Hospitality Design - July 2013 - 102

Sonu Shivdasani

founder, chairman, and CEO, Soneva Group,
Maldives and Bangkok
I believe in destiny. It was at a late age that
I suddenly realized I had become a hotelier.
I have been fortunate to experience some of
the best hotels in Europe whilst traveling on
family holidays with my parents. My father
loved driving and he would always plan his
holidays as a drive through the continent
from one great establishment to another.
It was not until leaving university that
my hotel destiny was sealed. I met [wife and
business partner] Eva at the Monte Carlo
Grand Prix at a time when I was studying
English literature in Oxford—not the typical
education for a future hotelier.

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July 2013 hospitalitydesign.com

The Maldives was a destination that
we would frequent. At the time, they
were largely undiscovered except for a
few mass-market 1- or 2-Star German- or
Italian-dominated properties. We loved the
geography of the islands but what was built
on top of them was something else. One
dined in plastic chairs, under neon lights
in very unattractive locations, eating food
that was much worse than that at school—
all in one of the most romantic and idyllic
destinations in the world.
Things came to a head and Eva and I
decided that if we were not able to lease our
own island and build our own house molded
on how we believed an experience in the
Maldives should be we would not return. So I
went to the government, and asked whether

we could lease an island given that they
had so many. The government very politely
explained that the entire country had been
zoned and giving islands to foreigners to
build a home was not part of their plan. But,
they would welcome us as investors in the
tourism industry. Every so often, they would
auction islands. It happened that an auction
was to take place six months later. Instead of
mass market we proposed a development of
luxury tourism with higher overall revenues
and greater income to the country. Given
where the destination was at that time
the government felt that our plans were
unrealistic and overly optimistic.
A few years went by at which point I
had graduated and Eva and I were living in
Geneva. We broke our resolve and returned
to the Maldives. During that holiday, we met
a couple. They introduced us to an island,
where a resort had been built in the seventies
and where the operation closed shortly after.
The island had remained abandoned for
about fifteen years. We went to see the island
and our jaws dropped; it was the biggest
that we had ever seen in the Maldives. It
was in an atoll with no other development,
so we had fifty private uninhabited islands
surrounding us. We fell in love with the
island and were determined to secure it.
But the drawback was that it was sixty
miles from Male airport. On a good day it
would take a client who had traveled nine
hours from Europe to Male a further six to
seven hours to reach the resort. During bad
weather it would take four days—not a great
start to a seven-day package holiday.
At the time we secured the lease
of the island a helicopter operator was
exploring the opportunity to invest and
set up operations in the country. When
Soneva Fushi opened our first guests were
transferred by helicopter—an idyllic twentyminute flight.
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