Four Seasons Resorts Maldives has picked up the 2026 Sustainable Hotel Award for Biodiversity Action & Education at HICAP, the Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific. The judges, who look for sustainability work that other hotels across Asia Pacific can copy, recognised a quarter-century of marine conservation at the brand's two Maldivian resorts — Kuda Huraa, open since May 1998, and Landaa Giraavaru, open since November 2006.
The headline project is Reefscapers, running at Kuda Huraa since 2001. More than 9,000 coral frames have been planted, making it one of the Indian Ocean's largest artificial reef restoration efforts. Corals on the older frames now reproduce on their own, and the team has pioneered a Maldives first: collecting coral reproductive cells in the wild, fertilising them and settling larvae under controlled conditions. When severe bleaching hit in 2024, staff relocated 28,000 corals to deeper, cooler water to save them.
The science extends well beyond corals. The resorts' Turtle Rehabilitation Centres have treated more than 500 sea turtles, many injured by ghost fishing nets drifting in on Indian Ocean currents, and released over 280 back into the wild. Onsite Manta Trust scientists at Landaa helped identify the world's largest-known population of reef mantas — research that contributed to Baa Atoll becoming the Maldives' first UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in 2011.
What makes this relevant to travellers is how hands-on it all is. Guests can sponsor a coral frame, transplant fragments alongside the resort's marine biologists, then track their coral's growth online via MarineSavers.com. Kids get the Junior Marine Savers programme at Kuda Huraa, while teenagers can do a one-to-one Trainee Marine Biologist course across six modules at Landaa.
The education pipeline runs deeper still. A government-accredited Apprenticeship Programme has graduated 1,058 young Maldivians since 2001 across 14 career paths, and a new fully funded four-year Marine and Environmental Science apprenticeship with Maldives National University leads towards a bachelor's degree, combining academic study with fieldwork at both resorts. Landaa also hosts a three-stage Baa Atoll Marine Biology Internship Programme for atoll students, launched in 2023.
"This award belongs to the people who keep doing the work," said Armando Kraenzlin, Regional Vice President and General Manager, crediting the marine biologists, conservation partners, gardeners and trainers — plus the guests and students who learn alongside them.
If you're picking a Maldives resort and care where your money sleeps, this is a genuine differentiator. Staying at Kuda Huraa or Landaa Giraavaru means your holiday directly funds reef restoration, turtle care and manta research — and you can get in the water and help, whether that's planting coral on a family trip or diving into the teen biologist programme. All findings and field reports are published openly on MarineSavers.com, and the Reefscapers model has been picked up as a case study by the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, so expect similar guest-science programmes to spread across the region.
