Four brothers, one island, one business

We grew up in Malé. Four brothers, parents, the Indian Ocean on every side of us. The first years were full of beach, of reef, of fishing trips on borrowed boats. Then the city changed. Construction filled in the shoreline. The beach where we'd swim disappeared under concrete. Year by year the natural space we'd grown up with shrank.

In 2016 we made the decision. We moved to Fulidhoo — a small island in Vaavu Atoll, about 65 km south of Malé, with a population of around 400 — and opened a small guesthouse with just four rooms. We called it Luau Beach Inn.

How we run it

Today there are fourteen rooms, but the model is the same. The four brothers, our parents, and our partners run the inn end-to-end. We don't outsource the dive school. We don't outsource the kitchen. We don't subcontract the night-fishing trips. When you arrive, the people you meet are the people who run the place.

This is deliberate. Hospitality scales easily into something corporate and impersonal — endless friendly-but-rotating staff who do exactly what their training script says, no more. We didn't want to be that. We wanted you to eat dinner with someone who lives here, dive with someone who knows the reef by feel, and go fishing with someone whose dad used to fish the same line.

What's stayed

Some things haven't changed since the four-room days:

• Open kitchen. You can wander in, ask what's cooking, and request a substitution.
• Joint dinners. On most evenings one of us is on the property and joins the dinner table. No fuss; just sit down.
• Night fishing with the family. When the moon is right, we go. You're welcome to come, on the same boat as our cousins and uncles.
• The same boat for dives that we used in 2016. Newer engine. Same boat.

What's grown

• A PADI 5-Star Dive Center — Divers Lodge Fulidhoo, our own operation
• Sustainability work — Parley for the Oceans partner, 2023 Sustainability Award winner
• Accessibility — a lift, ramps, wheelchair-accessible rooms
• An academic case study at the University of Otago, of all places

Want to come and meet us? Send a WhatsApp. We reply ourselves.