Is holidaying in the Maldives worth the price tag?

This was a question I had been chewing over for a few years, I loved the idea of the beauty of the Maldives from all the photos I’d seen, but I was concerned it would be a bit boring and certainly it would be very expensive.

But, it was one of the destinations on the bucket list, and seemed like the perfect location for that first major holiday without the kids. I was fortunate enough to have a British Airways Complimentary Voucher, through my British Airways Amex card, which I can highly recommend – maybe the offer isn’t as strong as it used to be (you can only use on economy flights now) but I’m not exactly 6ft, so I can put up with economy – which basically meant with a few avios points the flights were practically zero – bonus for me, I hate spending lots of money on the flights, I’d far rather invest my budget in the resort and accommodation and then experiences when in destination.

You do have a number of options when looking for flights, I was obviously tied to BA with my voucher, but at least they operate directly into Male (Velana Int.) airport – you do have other options with Virgin Atlantic – but they don’t have the same frequency as BA, you also have Qatar & Emirates – but pretty much all of their flights will stop at either Dubai or Doha enroute, adding anything from 2-5 hours onto an already 10 hour journey, Turkish Airlines also operate to Male but via Istanbul.

Nov to April is regards as the dry season for the Maldives, so whilst you can still get a burst of rain much similar to Sri Lanka, its not likely to ruin your holiday, the typical European peak of Jun to Aug is generally the worst weather in the Maldives – so it certainly is the perfect destination for winter sun and relaxation – but of course that means higher prices…

I won’t get into the personal reasons of why, but in the end we added our kids to the booking – those flights I had to pay for and worked out £900 on the same BA flight, about £150 more expensive booking in them end of December for a mid January trip, than if I had of booked them back in June when I made the original booking.

The toughest part of booking a holiday to the Maldives, is not the flights, but the accommodation. There are around 1,200 separate islands in the Maldives, arranged naturally into 26 group like configurations called atolls – of all the islands less than 200 are actually inhabited with somewhere in the region of 160 tourist resorts, generally distributed 1 per island, but with many many more guests houses of varying sizes and quality.

There are of course a number of package operators to the Maldives, which I’ll cover later – but as I was already committed to my flights, I needed to sort the resort myself – so I did what most people do first, I went to booking.com

Booking.com appear to have the vast majority if not all of the resorts as well as a huge selection of the guest houses (over 400) on their platform, so you know you have got pretty much all of the options in one place to peruse, and the thing I like most about booking.com, is the ease of booking and the ability to reserve multiple accommodations for the same date with the safety of the “free cancellation” booking terms. So by December, I had 8 different properties all “held” on booking.com, with several weeks before I needed to whittle down to just 1 before I got charged for all of them.

The biggest difficulty is picking between them, all the islands look so similar, but yet so different? Is it better to be at the Northern end or the Southern End of the Maldives, which could make quite a difference given the Maldives are spread over 500 miles from top to bottom – even with my travel background it was quite daunting to pick well and not end up regretting the selection – especially when prices ranged from £2,000 to £100,000 for the week!

In the end, it came down to being very clear on the decision criteria:

-       Accommodation quality – The look and feel of the room and the main resort areas is really important to me, not just cleanliness but overall design and feel – some of the resorts, even at the top end of the price range haven’t dated as well and can look old fashioned

-       2 Bedrooms - I also now knew that the kids (16 year old boy and 14 year old girl) were coming with us, so having 2 decent, separate bedrooms was crucial, I hate having a sofa bed in the same room and you feel on top of each other, plus having 2 bathrooms with a teenage girl was a must have!

-       Activities – Whilst the main purpose of the holiday was to have a very relaxing and peaceful break, we were going for 10 days, so on top of the typical watersports activities that pretty much all resorts offer, it was important to have a few other things on the island to keep us entertained

All the islands look amazing and beautiful,  so unless you are very specific on the diving you want to do or a specific location, they all pretty much look as good as each other – but just having the above criteria above clear in my mind really helped narrow the choices down, especially as the options for 2 bedrooms places is much narrower, about 1/3 of the resorts seem to only have 1 bedroom places and most of the guest houses just accommodate for single bedrooms.

