The Patina Effect

The Maldivian experience for travellers is given an update for the new decade with Patina’s diverse restaurant offerings.

- Kenneth Ten

FOR GUESTS OF Patina Maldives, the experience starts as they arrive at Velana International Airport in Male. Friendly porters quickly help them onto the resort speedboat, and a mere 45 minutes later – coupled with dolphin sightings for those in luck – they find themselves on Patina, one of the four parts that make up the Fari Islands archipelago. At this point, all it takes to slip into vacation mode is a warm greeting from the hotel’s essentialists: “Welcome to paradise.”

The Maldives has, since the late 1970s, represented a tropical island idyll with its clear aquamarine waters, swaying palms and white sandy beaches. This gave rise to the idea of barefoot luxury – being cast away on an island with endless days of communing with nature, especially the gloriously blue skies that turn into a sea of stars at night.

What has changed in recent times is the idea of getting people to return to the Maldives once they’ve been through that experience. For luxury real estate developer and hotel owner Pontiac Land, the solution lay in the establishment of Fari Islands, with Patina Maldives as its nexus. Evan Kwee, who is the vice chairman of Capella Hotel Group and head of hospitality and design for Pontiac Land, is an avowed fan of the Maldives, having visited since the 1990s. “My family liked coming here, but we also realised that people now want something more progressive – not just to sit on a beach all day with a book,” he says.