In Conversation with Mevin Ramasamy from Constance Moofushi

‘This is a place that I have a lot of passion and a lot of warmth towards,’ he says straight away, beaming. Mevin smiles a lot. You get the impression that he’d be a pretty friendly boss. In fact, he is boss to a fair few people at Constance Moofushi. ‘Before 2009, this island was owned and operated by a different company,’ he tells me. Constance Hotels & Resorts then brought its signature barefoot luxury to the island. In 2010, Constance Moofushi was unveiled, offering guests an immersive 5-star experience inspired by the natural beauty of the Maldives.

‘Today, we are proud to have team members whose dedication has been part of the island’s story for over a decade’ Mevin says. He’s right: the company has an exceptional record of staff retention, ensuring that familiar faces welcome guests back year after year. When Mevin talks about how Constance Moofushi was redesigned, he’s slightly underplaying things. There are now 100 villas, all at 5* level and they’ve 'pioneered a style of barefoot luxury that we still have and we’ve been consistently ranked as among the best hotels in the Maldives – on all the platforms.’

Mevin is clearly proud of what he and the team have achieved at Constance Moofushi, an ethos that he describes as ‘Robinson Crusoe’. ‘The property is very natural; there’s no concrete-based structures anywhere on the island and people can wander around with no shoes wherever they fancy,’ he says. The design studio that they enlisted back in 2009, Studio MHNA, have created a hotel at sea that’s both rustic, chic and cosy, which relies on curved structures instead of straight lines and which draws its design inspiration from the bottom of the sea. ‘A lot of our furniture looks as though it’s from a treasurehunt,’ Mevin explains, ‘with wardrobes like treasure chests and wood that’s washed ashore.’

In the hotel’s public areas, though, that design ethos is slightly different. They’ve been built with something else in mind: wine. ‘The tables around the bar look like wine bottles cut in half,’ Mevin chuckles, ‘and the restaurant pillars are made from bottles that have been drunk.’ I remark that it’s a good thing my parents haven’t visited, as the hotel would need another wing, but it seems as though they’d be in good company: ‘even at 80% capacity, we’re serving 150 bottles a day. We have one of the best all-inclusive lists in the Maldives.’ This luxury all-inclusive package was pioneered by Constance Moofushi, and it remains a cracker. Great food, good wine, an energising wellness activity every day – all in the comfort that you won’t be slapped with a hefty bill at the end of the week.

The Maldives are a byword for marine life, and the hotel has some of the best in the country. In fact, the South Ari atoll has one of the world’s best marine ecosystems – full stop. ‘Just 5 minutes from the resort, there’s a manta ray cleaning station,’ Mevin tells me, ‘and we’re within 30 minutes from at least 15 diving and snorkelling sites: whale sharks, leopard sharks, rays, black and white tip sharks, turtles, dolphins and more’. In fact, the day before I spoke to Mevin, he had taken his father snorkelling and they’d seen Hawksbill turtles just metres from the hotel’s beach. If you’re at the beachside Totem Bar sipping a sundowner, dolphins regularly swim up to the shore to get involved. In line with the resort’s natural ethos, only non-motorised water sports are available, ensuring a gentle footprint on the environment.

As ever with the Maldives, it’s a fine line between luxury and sustainability. These islands are threatened more than anywhere on Earth by rising sea levels, so the hotel must play its part. ‘It’s woven into our daily operations, with coral and marine conservation and research, food waste monitoring, no paper, no plastic, education, water-production, sewage treatment.’ Moofushi produces all of its own water by osmosis, an amazing logistical feat on an island not much bigger than a few football fields. It’s this size and relative isolation that make it so lovely to visit, but also so tricky to run.

‘We have a supply ship once a week, so if the chef forgets to order tomatoes, it’s tricky,’ Mevin smiles. ‘We need to know how much water to produce, how much fuel to purchase, exactly what we need and how much of it.’ Storage is always an issue and, whatever can be recycled, will be. ‘We currently have M&Ms in our villas but, amazingly, you can’t recycle M&M packaging. I’m going to stop that, to find a better balance.’ You see, it’s all in the fine details where the luxury ideals of running a hotel like Moofushi meets the sustainability principles that it needs, not just to flourish, but to survive.

Mevin, a pro with over 20 years in the industry and a decade with Constance Hotels & Resorts, is obviously a steady hand on the tiller. He’s up at half 5 every day, runs his morning meetings and tries to be present on the floor with guests as much as possible. “It’s in those little interactions that you learn how to make things even better,” he reflects. Judging by the reviews, I imagine it’s fairly minimal.