Sustainable Seafood Policies at All-Inclusive Resorts: Balancing MSC Certification and Local Catch on the Menu

Last November, I stood at the buffet line of a five-star all-inclusive in the Maldives, watching a chef slice into a tuna that, by its size and colour, had likely been caught that morning by a local dhoni. The resort’s sustainability brochure, tucked under my napkin, boasted proudly of its Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification programme. But the tuna on my plate had no MSC label. It had something better: a story. The chef knew the fisherman’s name. This tension — between global certification standards and the messy, delicious reality of local food systems — is playing out across the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia’s top all-inclusive resorts right now. And it’s about to get more complicated. In June 2025, the European Union’s revised Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Regulation takes full effect, tightening traceability requirements for all seafood imports. For Hong Kong-based travellers who frequent properties in the Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, this means the seafood on your resort plate is about to come under unprecedented scrutiny. The question is whether the industry’s favourite solution — MSC certification — can coexist with the small-scale fisheries that actually feed these islands.

The Certification Conundrum: MSC vs. Reality

What MSC Actually Covers

The Marine Stewardship Council’s blue label is the most recognisable sustainable seafood certification globally, appearing on roughly 20,000 products across 60 countries as of the MSC’s 2023-2024 annual report. For an all-inclusive resort, achieving MSC certification for its seafood supply means demonstrating that every labelled fish came from a fishery assessed against three core principles: sustainable fish stocks, minimal environmental impact, and effective management. The process takes 12-18 months and costs between HKD 150,000 and HKD 400,000 per fishery assessment, depending on complexity.

Here’s the catch that matters for travellers: MSC certification works brilliantly for large-scale, industrial fisheries — Alaskan pollock, North Atlantic cod, New Zealand hoki. It struggles with the small-scale, multi-species, artisanal fisheries that supply most of the fresh seafood in tropical resort destinations. In the Maldives, for example, the pole-and-line tuna fishery — one of the world’s most sustainable — has been MSC-certified since 2012. But the reef fish, lobsters, and crabs caught by individual islanders for resort kitchens? Almost none of it carries the label.

The Local Catch Gap

I spent three days last March tracking the seafood supply chain at a 120-villa resort in Phuket’s northern bay. The executive chef, a Thai woman who had worked at the property for 14 years, walked me through her procurement ledger. Of the 37 seafood species served across the resort’s four restaurants, exactly two carried MSC certification: the frozen Alaskan salmon and the imported New Zealand mussels. Everything else — the snapper, the barramundi, the squid, the prawns, the crab — came from local fishing communities within a 40-kilometre radius. None of it was certified.

This is not a failure of the resort. It is a structural limitation of the certification model. The MSC’s own 2022 report on small-scale fisheries acknowledged that only 7% of the world’s small-scale fisheries are MSC-certified, despite these fisheries accounting for roughly 40% of global marine catch. The cost and administrative burden of certification simply do not scale down to a fisherman selling 50 kilograms of reef fish per week.

How Resorts Are Navigating the Divide

The Hybrid Menu Model

The most sophisticated properties have abandoned the idea of a fully MSC-certified menu. Instead, they operate what industry consultants call a “hybrid sourcing model”: certified imported seafood for high-volume, standardised items (think smoked salmon at breakfast, fish and chips by the pool) paired with locally sourced, uncertified but verifiable fresh catch for the à la carte restaurants.

At Soneva Fushi in the Maldives, the approach is particularly instructive. The resort’s sustainability director told me their seafood policy, documented in their 2023-2024 sustainability report, divides procurement into three tiers: Tier 1 is MSC-certified or equivalent (primarily imported frozen fish); Tier 2 is locally caught, traceable to a named vessel or fishing community; Tier 3 is “avoid” — species on the IUCN Red List or caught via destructive methods. The resort publishes its seafood sourcing data quarterly on its website, a transparency practice that remains rare in the industry.

The Traceability Workaround

For resorts that cannot certify their local supply, the alternative is traceability — not a label, but a documented chain of custody. The Thai government’s Department of Fisheries, under pressure from the EU’s IUU Regulation (the same regulation tightening in June 2025), has implemented a national traceability system called the “Catch Certification Scheme” for all exported seafood. Resorts in Phuket and Krabi are now piggybacking on this system, requiring their local suppliers to provide catch documentation that includes vessel registration, fishing zone, gear type, and landing date.

