• 6 months ago
If you travel to a remote island resort, where do the people who work there live? Because of course, if we are traveling to a remote location, it’s highly unlikely that it’s an easy place for hotel staff to commute to and from. Typically on an island resort, staffers are housed in the middle of the island and don’t have access to the beach, the walking paths, or any of the amenities that make these destinations so appealing to travelers.
But there’s a new type of staff housing pioneered by the Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands, which created an entire island for its employees—one where they can also snorkel, swim, relax, eat, work out, and just generally soak in the Maldives. This week’s guest, Sally Kohn, traveled to the resort last year to get a peek at the island and see if it’s really as impressive as it seems. She was surprised by what she found—happy employees included.

Read the full transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/7zlj95p

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Transcript
00:00 Hey everyone, and welcome to the third season of Unpacked, a podcast by afar.
00:04 I'm Aislinn, and as you can probably tell by this giant microphone in front of my face,
00:08 I host the show. Every week on the podcast, we unpack a different tricky topic in travel,
00:15 and this week is no exception. This is Unpacked.
00:29 I'm Aislinn Green, and this is Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks one tricky topic in travel
00:34 each week. Today, we're heading to the Maldives to explore the complex world of staff housing
00:40 in luxury environments. Now, many years ago, my sister worked as a sous-chef on a cruise ship
00:46 that would sail around the Hawaiian islands. This was long before the drama of Below Deck,
00:50 but I remember being so surprised by the contrast between her living conditions and those of the
00:55 guests. I think she shared her bunk room with three other people. Of course, the guests were
01:02 paying to be there, and she was getting room and board, but still ever since then, I've thought
01:06 about what goes on behind the scenes of hotels, cruise ships, and luxury resorts. What are the
01:12 conditions like for people who work there, and especially for people who have to live there?
01:16 It's a question that has lingered in the mind of Sally Cohn as well. If that name sounds familiar
01:22 to you, you may have seen her as a commentator on CNN. Or maybe you read her book, The Opposite of
01:28 Hate, a Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity. Sally is an activist, a writer, and a fantastic
01:35 speaker with a keen eye for issues around social justice and defusing conflict. She's written for
01:40 afar several times, and is just an all-around wonderful human. Last year, she emailed to say
01:45 that she'd heard about a new kind of staff housing on a remote island resort in the Maldives,
01:51 a kind of staff housing that provides workers with comfort, space, and dignity. Let's see what she
01:56 found. I'm at the Ritz-Carlton Maldives in the Fari Islands, where it seems like everyone else
02:06 is on their honeymoon. And let me tell you, I think they do honeymoons pretty well here at the Ritz.
02:11 But there's something else the Ritz-Carlton in the Maldives does extremely well,
02:16 maybe better than any other remote luxury island destination.
02:20 Why did you come to the Maldives? I don't know. I don't even remember.
02:27 It's just like my one of my friends, actually, she's the one who
02:32 visited first in Maldives. And then she said, Okay, Abby, this place is beautiful. You should
02:39 come. My name is Abby, and I am a spa therapist in the Ritz-Carlton spa.
02:45 Abby has worked in the Maldives for 13 years, and at all the other resorts she worked at,
02:51 she lived in the middle of the island. Maybe you've never thought about it, but if you go
02:54 on vacation on a remote island, remote by definition kind of means too far for staff to
03:00 commute back and forth to anywhere else. So generally, they get put in staff housing in
03:04 the middle of the island. Sometimes it's nice. Sometimes it's not. Either way, usually there's
03:09 a canteen, maybe a gym, laundromats and a shared kitchen. But the staff can't generally say go to
03:16 the beach or go for a walk or play soccer. Because to be frank, the people who own luxury resorts
03:23 don't think people on vacation want to be sunbathing next to the people who work in the spa.
03:29 If you're in the island, in the same island as the guest, there's a limited spot for you to go.
03:35 Like you're not allowed to go here because it's only for the guest.
03:39 And that's a very important point for another podcast. For a resort to feel exclusive,
03:46 does it literally have to be exclusionary? But that's the reality of how most staff are
03:50 housed on most luxury island resorts, except here at the Ritz-Carlton Maldives.
03:57 We have our own island just for the staff. So I feel like a lot of things to do. We have the
04:06 beach if we wanted to swim and then go to the gym. We have our own cafeteria to read books,
04:14 have coffee. I can have my own space. I will have my favorite spot in the island where I can do my
04:25 own time. I love reading. So I will just have a space for me in the beach so I can read peacefully.