The other thing you may need to consider, which you probably don’t think about it until you are about to book, is how you get from Male airport to your resort! You pretty much have 2 options, either take a Sea plane directly from Male to your resort, or if you don’t fancy this or sea planes don’t serve your resort, jump on a more traditional aircraft to one of over 12 domestic airports dotted around the Maldives and then jump in a speedboat to get to your resort – whilst all this does add to the experience, it’s not cheap – our resort was a 40 minute sea plane transfer, direct to the resort, which cost arounds £350 return, per person – though it was an amazing view flying over the islands. The very top end resorts have their own aircraft and boats which may be included in your price depending on your package, but I’d already ruled them out of my options.

In the end I chose the Jawakara Islands Resort on the east side of the Lhaviyani atoll, north of Male. Obviously it had to be within budget, but the main thing I liked about this resort was it was brand new, it had just opened at the end of the 2023 summer season and it was part of the Crown & Champa resorts collection – a well established business operating 10 resorts in the Maldives.

A two bedroom beach front villa hit the accommodation spec, it would have been great to have had our own pool, but that was outside of the budget and the over water villas are one bedroom only.

Finally activities, they had a very good gym (not well photographed on their website), possibly one of the best in resort gyms I’d seen (apart from Dubai), brand new equipment, very clean and with a view over the island harbour – on top of this was all the usual watersports, but also padel tennis, multiple games rooms, 2x infinity pools, a gold simulator and a pitch and putt golf course.

So flights booked, resort chosen, transfers sorted – the only thing left was to choose the board type – the room type on booking.com was a bed and breakfast rate,  but with options to upgrade to include dinner, lunch or go fully all inclusive. Now, I often am an all inclusive type of person, not because I like to load my plate up each meal serving, but more so for the convenience and generally because it works out a lot better value – and anyone holidaying with kids as they are growing up will know the pain if you are constantly getting your wallet out every 5 minutes because they fancy a fizzy drink or an ice cream. The resort also offered a ”premium all inclusive package” which not only included all your food and drinks but also included a number of spa treatments, certain watersports, access to the golf amongst other incentives, but, it was pretty much the cost of the accommodation again to add PAI.

Thankfully the resort publish their menus online so you can make some comparisons, this was intended to be a much needed treat (now for the full family) so I wasn’t going to penny pinch, but at the same time I had a budget in mind – when I looked at the prices of the restaurants (which I thought were very reasonable considering the accommodation - $35 per head for a buffet dinner, main meals in the a la cartes ranging from $20-$40), I decided we would be better off paying as we go – the main issue was drinks, we do like a bottle of wine with dinner and in the evening, the cheapest they had to offer was $60 a bottle and beers started at $12 each…

Finally, before I give you an insight into the actual holiday itself, a quick bug bear with in resort reservation teams. For all the resorts I had held on booking.com I found the contact details for the resort teams and emailed them to get what their best rate would be for the same dates we were due to travel, all 8 of the res teams I contacted quoted a rate much higher than the rate I was holding via booking.com – in the region of 10-20% higher. Now to some extent this is understandable, they would assume I am a new enquiry, I’m enquiring within 2 weeks of departure and if they have a decent occupancy on the books, let’s say about 80% then they probably would just quote back to me their current rack rate, which will be the highest price out there as it has no discounts applied. And this is where the booking.com model is so good, and is made to win against reservation teams that maybe don’t have time to run a few checks before quoting back rates – bear in mind that the hotel will be paying commission to booking.com of somewhere around 15% plus as I am Genius level 3 (whatever that means) then I am also, for a number of participating hotels, in the “genius” discounts scheme, I’m seeing discounts on booking.com that the hotels are paying for! If they had quoted a slightly cheaper rate and thrown in a bottle of wine or something I would have dropped my booking.com reservation like and stone and booked directly with them, saving me a bit of cash but also saving them all that commission – bearing in mind the accommodation for the 4 of us was around £10k, that’s quite a lot on just one booking.