The practical result for the diner: your grilled snapper may not have a blue label, but the chef can tell you exactly which boat caught it and when. At the InterContinental Phuket Resort, I watched a waiter pull up a QR code on an iPad that linked to the supplier’s catch log. It showed the fish had been landed at 6:30 AM that morning, caught by a longtail boat registered in Koh Yao Noi, using handlines. That level of detail is arguably more meaningful than a certification label applied months earlier to a frozen fish from the other side of the world.

The Price of Doing It Right

What You’re Actually Paying For

When you pay HKD 4,500 per night for half board at a top-tier all-inclusive in the Maldives or Thailand, roughly 18-22% of that goes to food and beverage costs, according to the 2024 Horwath HTL Asia Pacific Hotel Cost Benchmarking Report. Of that F&B allocation, seafood typically accounts for 25-35% at properties with significant marine-focused dining.

Here is where the economics bite: MSC-certified imported seafood costs 15-40% more than non-certified alternatives, depending on species and origin. Local catch, by contrast, costs 10-30% less than imported frozen fish — but only if the resort has direct relationships with fishing communities and can bypass middlemen. The resorts doing this well are not saving money; they are spending the savings on logistics and staff training to manage the dual supply chain.

The Hidden Cost of Certification

The MSC certification itself is only part of the expense. The real cost is chain-of-custody certification for every link in the supply chain — the processor, the distributor, the resort’s purchasing department. For a resort in the Maldives importing MSC-certified tuna from the Pacific, the chain-of-custody certification must cover the canning facility in Thailand, the shipping agent in Singapore, and the resort’s own cold storage in Malé. Each link adds cost.

The result is a two-tier system that mirrors the broader inequality of sustainable tourism. Large international chains like Marriott and Hilton can absorb these costs across their global portfolios. Independent properties and smaller operators — including many of the boutique resorts Hong Kong travellers favour — cannot. Their choice is often between offering no sustainable seafood at all, or offering locally sourced, uncertified seafood that is ecologically sound but carries no label.

What This Means for Your Next Trip

Reading the Menu

The first sign of a resort’s real seafood policy is not on its website but on its menu. Look for three things: species names that are specific (not just “fish of the day” but “yellowfin tuna, Thunnus albacares”), origin details that include a specific location (not “local” but “caught off the west coast of Koh Lanta”), and catch method (handline, pole-and-line, trap, or net). A resort that provides all three is serious about traceability. A resort that provides none is likely buying from the cheapest available source.

The EU Regulation Ripple Effect

The June 2025 EU IUU Regulation update requires all seafood imported into the EU to have full traceability documentation from catch to point of import. This matters for Hong Kong travellers because many Indian Ocean resorts export a portion of their seafood to European markets, and the compliance systems they build for that export trade inevitably shape their domestic procurement. Resorts that already have traceability systems in place for EU-bound product can extend those systems to their own kitchens at marginal cost. Resorts that do not export to Europe have no such incentive.

Asking the Right Questions

Before booking, ask the resort three specific questions: (1) What percentage of your seafood by value is MSC-certified? (2) Do you have a written seafood sourcing policy that covers local fisheries? (3) Can your kitchen provide the vessel name and catch date for the fresh fish on tonight’s menu? The answers will tell you more than any sustainability page on their website.

The Local Catch Advantage

For the traveller who actually cares about eating well, the local catch at a well-run resort is almost always superior to the certified import. It is fresher — caught hours rather than weeks ago. It supports the local economy directly. And it reflects the actual marine biodiversity of the place you are visiting. At a resort in the Andaman Islands last November, the chef served me a reef fish I had never heard of, caught by his cousin that morning, grilled over coconut husks. It was not certified. It was unforgettable.

The Takeaway

The sustainable seafood debate at all-inclusive resorts is not a binary between certified and uncertified. It is a negotiation between global standards and local realities, between what can be labelled and what can be eaten. For the Hong Kong traveller accustomed to efficiency and transparency, the best resorts are those that are honest about the trade-offs — and that let you taste the difference.