Dear Editor,
Before we talk of alcohol license, we have to talk about why city hotels and guest houses are on inhabited islands.
The idea of guest houses and city hotels on inhabited islands was originally to spread the economic benefits of tourism into local islands and to promote the heritage and culture of Maldivian life to tourists, who rarely see the light of day on an inhabited Maldivian island. This is outlined in brief in the previous tourism masterplans.
Yes ofcourse there are numerous benefits from tourists coming onto populated islands, look at the northern strip of Chandhanee Magu, full of tourist shops and series of restaurants that benefit from catering to tourists. This is a fine working model, but unfortunately one that extorts money from tourists and destroys our culture – fake souvenirs manufactured in the East are sold as genuine Maldivian products, restaurants maintain two sets of menus – one for locals and another overpriced menu for guests, tour guides work also as salesmen for tourist shops! This is a massive extortion scheme. To this date, government has not addressed this issue (Maumoons nor Anni’s government) to the extent it should.
The same sort of markets will bear fruit once fully-fledged city hotels with liquor licenses start operating on other islands, tourists arrivals would create such unregulated markets specially if there’s no authority monitoring and keeping things in check. Guests will be unfairly exploited and worse yet, liquor being made available will most certainly be shipped behind doors into the local community.
Liquor and drugs are already readily available in Male’ and elsewhere. The same illegal distribution networks and those in charge will exploit this opportunity and make a quick buck!
I personally feel, the policy to have city hotels and guest houses should be gotten rid of entirely. A city hotel or guest house for local domestic tourism is fine, but not for tourists coming from abroad.
The tourism model that has worked so far, where tourists stay in a separate island is good as it is and we should not try to meddle with it but to develop it further keeping the core concept of one island one resort intact.
Regards,
Anonymous
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