Maldives

53 records, more than in any other country by a factor of three, and the reason is law rather than taste. Maldivian planning has assigned one resort to one island since the 1970s, which makes it the only place on earth where this register's core test is the national default instead of an exception.

The consequence is that every distinction here has to be finer. Being alone on your island is not remarkable; being alone in your atoll is, and only a handful are — Laamu, Thaa and one or two others where a single resort holds the lagoon. The register marks that rather than repeating the word private fifty-three times.

Read the transfer before anything else. A seaplane runs in daylight only and an arrival after four in the afternoon means a night in Malé; a domestic flight plus speedboat is longer on paper and works at any hour. On a fifty-minute-versus-four-hour difference the first day of a week is won or lost, and the records carry both numbers.

The country is also where the register is most sceptical. House reefs are described as house reefs whether they are alive or bleached, over-water villas are counted separately from beach villas because the experience differs, and where a resort's own pages give two different villa counts the register prints both.