04:34 I finally get to meet Aduham. He works in housekeeping. And full disclosure,
04:40 I'm making sure to meet him because he's the housekeeper for my suite and I really want to
04:44 meet the person making these incredible ornate palm leaf sculptures on my bed. Turns out,
04:50 Aduham is a fan of palm leaf art. And he's also a fan of the staff island, which is called Fari
04:55 Campus. We actually have a whole island in campus. After we finish the duty and go,
05:04 the whole island is for us. We can do whatever we want. If I want to go to snorkeling, I can go to
05:12 snorkeling. If I want to go to swimming, I can go. I don't have to take a permission or anything.
05:21 Like our own island, we can do whatever we want. That's the best part of that.
05:26 So there are four Fari Island islands, owned and developed by the Pontiac Land Group.
05:31 They're actually man-made islands, another fascinating subject to unpack some other time.
05:35 But anyway, three of the islands hold resorts, the Ritz-Carlton, the Patina Maldives,
05:39 and the soon-to-open Capella. And then the fourth island is the staff island, Fari Campus,
05:45 where the staff from the three resorts live. Right now, about 1,400 staff in total.
05:51 After a few days at the Ritz-Carlton, I hop on a boat so I can go see this staff island for myself.
05:57 We will go first to our beach. We'll start from beach. This is Maldives, the sunny side of life,
06:07 so we should start always from beach. Nadim is the learning and development manager at the Fari
06:12 Campus. So this is our football pitch, not only football, but also cricket, you know, every such
06:19 games we play here. The island has a free buffet-style canteen and also a small subsidized
06:25 restaurant that stays open late. Plus a small grocery store, a hair salon, a health clinic,
06:30 a lounge, a computer room, and a gym, our next spot on the tour. This is 10 times better than
06:36 what I expected. What did you expect? Not this. Definitely not this. It's a really nice gym,
06:43 well-equipped, overlooking the ocean with walls of windows. So this is like if I were,
06:49 if I were staying at a hotel and it had a gym like this, I'd be overjoyed. Yeah. Right?
06:56 Over there is the area where we do yoga and some aerobic classes in the evening,
07:04 maybe sunset yoga or sunrise yoga. The Pontiac Land Group really did something new with the Fari
07:10 Island Campus. For instance, it's not just unique that there's a staff island, but that a luxury
07:15 resort architect was brought in to design it. That is definitely not the norm. And though it's too
07:21 early to know the impact, the Ritz and Patina just opened in 2021, the Pontiac Land Group is confident
07:27 that the Fari Campus will lead to happier staff, which ultimately means easier hiring and retention
07:32 and overall better hospitality for guests.
07:39 We check out one of the rooms, Nadim's room, in fact. So this part is similar to how other
07:56 properties do worker housing. The size of your room and how many people you share it with
08:00 is determined by your job. If you work in housekeeping or the spa, you probably have a
08:05 four share, meaning you have three roommates and you're in bunk beds. But if you're a manager like
08:10 Nadim, you probably have a single. Depending on your work level here, there's even housekeeping.
08:15 Nadim's room is modern and bright. There's a double bed and a sofa and a desk and a big ceiling fan.
08:21 Okay, so the mini fridge. TV. TV you had to bring or they bring? No, it's provided from here.
08:28 Also, every room apparently comes with the biggest water bottle I have ever seen. What's this? What's
08:33 with this water bottle? Oh, this is Fari Campus water bottle. So every room, all the residents
08:39 has one. Oh, okay. That's a lot of water. A lot of water. Yes. So what I do, I fill it from the pantry,
08:46 I bring it, I boil it, then I drink. I joined Nadim and a group of workers in the canteen for lunch.
08:52 The feeling that you leave your work behind there and you come to be a better version of yourself
08:57 in your own island is, I think, very, very unique feeling we all get when we are living in our staff
09:05 island, Fai Campus. Having a separate island like this gives us more freedom to do more activities
09:13 to, there's no restrictions, you know, to walk around the island. So you feel that, you know,
09:21 now I would just say that freedom. So the lunch at the staff island cantina was good, but later I had
09:27 dinner with some staff from the patina, who also live on the staff island. We ate at the resort's
09:32 Patagonian Steakhouse and I ate a very, very nice steak. And just so we're clear, the cantina was
09:38 nice, but the steak was extraordinary. And yeah, hotel staff can enjoy the amenities at the resorts.
