Sleep underwater in magical Maldives
Maldives’ new star villa is under water, writes Nikki Ekstein
ON a recent trip to the Maldives, my itinerary was planned around a single hotel amenity: a bungalow with a two-storey waterslide.
In the luxury-friendly Maldives, more than anywhere else on Earth, it’s extravagant design features rather than location or good restaurants that make a hotel.
Enter Conrad Maldives Rangali Island with the region’s first underwater bungalow. When it opens later this year, the Muraka (“coral” in Dhivehi, the local language) will have cost $15 million (about R184 million) to build and the experience of sleeping 5m below sea level can be yours from $50 000 per night before taxes.
“The Muraka promises a unique experience that is not available anywhere else in the world,” architect Ahmed Saleem said.
While it’s true that there aren’t many hotel beds suspended below sea level, encased in glassy tunnels and surrounded by tropical fish, Saleem was more concerned with creating a full experience than designing a single, iconic room.
So guests to the Maldives – an archipelago in the Indian Sea, south west of India –will be flown to a private seaplane jetty and picked up in a speedboat for their ensuing use. The suite is set apart from the Conrad’s beach villas and bungalows, so its residents don’t have to see other humans, or set foot on dry land if they don’t want to. The price includes four dedicated butlers in a nearby structure for round-the-clock service, a chef, a set of jet skis and an on-call fitness trainer. Guests are upgraded to Diamond Honors Hilton status and given a 90-minute spa treatment per day.
The structure is made of steel, concrete and acrylic, with one level above the water and another below. It’s more a castle than a hotel suite, with enough nooks and crannies to sleep nine guests plus a gym, butler’s quarters and space for a private security detail.
But not all the action happens under water. The top floor has two bedrooms, a bathroom with an ocean-view tub, a sunset-facing deck and an infinity-edge pool. Guests can descend below sea level down a spiral staircase or elevator. There, nothing but a curved acrylic dome separates the king-sized bedroom and living area from the reef just beyond.
The bathroom, with its see-through walls and ceiling, feels like a bona-fide fish bowl. But privacy isn’t an issue, unless fish make you feel shy; the villa is far from the rest of the resort. The deep underwater darkness – or simply feeling lost at sea – might be more unsettling.
Conrad isn’t the first to take on underwater residences.
In Dubai, the developer Klenienst has been developing a community of partially submerged homes called the Floating Seahorse within the cluster of islands known as the Heart of Europe. The project was announced in 2015 with a projected completion in 2016; only three such homes have been completed to date. According to a local news source, one sank near the Burj Al Arab hotel, another “toppled into the sea while being transported on-site,” and the third is a prototype that’s being stabilised with sandbags.
That’s all to say: creating a self-contained island residence with undersea sleeping quarters is challenging, at best. Conrad Maldives Rangali Island has experience in that architectural arena thanks to Ithaa (“mother-of-pearl”), its underwater restaurant where diners enjoy eight-course feasts below a seethrough, acrylic canopy.
Still, Saleem said: “Designing an undersea structure such as Ithaa and designing a sleeping and living experience is vastly different.”
Among his main concerns was safety. The restaurant, he said, is in shallow waters and always fully staffed; evacuating from the Muraka in the event of an emergency may have to happen unattended. A sophisticated air-quality monitoring and alarm system will help; so will safety instruction briefings like the ones on airplanes.
The project’s scope presented logistical concerns. Saleem had to devise a lighting and design scheme that wouldn’t reflect off the acrylic walls.
“We couldn’t use bright colours or variations of white, as that would reflect too much and impede the undersea experience,” he said.
He had to work with marine biologists to ensure the villa wouldn’t affect the surrounding corals.
Then the 600-ton structure had to be built on land in Singapore, hoisted onto a crane, and transported in a specialised ship that could moor near the reef and submerge the suite. Even in the Maldives, where resorts are known to command some of the highest prices globally, this type of building isn’t sustainable as anything more than a one-off.
“There are no plans to create additional undersea residences,” Saleem said.
To Martin Rinck, who oversees Hilton’s global luxury and lifestyle brands, including Conrad, the debut of the underwater villa is a way to stay ahead of the industry.
It’s “a perfect example of the outof-the-box thinking that meets guests demands before they even have them”, Rinck said.
Nowhere is it more important to drive these types of trends than in the Maldives, where about a dozen ultra-luxe hotels will open this year.
“The Maldives is indeed a competitive destination, but also a destination where guests expect the best,” Rinck said.
It’s also a destination for which travellers are willing to shell out for the best. The price of $50 000 may sound like a lot per night, but the region claims a handful of private island villas at comparable prices that are popular, too.
After 20 years in the Maldives, it’s important that Hilton keeps pace with its newer, shinier competitors, Rinck said: “We need to continue meeting the expectations of travellers looking for that ‘go big or go home’ experience.” - The Washington Post