Nowadays it’s no longer enough to wine and dine in the tallest skyscrapers in order to prove your upper-class bona fides. Apparently, you need to go deep, too.
Next month, luxury-seekers will find another reason to revisit the Maldives with the opening of the 5.8 Undersea Restaurant. Part of the expansion of the five-star Hurawalhi Resort, it is being billed as the world’s largest underwater restaurant.
It’s yet another feather on the proverbial cap for tourism in the Maldives, a trailblazing destination in the field of underwater hospitality. The 5.8 Undersea Restaurant will open on the heels of two submarine Maldivian restaurants: the Ithaa at the Conrad Maldives and the Subsix at Niyama.
In addition to 360-degree views of marine life, Hurawalhi’s restaurant will come with its own wine cellar. The Maldivian resort of Anantara Kihavah opened a dedicated wine cellar under the sea in 2011.
While not every atoll or isle is cut out to be the next trendy submarine restaurant, the Maldives has the perfect synergy of factors favouring such a “niche product,” according to Nihat Ercan, executive vice-president for investment sales at Jones Lang LaSalle.
“The Maldives works very well for the underwater concept,” Ercan said. “Tourism there is generally based on the principle that one island hosts one resort.”
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On that note, India’s pioneering underwater resto, the Real Poseidon, was shut down shortly after launch, due to building code violations and safety risks.
Developers around the world have been trying, with various degrees of success, to replicate the concept on lodging. In Florida, an underwater laboratory was converted into Jules’ Undersea Lodge, which guests can access only by scuba-diving 21 feet into Key Largo waters. Off Pemba Island in Zanzibar, the Manta Resort offers the Underwater Room, a submerged bedroom in a floating house.
Surprisingly, it’s an idea that makes business sense. According to Ercan, underwater rooms are cheaper to develop than overwater villas. The key lies in prefabricated the structures on land and then submerging them later.
The Ithaa restaurant was pre-constructed in Singapore for USD5 million before it was cast into the Indian Ocean in 2005.
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Unlike underwater restaurants, a fully underwater hotel seems to be an idea that doesn’t hold water, so to speak. Plans to build the Hydropolis Hotel in Dubai and the Poseidon Resort in Fiji, both of which feature multiple submarine rooms, are now figuratively dead in the water.
For now, visitors to Dubai can make do with the Poseidon and Neptune suites at the Atlantis hotel, which gives the semblance of a submarine environment through “windows” that are actually the panes of the hotel’s larger-than-life aquarium. Similarly, guests at the 11 Ocean Suites in Singapore can sleep in rooms that share walls with the massive South East Asia Aquarium, the largest oceanarium in the world.
While it’s still years before most people come to sleep underwater, it’s clearly becoming evident that when it comes to eating out with class and attitude, you don’t keep your head above water.
Get a glimpse of what to expect here:
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