This is our seventh visit to the Maledives, due to capacity we choose accommodation in beach villa with pool. There is a possibility to wait for the seaplane in hotel lounge wich is quite nice. The seaplane journey was about 40 minutes long, the check in formalities were fast so we could start our vacation immediately. Beach villa is really nice, clean, but i tis older, it has outdoor shower and bath. The pool is very pleasant, but never cleaned during the whole stay. The beach is beautiful, big, long, with white sand, looks like paradise.
There are different variations of all inclusive. The food is delicious, every evening has its own theme. I would like highlight the new years diner which was absolutely perfect. There are many variations of coctails, two kinds of red, white and rosé wine (premium all inc has more). The stuff is great, maybe a little slower sometimes, but very kind and nice.
I dive a lot here, diving is great here because of reefs and life in here, lots of sharks, eaglerays, many fish, couple of turtles..very nice dives. The dive centre is small and there are only a few instructors or dive masters, so we dive in a groups. But honestly, group of five unknown divers each at different level in an unknow environment leading just by one dive master is not very safe. Also some of the dives were too short because of some heavy breathers, but after the discussion with the instructors they solved the situations for example by exchanging for larger tanks or by dividing the group. Big plus for proffesionality, minus for the fact, that this came only after my intervention.
But the biggest tragedy of the resort is its front desk. As I mentioned before, we stayed at beach villa with pool because of availibility, and even the accommodation is very nice, we hoped for a possibility to buy an upgrade to ocean villa for couple of nights. We were asking for the upgrade from the very first day, unfortunatelly, there is a different stuff every day and every day we got the same answer: I need to check availability, I will let you know via whatsup (but they never let us know) and all over again every day. After seven days, there was finally a guy, who checked the reservation schedule and blocked for us an ocean villa for two nights. We were looking forward very much but the next day a different guy told us that villa is not available and never was. We were surprised and dissapointed. He offered a different villa, but the guy previous day highly did not recommended this one because of its location very near to jetty, so we refused. The same situation was with the possibility of late check out we wanted to arranged because of our late departure (11p.m.), same answer again every day, need to check availability, simply they are unable to arrange this. The proffesionality of the front desk is on a poor level and that is a big negative of an otherwise nice resort.
P.S. : After we complained, the reception contacted us with an interest in resolving the situation. We were offered a short tasting of stay at the ocean villa (the sunset one, not the near to jetty one) for at least a few hours till our departure, which was finally scheduled for 3pm. The villa is very pretty and big, it has a cool roof terrace and bigger nice pool. It is windier here (but just a little bit) and less privacy. The ocean villas are faced to the reef so snorkeling here is very good, but watch out for the current. I liked it here very much, more than stay at beach villa but my companion still prefer a beach villa after this experience. We really want to appreciate the attitude of the management who listened to the feedback and tried to respond to it, especially Karen Zhan, who solved the situation with us. It was a different level of communication in a very positive way.