Finding hotels can feel quite overwhelming – where do you even start? The great thing about the Maldives is that there is truly something for everyone. Big brands like Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton offers great experiences where loyalists can earn or spend hard earned points, but there are also dozens of 5-star brands that you may never have heard of.
My favorite thing to do is to search on trivago.com . Trivago aggregates all the major booking platforms and displays every hotel available on the internet and the prices related to each of the hotels across different platforms. There are a few ways to transfer to hotels in the Maldives: boat, plane or sea plane.
Depending on the distance from Malé, your hotel may offer a boat transfer. Boat transfers are often less expensive than flights and have more flexibility around hours of operation. One of the most difficult decisions you will have to make are whether to choose a beach villa or an overwater villa. I know, tough life. But really, this is important. People always ask us what our preferred room type is or assume we will always pick the overwater villa, but that’s not necessarily true.
Not all overwater villas are created equal. Some hotels will offer overwater bungalows, but they will be smaller and darker than their beach villa counterparts or simply not over desirable water. Sometimes, the beach villa is significantly nicer, larger, with access to gorgeous sandy shores and blue water with a bathroom the size of the room itself. We have stayed at properties before where we have actually moved rooms due to the overwater villa being far less appealing.
For example, one overwater hut we stayed in, you could actually not swim from the balcony due to the grassy bottom and six inches of water. We decided it was much more pleasant to stay in a gorgeous beach villa that accessed pristine teal water AND had a private pool.