Ellaidhoo, Maldives Reviews

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Good Points: Very friendly and helpful staff. Comfortable accommodation, if your hut is in the first line facing the sea. Good and varied food. Rewarding snorkelling.

Bad Points: The resort is looking a bit tired in places. At first we were in one of the second line bungalows, as booked in our package. Although comfortable enough and clean, it was very dark and the view of the back of the front line bungalows was a bit depressing, obscuring our view of the sea. The management kindly up-graded us to a bungalow on the beach at no extra cost, much nicer.

General comments: We booked our holiday last summer with the Travel Collection, part of Kuoni. When I read the reviews on this site, I wondered if we had made a bad mistake, this was our fourth visit to the Maldives. As the Travel Collection have never let us down in the past, I was hopeful we would not be disappointed on this occasion. We were not. True, the island has been very much geared towards the Italians but since the resort has been taken over by the John Keells group, this is changing. Indeed, they are closing the resort in April for about six months for a thorough refurbishment. This will include the removal of some of the concrete barriers that encircle the island. We understand their aim is to boost the British presence and that of other nationalities at the resort. While we were there, there were only about half a dozen other Brits. But don't worry, more of the staff, a mixture of Sri Lankans and Maldivians speak more English than Italian.
My wife and I do not dive but are keen snorkellers. Speaking to those who did dive, it is very, very good. The snorkelling is good too, with plenty of fish and coral to see. When the sea is rough, which unseasonably it was for some of the days we were there, it can be a bit difficult to get through the barriers to the reef. Also watch out for the Titan Trigger Fish who can have a lot of attitude!
As mentioned before, they readily upgraded our accommodation when we asked. Obviously this depends on availability but it is worth asking. We would say to anyone about to visit the island, don't be put off by the bad reviews. Although we would not rate it as the prettiest island in the Maldives, we had a very good two weeks. It will be interesting to see it after the refurbishment.

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I wholeheartedly agree with Mats Sweden in the previous review. We spent the 2nd week of Jan 06 at Ellaidhoo and experienced quite a few problems with our accommodation and diving. We received very little help from staff at the resort, and had to initiate any conversations with them to get our problems cleared up. The staff / management seemed pretty disorganised, and nobody really seemed to care when things went wrong. There were a lot of unhappy people at the resort while we were there. I ...

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This was our second visit to the Maldives and we had really looking forward to Ellaidhoo. We had booked a individual superior bungalow so we were really disappointed and irritated when we got a room in the second line of romms on the island. There were a couple of rooms in each block and not individual as we booked. The standard of the room was also bad. Very dark and ugly furnished. The bathroom wasn't very fresh either. This was absolutely NOT a four star room that we had booked. Also the smel ...

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Having been to the Maldives 3 times before I had certain expectaions, my stay this time was over Christmas and New Year as it was a work trip by the time the company booked places the Elliadhoo was the only place remaining.

We arrived after a 27 hour trip and discovered that the resort had failed to arrange transport which ended in us staying by the airport for the first night after 2 hours of being messed around by the Sky Tours rep.

The next morning we headed over the resort, we were s ...

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This was our fourth visit to the Maldives and our second to Ellaidhoo. We love the island and couldn't wait to go back post tsunami. Its a small dream of a place just 300 metres long by 280 metres wide with about 70 rooms on the seashore. Our home for 2 weeks was a comfortable air conditioned bungalow on the beach with open air bathroom complete with its own palm tree. Our holiday really began at the sea plane terminal in Male when we took off our shoes - for 2 weeks.
In temperatures of 30+ deg ...

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Ellaidhoo in the Maldives is for the divers at heart. Not a place to party. It has been upgraded with beautiful gardens and workout facilities for those who wish to keep fit. The management is friendly and family oriented willing to keep their good name with excellent service. The only thing I did not like were the excursions directed by the Italian tour operators which did not speak English or try to accommodate those who were not Italian. Since they are obviously taking our money for the excur ...