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Ensure your safety in the Maldives with us

Building on our long-standing commitment to hygiene and cleanliness at Seaside Finolhu, we have recently updated our cleaning regimes to incorporate even more rigorous conventions, elevating Maldives safe travel standards.

In partnership with Ecolab, a world leader in hygiene and cleaning technologies and services, we have enhanced and expanded our cleaning procedures with additional COVID-19 protocols and best practices to reflect the recommendations of the World Health Organization, the Centres for Disease Control & Prevention, and local public health authorities in the Maldives.

While we have always applied deep cleaning with hospital-grade disinfectants as standard, moving forward, guests can expect to notice more evolved cleaning and hygiene procedures in all areas of the resort. Such actions include:

Beach House (Reception)

Reduced contact at check-in, touchless transactions, sanitiser stations, sanitised key-cards, and paperless check-out, among other initiatives.

Public Areas and Facilities

Additional deep cleaning of high-touch surfaces, social distancing-friendly furniture placement, ‘last cleaned’ charts, and industry best practices for pool, gym and relaxation areas.

Guest Villas

Visible verification of the sanitisation of items (e.g. glassware and remote controls) and a reduction of non-essential in-room furnishings/high-touch items like note pads and service directories. Amended laundry protocols, electrostatic misting technology, and other new technological advancements in cleaning are also applied.

Food & Beverage

A new standards and service approach to buffets, room-service and catering services in general.

Supporting the Wellbeing of Guests and Islanders (Employees)

Ensuring the personal wellbeing of guests and Islanders is paramount at Seaside Finolhu. Our in-house medical Doctor is working closely with a team of medical experts at the Health Protection Agency to ensure the resort team receive the guidance and resources they need on returning to work and keeping guests safe in this new environment. The measures applied include:

Cleanliness information at various points within the resort and on our booking channels
Social distancing operating procedures and signage, including compliance training for our team
Guidance on the correct use of protective equipment as necessary by resort team members
Updated training and certification for our team
Availability of individual guest amenity cleaning kits
Hand sanitiser and disinfecting wipes available in guest rooms and at high-touch points throughout the resort

Our Islanders also receive ongoing specialised training in precautionary measures geared toward preventative protocols and added sanitation practices.

Having completed a thorough assessment of all points of guest contact, we have integrated advanced hygiene practices across various key touch points, starting from the moment guests walk through the gates at the International Arrival Terminal and continuing throughout the entirety of their holiday adventure at the resort.

These touch points include the airport lounge, guest transfers to and from the resort, guest rooms, food and beverage experiences, housekeeping and laundry services, maintenance services, resort activities such as water sports, swimming pools, gym & spa services, public bathrooms, in-bound supply processes, all public areas, back-of-house facilities (store rooms and offices), the Oceaneers Club (Kids Club) and HVAC systems.

In addition, Finolhu is introducing new ways of encouraging guests to maintain a safe social distance without compromising the relaxed experience for which Finolhu has become so well-known. To achieve this, safe social distance measures have been established across the resort’s restaurants, bars and beaches by placing furniture at intervals, replacing handshakes with a friendly smile, and limiting the number of guests congregating in public areas at the same time.

To further ensure cleanliness is maintained throughout the resort, new cleaning technologies have been introduced, including electrostatic sprayers with touchless disinfecting capabilities and cleaning processes, while changes have also been applied to enhance the sanitisation regimen.

Additional hand sanitising stations are provided for guests and team members throughout the resort, at all dining locations and within each individual guest room. All items that guests will come into contact with (from key cards to welcome drink glassware) are sanitised before being used.

The new standards and service approach to food and beverage includes steps taken to ensure buffets, room service and restaurant catering all adhere to the most stringent cleanliness standards.

Arrival & Transfer

Our Airport Representatives now wear the necessary PPE when welcoming you as you step out from the International Arrivals area, ready to handle your luggage with gloved hands and escort you to the Seaplane / Domestic Check-in counters where the friendly ground crew observe all anti-Covid protocols while proceeding with your check-in.

All aircraft are also sanitised as per the guidelines prescribed by the relevant authorities.

Airport and Seaplane Lounge

Guests on seaplane flights are then transferred by a vehicle which has been sanitised as per Airport Authority regulations to our seaplane lounge, where our team will welcome you in a clean and safe space in which we have ensured that all cleaning and sanitisation standards have been implemented.
The furniture in the lounge has also been arranged in a fashion which allows for social distancing without compromising guest comfort.