But they didn’t, and I’m happy with what I’d booked and the level of management you feel you get within the booking.com app – and so off we went.

Actually the final thing I should mention is that you need to complete an online Maldivian immigration form (https://travel.immigration.gov.mv/) for each passenger within 3 days of your travel, its pretty easy to do and similar to the passenger locator forms we got so well aquatinted with during the pandemic – you can do in Male airport if you forget, but it’s a bit of a pain when you just want to get through passport control.

And so on to the holiday, if you are still with me – it is quite difficult to do justice to just how stunning and how unique the islands of the Maldives are – they are all unique in their own right and certainly the sea plane flight gives you a good idea of the variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have white sandy beaches, they are all surrounded by crystal clear warm waters and they all have amazing corals just a few meters off the beach with an abundance of sea life to marvel at.

The accommodation was just as I had hoped, immaculate, large and roomy, classically modern with a high level of fixtures and finishes – very well equipped with of course air conditioning, large flat screen TV, mini bar, plenty of plugs and sockets and wardrobe space – but possibly the best thing about the beach villa, not excluding the feeling of having your own private beach, was the indoor/outdoor bathroom – being able to shower in luxury but feel like you are in the middle of the outdoors was somewhat special – showering in lukewarm to cold water against the tropical Maldivian heat was something I really could get used to.

The main island had 2 separate pool and bar complexes, with a similar but different feel so you could have a change of scenery through your stay. Both had a large infinity pool that made you feel like you would be able to swim straight into the sea from the pool, a large decked area for relaxing with drinks and enough sunbeds to cater for the guests without feeling crowded. Everything said quality and tranquillity and the weather more than played it's part in creating the perfect holiday.

Even in the dry season you can get bursts of rain, and the week before we arrived they had experience 3 days of wet weather, but from the moment we arrived till the day we left we had near unbroken sunshine, 29-30 degrees without falter and a heat that is dry enough that you don’t feel like you are sweating just walking to the restaurant. Something to watch out for are the extreme UVs, guided by my daughter who was educating me, the UV levels got up to 11 or 12 most days in the peak 12-2pm period – when you consider 11+ is considered extreme and the max is 13, you know you need to take sun protection serious - pretty much factor 50 for the first week before I dropped to 30, the kids stayed on SPF50 for the full 10 days.

Our resort was two islands connected by a long footbridge, the main island was about a 3km walk around it, with the 2nd smaller island about a third of the size and exclusively kept for customers on the premium all inclusive board basis. The combined islands had just under 300 villas on them, for the period we were there they said they were about 50% occupied – a combination of the lower occupancy and that a number of guests like to keep to their private part of the beach made for a very quiet and relaxing holiday.

No need to get up at the crack of dawn and race down to get a sunbed, there was always a sunbed available in a perfect spot. No long queues for breakfast either, that was probably the busiest part of the holiday but you never had to queue, the egg station was always a quick turnaround and the freshly made juice combinations made for a perfect start to the day.

I was still concerned I’d be a bit bored, the kids are at an age where they are less demanding and I’m safe in the knowledge their phones are more interesting than me – plus I’m not a huge reader – but there was never a day where I thought I’ve had enough of this, which for me is a real change as I’m often restless and need to explore when we have stayed in more traditional all inclusive resorts. I think the sheer beauty of the place, the calmness of the sea, the complete peace and quiet and ability to completely switch off without being disturbed was the difference – I can honestly say I’ve never chilled out as much on a holiday before – and we still packed loads in.

The diving centre (which most islands will have) ran a free, twice daily boat trip just a few hundred metres out to see with a qualified instructor for you to snorkel and explore the coral, a great way to enjoy the sea life. On top of this they run longer paid for excursions, we took the 3 hour turtle & manta ray trip, $110 per person, you had two snorkel locations and whilst we didn’t see turtles we did see a manta ray, dolphins and an abundance of sea life – very well run and organised trip.