09:44 They can book dinner at a hotel restaurant, a massage in the spa, or a night in an overwater
09:49 bungalow at a 50% discount. There are regular boats between the staff island and the other
09:53 resort islands, plus regular boats back to the mainland. Hi, my name is Fatima. I am the events
10:01 and curations coordinator. I started working at Patina early 2021, way before we opened. Yes. Wow.
10:11 I was actually one of the first line level staff to come on the island. They are very much into
10:16 the work-life balance concept here. And it's just a 10 to 15 minute boat ride away from
10:22 the place that we work and the place we have our accommodation. And it's perfect. It has everything.
10:30 It's very clean. It's very new. You get the privacy and you even get to go to Malé every day. There's
10:37 a boat arranged for you three times a day. So we can just go back and forth to see our parents and
10:44 family anytime we want. Let's not paint everything too rosy. Maldivian tourism is a $500 billion plus
10:51 industry, but you still have staff making relative pennies compared to the thousands of dollars a
10:55 day being spent by guests. As of 2021, tourism accounted for roughly a quarter of the Maldivian
11:01 economy and one third of government revenue. Yeah, that means many in the Maldives have a stable
11:06 source of income, but there's also a price to pay. For instance, many have to work away from
11:10 their families for large periods of time. Nadeem, the learning and development manager, has a five-year-old
11:15 and a 10-year-old who live on his home island in the Maldives. Normally the mattresses they have
11:21 over there, the bed will be over there, the sofa will be over here. But I just created this way because
11:26 I bring my family and so it's easy for us to have this setup. We have single accommodation so we can
11:33 bring our family and they can live with us for 90 days. Nadeem's walls are pretty blank, except for
11:40 a tiny little cluster of tiny little handwritten notes, which were clearly written by tiny little
11:45 hands. I could tell from the notes that that wasn't your handwriting. They leave me notes, you know,
11:54 when I come from work I see their notes, they have drawings. Even you can see this is not what I use,
11:59 they use this. So they live at home but they come during school holidays, they come and
12:07 they are coming this month 22nd as well. And you go when you have your leave? Yeah. That must be hard.
12:14 But it is what it is, right? And most of the locals who live in the resorts, this is our life.
12:19 During my stay at the Ritz-Carlton, I met a man from the Philippines who was incredibly excited
12:25 to be working there, his first job in the Maldives, because now he could finally be near his mother,
12:31 who works at a different resort on a different island. She's worked in the Maldives for most of
12:35 his life. So does the Fari Campus model cure all the complexities of island resorts? No. The good
12:42 news is the Maldives has strong minimum wage laws and Ritz workers get generous vacation days,
12:47 over a month off per year. But again, still while I was working there I heard about a family that,
12:53 if I'm doing the math right, spent more in a weekend than a Ritz housekeeper makes in a year.
12:58 Travel, whether it's in the Maldives or Manhattan or anywhere in between,
13:04 is often about those who have being served by those who have less. And yet, at least in the
13:10 way that they're innovating their staff housing, the Fari Islands and their owners are maybe,
13:14 hopefully, making things a little more just. Or at least feel more just. And that's important too.
13:20 Here's Abby again from the spa. But I feel that if you're in the island, in the same island as the
13:27 guest, there's a limited spot for you to go. But if you have your own staff island, you can go
13:35 wherever. Like you can swim, you can snorkel. Like, I feel like I am the guest in the campus like that.
13:43 That was Sally Cohn. And that was the Ritz-Carlton Maldives and the Fari Islands.
13:56 We'll link to the resort's website in the show notes, and we'll also link to Sally's book,
14:00 as well as her social media handles and the other stories she's written for AFAR.
14:04 We'll see you next week.
14:05 Ready for more unpacking? Visit AFAR.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and
14:11 @AXe. We are @AFARmedia. If you enjoyed today's exploration, I hope you'll come back for more
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14:28 to ask a question or suggest a topic for coverage, you can reach out to us at AFAR.com/feedback,
14:34 or email us at unpacked@afar.com. This has been Unpacked, a production of AFAR Media.
14:40 The podcast is produced by Aislinn Green and Nikki Galteland. Music composition by Chris
14:45 Cullen. And remember, the world is complicated. We're here to help you unpack it.
14:53 Okay, that was our show. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe on your way out,
14:58 and I'll include a link to the podcast below.

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