Before boarding your flight, you will be requested to wear a mask. Should you not have your own mask, we will provide you with one to wear during the flight.

Check-in

Hassle-free check-in allows guests to skip this process at the front desk and go directly to their villa, where refreshing welcome drinks, personal anti-bacterial hand towels, and in-room hand sanitiser await arriving guests.

All items which form part of the check-in process, such as key cards, are sanitised before distribution to guests.

Housekeeping

Finolhu has introduced even more robust housekeeping measures, including the use of additional anti-Covid approved disinfectants applied by electrostatic aerosol sprayers which allow for touchless disinfection to take place. The magnetically charged droplets produced by the electrostatic sprayers are especially effective as they seek out and coat hard-to-reach areas and surfaces typically missed in standard cleaning processes.

We also provide advanced cleaning and sanitisation of air conditioning filters and ducting before each arrival and again upon each departure. Upholstery, curtains and general common-touch areas undergo regular steam-cleaning and sanitisation, while anti-bacterial gels and soaps are placed in each guest room. All of these measures form part of our 3-person check system.

High-Touch areas receive additional deep cleaning. This includes, for example, the extra disinfection of the most frequently touched points in guest room areas such as light switches, door handles, TV remote controls, and thermostats.

As a precautionary measure, we have removed the pen, notepad, paper and guest directory, all of which have been replaced by digital options where possible. However, such items are still available to guests upon request.
Placed in each guest room, our “Care-4-Me” kits provide guests with face masks, hand sanitiser, and sanitisation wipes, while additional disposable masks can be supplied on demand.

All Public Areas

Signage has been placed in public areas to remind guests of the importance of maintaining social distancing protocols and using the hand sanitiser gel which is placed near all entrances, fitness areas, and public meeting areas.

All public areas are now cleaned more frequently and with EPA-approved hospital-grade products.

Food & Beverage

While food safety has always been very important to us, we have recently introduced extra measures to further enhance this area. With this in mind, all food handlers and supervisors undergo thorough training in safe food preparation and service practices. The resort’s food and beverage operations are subject to a strict self-inspection protocol that applies food safety standards as their guidelines, while compliance is validated by independent audits. As standard practice, all our preparation and service staff wear the appropriate PPE while in the workplace.

Our training, audits and verification inspections are conducted under the auspices of Nsure, a recognised leader and partner in Food Safety, Health and Safety and Sustainability in the Maldives.
Our restaurants which provide a-la-carte service utilise digital menus wherever possible or display daily specials on easily visible boards.

The restaurants and bars at Finolhu operate at reduced capacity to maintain adequate spacing between guests and ensure that furniture arrangements allow for social distancing.
In-villa dining includes the option of offering contactless delivery, which provides drop-off and collection services outside of the villa for guests who wish to limit their service interactions.

Spa, Gym & Wellness

The changes made to the protocols we follow for disinfecting our wellness areas include closing for cleaning and sanitising multiple times each day and limiting the number of guests allowed in these spaces at any one time.

Personal training sessions now take place in the privacy of the gym, while wellness activities such as yoga and Pilates are available for individuals, couples, or small groups only, with safe distancing strictly applied.

Changing clothes in preparation for a Spa treatment can now be done only in the designated changing room for each of the individual treatment rooms instead of in the central locker room areas. Each of our spa treatment rooms will also receive a full sanitation service before each treatment, while our Spa Therapists are equipped with the necessary PPE to ensure the safety of our guests.

Kids Club

We have not forgotten about the precious little ones!

Our team at the Oceaneers Club (Kids Club) have implemented an intensive cleaning regime to ensure that we can also ensure a safe playing environment for our little guests. This also includes electro-static mist treatments that apply a hospital-grade disinfectant in the bathrooms, play rooms and other shared spaces.

While we have had to discontinue some of our previous fun activities which entailed the sharing of equipment or toys, we have found some exciting but safe new ways of keeping the fun times alive.
We also offer sanitising gel and wipes at various points in the Oceaneers Club.

Our team

The extensive training our Islanders undergo is focused on educating and empowering them to deliver our enhanced health and safety program with complete understanding and confidence so that they are able to pass on this care to each and every guest.

We place an especially strong focus on re-training programs for our Housekeeping teams to ensure they are kept up-to-date on all of the cleaning protocols which are being implemented across the resort.

We also believe that our Islanders should be grounded in their emotional intelligence. For this reason, they also receive behavioural training to ensure that empathetic and personalised care and connections remain despite the reduction of close contact and face-to-face interactions with which we have all become so accustomed.