Emerald Faarufushi Resort & Spa Hotel

Our host Apekcha is nice and helpful. She arranged all the activities for us, even though we would like to change the time, she tried her best to help us. The house keeper Irman did a very good job. he cleaned our villa twice a day. Every time we came back, the room was tidy and clean. The cameraman Maain is professional. He did the photo shoot very quickly and the product was perfect. The staff in all the restaurants are nice and helpful. Rabiul is a staff from Beach Club Grill. He is helpful. Read less

Firstly, apologies for a very late review for our stay at the wonderful Emerald Faarufushi in March 2026. We arrived in the morning from the UK and were whisked off to check in for the Seaplane at the new terminal by Emerald agents. There was a short wait for the bus to take us to the Seaplane terminal, where we were ushered straight to the gate. We did not have a long wait before we walked to the plane and boarded. Within an hour we landed and offloaded on a pontoon. We were collected by a Emerald boat and were offered water. From here it was a short journey of 5 mins to the arrival jetty, where we were greeted by the smiling faces of Patrick (General Manager) and the staff. We were beaming with happiness as we arrived in paradise. This is the second island we have stayed on in Maldives, both very different. Our main reason for choosing this resort was the luxurious feel, its size and the house reef. We were not disappointed at all. Our villa host was Ali, always checking in with us daily and he looked after our every need and more. Ali checked us in after we had our arrival drink, showed us around the island and took us to Aqua to meet the chef. Both of us are vegetarians so he wanted to make sure we speak to the chef and adequate food is available for us, whichever restaurant we eat in. We ate lunch before Ali collected us and took us to our beautiful villa. We stayed in a sunrise water villa for 3 nights and moved to a sunset water villa for 7 nights. For those of you who want sun on the deck longer, it is the sunset villa you should opt for. The sun hits it later but is there till the end. This also warms the pool up nicely. The water villas are stunning, with ample storage and endless views of the beautiful blue Indian Ocean. The only slight issue we had was the mattress was hard, I later learned we could have asked for a mattress topper. We ate in all the restaurants and did like all. Teppanyaki Grill one however was the least preferable as vegetarians. Despite this, the lead chef at Carnivorous – Chef Jibin ensured that we had special food and we could enjoy the experience. We ate there once and it was good but preferred the others. Chef Jibin would look after our every need when we ate at Aqua and Carnivorous. He went above and beyond for us to ensure we had choice, we did not expect this but were so thankful. We enjoyed Le Asiatique and even though it was indoors, I felt it had was nice eating with some coolness. For lunch we liked Aqua and Beach Club Grill was a firm favourite. One lunch time Chef Moreno prepared a special vegetarian risotto for us both and brought this out. I also recall on our first night t Aqua, I asked if the Papaya salad for vegetarian. It was confirmed it was not but they said they could make this without fish sauce. The following day at lunch the server said they had a vegetarian Papaya Salad for us. We did not even ask for this. There were always surprises for us. We did not want anyone to make us special food and would have eaten what we could. Ali reminded us we have spent decent money on this resort and hence they would look after us as they do the other guests. We used the diving school a lot. One of us got our PADI certificate and the other learnt to snorkel here. We paid for private snorkelling lessons and these were so worthwhile. The house reef is accessible from the jetty parallel to Eclipse bar. There are no words we can use to describe the beauty that lies beneath. This is a truly beautiful house reef. A massive thank you to Rahul for teaching my wife to snorkel and now she is converted and wants to snorkel on every holiday. By day three we went on the Manta and Turtle trip, we saw both and I could not believe that she had the confidence to get into open water. This would not have been possible if it was not for Rahul, the guides on the trip and the patience they show. I did notice during the trip the resort is very struct about marine life. If any guest tries to touch marine life, gets too close or stands on the coral they will be asked not to. We were very happy with this. I learnt to Scuba dive with Miru, the man with ultimate patience. At first, I was apprehensive but by the end I thoroughly enjoyed seeing deeper water. I saw Octopus, Eagle Ray (etc add more in). The fish we saw in the house reef were Shark, Stonefish, Clownfish, Napoleon fish, Parrot Fish etc (add more), Moray Eel and we also saw turtle. We must mention the names of some of the staff who made our stay truly memorable. Our host Ali of course, who looked after us from the moment we arrived to the moment we left. He even messaged us to check we arrived home safely. Patrick the resort manager, Sonu, Arres (from Indonesia), Prasant (from Sri Lanka), Priyanka, Sajane, Sachin, Neema, Rohit, Lateef, Akaash, Rakshit, Hilol, Chef Jibin, Ruwan (the wonderful room attendant), Miru and Rahul from the dive center, Ammy, Sean, Koena and Wayan. I know we have missed names, every staff member was exceptional in the service they provided and a special mention to Patrick, who really looks after his staff and guests. Read less

We stayed at Villa 204 from July 9 to 18, 2026. Despite the hotel's overall excellent service on the leisure side, our stay was overshadowed by the disappearance of cash from the safe (exactly 3,000 US dollars), which we had brought in case of problems with our credit card — a card that, as it turned out, we never even needed at the hotel. The money was placed in the safe in an envelope right away and was never taken out of it. When checking out, we were in a bit of a hurry; I quickly tossed all our belongings from the safe into my backpack without really paying attention to the envelope, to be honest, and I only remembered about it when we were already flying to the airport on the seaplane. Frankly, the thought of theft didn't cross my mind at that moment, since this is a respected hotel with a high rating, so upon arriving at the airport I immediately messaged our manager, Eldor, asking him to check whether we had simply left the money in the safe. He called back and said there was nothing in the safe except for a few small coins (which, honestly, is strange, since there were definitely no coins in the safe when we checked out). Later, the hotel manager wrote to us saying they had checked everything and found nothing, and that no one other than us had entered the room. Looking back, I now realize that it would obviously have been hard for me not to notice the envelope in the safe at checkout — perhaps it had already been stolen from it before that. As far as I understand, no checks were done on that possibility. Yes, I probably should have paid attention to the loss sooner, but you have to understand that we were on vacation at a tropical resort, and our minds were on other things. Be that as it may, despite the overall excellent impressions of the hotel's service itself, the fact remains unchanged: 3,000 dollars were stolen from us by one of the staff, which ruins the entire final impression of the trip. I understand that it's difficult to maintain oversight of every single one of a large number of employees, but that ultimately doesn't make it any easier for us. Read less