I imagine that resorts will find ways around this, but perhaps this will cause people to focus on the sort of regime that they are supporting by visiting the tourist ghettos of the Maldives.

There has always been much hand wringing about whether or not it is morally correct to visit -- and thereby indirectly support -- repressive places like Burma or North Korea. It has always been a convincing argument to me that such tourism helps the people more than it hurts by exposing them to free thinking people, and helping to expose the repression to outsiders.

Somehow, the Maldives has avoided any sort of tourist backlash despite the fact that it is amongst the most repressive societies on earth. Given that the Maldives has set up a system whereby the regime can enjoy the fruits of tourism without either exposing the population to outsiders, or allowing outsiders to witness the repression, the above arguments certainly do not apply. Tourist visits do however, support the regime and its elites.

Personally, I've never had any interest in going to the Maldives, given that the tourist experience it offers is a totally artificial one, of being quickly ferried away from Maldivian society and out to uninhabited islands which might be beautiful, but are totally bereft of genuine culture or any sense of place. I suppose this allows people to ignore that the religious totalitarianism of the Maldives is not too unlike Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Everybody has to make their own choice, and I don't begrudge anybody's decision to go. I think though that the Maldives has at least done a service by clarifying the factors that a potential visitor might wish to weigh in making a decision to visit the tourist resort/ghettos of the Maldives.