Kurumba — The First Resort.
Kurumba Village opens as the Maldives' very first tourist resort. Italian travel agent George Corbin and local entrepreneurs — Ahmed Naseem, M.U. Maniku and Hussain Afeef — hand-build thirty simple beach huts with coral, palm leaves and brackish water showers. It is the quiet beginning of a global luxury brand.
In 1971, an Italian travel agent named George Corbin arrived in Malé on a cargo ship with an Italian photographer named Benini, looking for untouched tropical destinations to sell to his clients. Maldivian entrepreneurs Ahmed Naseem, M.U. Maniku and Hussain Afeef — three figures who would go on to dominate Maldivian tourism for the next half-century — met him there.
Together they developed the country's first resort on the island of Vihamanaafushi. On 3 October 1972, Kurumba Village opened with sixty beds, brackish water showers, meals cooked over beach barbecues, and bungalows built from coral blocks and uneven palm leaves. It was immediately fully booked.
Kurumba was the match that lit a fire. By the end of the 1970s, 17 resorts had opened in the Maldives, offering a total of 1,300 beds. Today the number is past 180 — and the entire Maldivian economy, and most of its foreign exchange, rests on what began with thirty huts on Vihamanaafushi.
It was breathtaking. I could feel the potential these beautiful islands could offer to tourists.