Reethi Faru Resort - Stay 5 Nights or More and Enjoy a Free Sunset Cruise

excellent

NA

1. The water villa was large enough for our family of 4 (twins aged 11) plus had spacious outdoor deck. It was well appointed and had everything we need. There were no mozzie’s here so we could sleep in peace and enjoy being outside (definitely mozzie’s elsewhere on the island). The outdoor shower was great but to also have another indoor shower and bath tub was perfect. 2. The Snorkelling was great and well organised – the house reef has clear entry and exit points, we saw a good variety of fish and to be able to snorkel with the turtle/s and sharks that live on the reef was amazing. 3. Service – all staff at the restaurant and bars were excellent. 4. All Inclusive – I did not feel that there were tons of restrictions and we were always being upsold. Sure, you can only eat at the one restaurant but that is fine and they had a good selection of drinks, cocktails and mocktails available. I can’t understand the complaints on this. 5. Food – the breakfast lunch and dinner buffet was excellent quality. I can understand the frustrations of people who say it was repetitive – if you are someone who does not like a wide variety of food and is quite restrictive then yes, you may be left with only the pasta station most nights. For us, there was just about enough curries/local food (we would have loved more!) and a decent selection of other things, salads, beautiful fish, well cooked meat dishes.

1. When we booked via booking.com, the room states it comes with a double bed, sofa bed, and extra bed available for free on request. When we requested the extra bed we were told this was the sofa bed, and were asked to pay. What utter madness. Imagine saying there is a double bed and extra bed available for free and then saying that the extra bed for free IS the double bed mentioned…..We went back and forth with reception…eventually they said that the room was not big enough for another bed to be added. But they had just said we needed to pay for it? I ended up being so annoyed I got booking.com involved and told them that the hotel either needed to provide the beds as per the booking for free, or they could cancel our stay. They agreed to provide the beds and I received a condescending email about how they would allow it “as a one off goodwill gesture” – which wound me up as they could not seem to accept it is just what they were meant to do. 2. I found the reception communication in advance generally unhelpful – I think that many people use the same account and we would get general messages that were either automated or copied and pasted with inaccurate information. We landed late in Male so rather than arrive at the hotel that day stayed over night – I asked advice about what time the sea plane would be and what time I should get to the sea plane terminal and it took about 6 emails for them to explain that they couldn’t tell me, I just turn up and then they work it out. 3. Finally, we had read earlier reports of theft but we have stayed all over south east asia and never been stolen from, so assumed reports were exaggerated or people were mistaken. Unfortunately this is not the case. Regretfully, it had not been explained that the sea plane amount would be taken along with final payment before arrival and so we had lots of USD in case we needed to pay for the sea plane at the sea plane terminal. We therefore knew pretty accurately how much we had as we only

- Water villas are really good, beach villas depend on your location and view to beach, garden villas are nice if you want to save some money on view and rather be outdoor - water seemed clean blue and alive, beaches were white and pristine

- Most of the staff seemed sad, unwelcoming and curt, more like staff of a budget airline who don't seem to care. Or maybe that's how they were with us. - They didn't bother about any of our preferences. In-spite of being on half board, we felt like starving with very little veg options and no one bothered - Everything seemed very transactional and focused on getting you to spend more for little things like a glass of water even on buffet meals - Didn't had the hospitality vibe at all and going the extra mile to make guests feel special - There were hundreds of ants on our bed on day-1. pics attached - Quite far from Male, very limited options to travel back to city. we were told their are only two fixed speed boat departures and sea planes need to be booked two days prior. private speed boat option was also not available

I loved the peaceful and relaxing nature. Rooms were beautiful and staff were helpful.

The spa treatments, in particular the mani pedi was not great. I wouldn’t recommend paying extra for this.

Facilities

Expensive