On the island we made the most of the facilities, almost daily trips to the gym, which was very well kitted out and with the best view of any gym I’ve been in; more than daily usage of the several games rooms with the usual pool, shuffleboard, ping pong tables to play on (all free of charge); we took out a couple of paddle boards for a hour ($35 per board per hour) which worked out well allowing us to swap when someone fell in; we had a laugh in the golf simulator, which was very good but quite expensive at $75 for the hour (probably why we were the first people to have used it!) and my son and I tried out the pitch and putt course – fair to say its got some growing to do and the artificial greens made landing the ball where you wanted a bit tricky, but again it was good fun and pretty good value for $25 each which included clubs and balls – the girls tried out the spa whilst we played, they loved the experience but so they should for $120 a facial; best of all was the padel tennis courts - $10 an hour to hire and under shade to escape the heat, I’ve found a new sport to fall in love with.

For evening dining, the options were a little limited, but were very good and worked out perfectly for us. A choice between 2 a la cartes or the buffet – at $35 a head the buffet was pretty good value, the food was really good with out being amazing, but you had the typical flexibility from being able to help yourself and plenty of different cuisines which changed daily to pick from – the 2 a la cartes were really very good and both and different aspects positioned out at sea, so whether you ate early evening or after the sun had gone down you had a fantastic experience – at Molo you had a Mediterranean cuisine with a bias towards Italy and Umi served up a Asian Pacific cuisine – meals excluding drinks worked out only slightly more expensive than the buffet but with a full dining experience and stunning location and on the final night they brought in a teppanyaki chef for a set menu experience, slightly expensive at $115 per person, but we had front row seats for 2 hours with the chef and it was a lot of fun.

Our biggest additionql expense over the course of our stay was alcohol & drinks, not because we are huge drinkers, but we do like a bottle of wine of two with dinner and into the evening, the kids also had a taste for the mocktails, which quickly racked up as they were $14 each – I can’t put it any other way, the drinks are expensive, so if you want to really booze heavily then get the all inclusive, but it’s not really a booze heavy type of holiday and for me the value and quality of the food offset the additional cost of the drinks.

Overall costs of the holiday

Adult flights (including voucher & avios)                   £300

Kids flights (full price)                                                  £1,800

Sea plane transfer                                                       £1,400

Jawakara accommodation (booking.com)                 £9,300

In resort spending money (inc food & drink)             £4,600

Total Cost                                                                    £17,400

Clearly its not a cheap holiday, for a typical family package holiday when we have gone in the summer holidays for 2 weeks, all inclusive, I’d be expecting to spend £1,000 - £1,250 per person per week, all in, for a decent location and resort – or roughly £180 per person per night if you take the top end of the range.

The Maldives trip worked out at £435 per person per night (£4,350 per person total), and that included the discounts on the adult flights – so overall more than double what I would normally spend on the main family summer holiday, but…

…This was like no holiday we had experienced before plus it’s a destination I’m maybe never going to visit again, so in my view, the extra expense was more than worth it for the experience that we had.

Certainly there are more cost effective ways to holiday in the Maldives, as a family or a couple. For our same dates for next year the accommodation prices on booking.com range from £4,800 and up (for resorts with a rating of 8+), but of course if you want convenience and value then a package can be a great way to holiday in the Maldives:

-       https://www.tui.co.uk/destinations/indian-ocean/maldives/holidays-maldives.html have prices starting from £1,905pp for a family of four for the same dates in 2025, including flights and transfers and on a half board package

-       virginholidays.co.uk cheapest deal for next Jan was £2,648pp, bed and breakfast but again includes flights and transfers

-       bluebaytravel.co.uk best offer was £3,245pp, based on 2 adults sharing but in an all inclusive resort

Just 3 examples but clearly some very good value options depending on how you want to travel and exactly where you want to go.

In summary, I would believe the hype, the Maldives is an amazing place, like nowhere else I’ve been to before, get your timing right and you have the best weather in the most stunning of destinations – not all of the resorts are quiet so if you want something more lively there are still plenty of choices, and if you want to maximise your value then a package is probably your best bet – for me, the Maldives should be on everyone’s bucket list of travel destinations, and its more than worth the extra expense to experience it.