Safety Aspects Of Maldives Underwater Hotel Villa

Maldives Finest is a specialist travel agent in luxury holiday. We have featured a luxury private residence at Conrad Maldives that includes an underwater bedroom. Under our ultraluxury collection of fine resorts in Maldives we decided to include this villa for several reasons. It is a luxury thrill quenching experience that involves way too little risk than most of the adventures guests experience on island holidays.



If you are doing anything underwater, even above water as well, there is some degree of risk involved. You can’t rule out risks if you are at sea for any purpose. For example, snorkeling is one of the most popular activities guests do in every resort, but there is slight risks of getting bitten by a fish or something. There are also some dangerous species of fish that you should keep distance to avoid becoming a threat to them for which they react aggressively. Scuba diving is also very popular and have remained so in the Maldives tourism industry for several decades, it involves risk of decompression which is fatal and ADK hospital in Male’ has special chambers to give treatment just for that. If you are travelling by speedboat on a calm day if may be safer than crossing a road but still it can’t be regarded as risk free, most of the luxury resorts give you lifejacket when you board, safety measures are taken to minimize risks as much as possible.

The concept of the underwater room in Muraka private residence has undergone test of time. Conrad Maldives first introduced an underwater restaurant and operated it for over a decade without any known incident or evacuation. The undersea hotel room they introduced comes in similar shape and construction. The structure is very similar to their restaurant but with a slight different, the room comes with an added elevator copy of their proven design, we have personally not checked its dimensions and technical details. But, the shape is very interesting to us in terms of safety. Because, the arch shape is something that is well known to withstand against stronger forces than other shapes. In underwater environment there is pressure that pushes against object that is less dense, such as an empty plastic bottle with air. The deeper it gets the stronger the water pressure.

The arch design pushes lot of force towards the base of structure, there is lesser pressure at the top as it is close to surface. Increase of pressure is gradual, starting from the top of arch. Pressure being distributed to all areas is an important factor to be noted while assessing safety. If it were to come cubical shape there would have been corners which may be different in strength compared to other areas. Arch shape is efficient in distributing force across the whole panel, without weak points.



The arch shaped cover is made of thick acrylic, not glass. Acrylic is slightly flexible and that is the material used in flight windows as well. The OceanGate submarine that got imploded at the Titanic wrack had a view port made of acrylic but thicker. The underwater room at Conrad Maldives contains acrylic of 180mm (according the company’s website) inches in thickness. There are rings made from “H-shaped” metal that acts like a frame without blocking much from the view. The “H shaped” metal is another important factor to highlight, because this is also used to add strength in building construction. Viewing photo of the room may depict the transparent dome being constructed with separate panels but it is actually 3 different compartments assembled on a barge in Hong Kong. Breaking the transparent arch into separate panels would make it less strong than one solid structure. The construction was done by MJ Murphy Ltd, New Zealand, Mr Mike Murphy was the project Chief Engineer.

Underwater room filled with air means the structure is in constant push towards the surface as air tries to escape. This is called buoyancy. To make it stay stationary on sea floor it should have either weight or anchors. According to Murphy’s website, they used concrete and sand.



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