Ayyoub Salameh, director of culinatry service at St. Regis Vommuli. [Photo by St. Regis/provided to China Daily]

"My job is to make people feel at home, literally, since this has been my home for the past 30 years," says Ahmed Asim, room director of the St. Regis Vommuli hotel in the Maldives.

Between his generation and that of his parents, his country has turned from a gathering of specks in the Indian Ocean to one of the world's best known and most desired escapes.

Yet for Asim, the notion of escape is virtually nonexistent, if not laughable.

"For me, this only provides an initiation to the outside world as they are coming to us in planeloads."

His entree into this world came early, he says. When he was at primary school, property owners invited him and his classmates to tour the resort islands, where human endeavor tries to emulate natural beauty in creating paradise on Earth－sometimes with unintended results.