A somehow disappointing experience
Aug 6, 2025 to_many_reg_users zurich
The start was a bit bumpy: a five-hour wait for the seaplane in the hotel's otherwise pleasant lounge. While waiting, I noticed something peculiar: in the middle of July, most of the music playing was Christmas music. This gave me my first concern that this hotel did not pay attention to details or has a somewhat laissez-faire approach to certain…
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The start was a bit bumpy: a five-hour wait for the seaplane in the hotel's otherwise pleasant lounge. While waiting, I noticed something peculiar: in the middle of July, most of the music playing was Christmas music. This gave me my first concern that this hotel did not pay attention to details or has a somewhat laissez-faire approach to certain things. This continued throughout the week...
The next surprise came at check-in: even though we had booked a large water villa with a pool and two bedrooms for over USD 10,000 (room only) we still had to pay USD 10 per bike per day. That's petty, especially when you consider that it takes a good 20 minutes to walk from the large water villas to the restaurant each way. But there weren't enough bikes anyway; we only got two at first, and then two more a day later. On the good side: the buggy service was good.
Then came the next strange surprise: the specialty restaurants were already fully booked for days, so we had to go to the main restaurant, Turquoise, for the first few evenings. And this is where the hotel's biggest problem begins: the evening buffet was really not good. The worst buffet in many, many years. Even on cheap mass cruise ships, the buffet is better. The icing on the cake: even if you went to dinner right at the beginning of the buffet, certain dishes, such as salads, were already soggy. Someone should explain them the problem of osmosis and green salads.
But eventually, we managed to get into the specialty restaurants. We wanted to check out the menus in advance via QR code in our room, but it didn't work (at least not on iOS devices). Just one of many further examples for the small glitches in this hotel. At least the food in the specialty restaurants is good, especially the Japanese one is excellent.
Then, at the end of our week, again we had to wait almost five hours in the lobby for the seaplane! We've been vacationing in the Maldives every year for over 20 years now, sometimes even twice a year. We've had lots of transfers by seaplane, but it's never been as bad as it was here!
The positive aspects of the hotel are the friendly people and the truly excellent dive center. The dive base saved our holiday in the end.
Conclusion: You can have a nice vacation here as long as you can overlook the poor food at the dinner buffet and the many small glitches.
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