Once the couple was invited for a drink at a nearby island, only to discover that the hostess, a Maldivian who had previously worked on the construction site at Vommuli, had fashioned her little bar using discarded plywood she had gathered from the St. Regis site.

Wong Chiu Man, asked about any misgivings he has about the hotel's design, said that if he had his chance again he would pay greater heed to any risks such a project posed to the environment. "The construction of the water villas did cause the bleaching of corals on a scale I hate to see."

But as tourists pour in, won't further stress put on the country's unspoiled beauty and fragile ecosystem?

"I don't see that happening," Asim says. "First of all, the Maldives is a high-end tourist destination as we cater to a niche market. This is especially true in our case. For the moment, the government has adopted a very positive attitude toward developing tourism. A college in Male offers a master's degree in hospitality and tourism."

However, he acknowledges that even though tourists started coming to the Maldives in the 1970s, it is only in the past five years that the country's tourism industry has really taken off.