Ellaidhoo Tourist Resort Reviews

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+ degrees day and night, my husband - a 'Jacques Cousteau' spent the mornings diving, Ellaidhoo has some of the best diving in the Indian ocean, leaving me to relax on our terrace overlooking the turquoise lagoon and the Indian Ocean beyond - the biggest infinity pool in the universe. The water is beautifully warm at 29 degrees, perfect for snorkelling or just sitting in the water watching the fish swimming around you - a tropical fish tank. We shared our beach with many small friendly hermit crabs who surprisingly prefer cheese and onion crisps to plain, as do the mynah birds who come to feed out of your hand several times a day!
The atmosphere is chilled, the food is excellent and varied and the friendly service second to none. The sunsets are spectacular after which, drink in hand, we watched the stingrays being fed in the lagoon by the bar - a beautiful, awesome sight under a clear star filled sky. Relaxed affordable perfection!

You won't find Ellaidhoo in any travel brochures - book direct and book a good value flight on the net.

This was our second holiday in the Maldives. We were supposed to be going to Reethi Beach (excellent) but it was damaged in the tsunami and was closed until April. So we re-booked with a company which specialises in diving holidays, Regaldive.
They were very good and and made it quite clear that Ellaidhoo is a 3star island (even though it advertises itself as 4 star) and wasn't up to the same standard as our original choice. But as we wanted a diving holiday we decided to go for it.

We flew with Emirates (definately worth paying the extra £300 to fly with them rather than the charter flights to the Maldives) and arrived at Ellaidhoo by sea-plane.
The first thing you noticed was a sea-wall built right around the island to protect the beach. It's not very attractive and does tend to spoil the view a bit.
We were met by staff with a very welcome chilled flannel and a cold drink. You have to fill in a registration form and are give an information list.

Our accomodation was quite nice. It was a detached bungalow on the beach (there are some other terraced bungalows behind - don't go for them, they're not as nice). Our room was a good size and clean with air con. We had a huge bed, plenty of wardrope space, TV and a mini bar. The bathroom was open air and had a shower and a seperate bath.
The dive school, run by Sea Explorer, was a 30 second walk behind our room.

The island itself had a nice beach with a shallow lagoon and an excellent house reef. The currents could be very strong on the reef but that meant that there was always lots to see even just snorkelling.

The diving was fantastic. We dived almost every day and saw sharks (lost count of many in the end), turtles, stingrays, napoleon wrasse, manta rays (awesome) and best of all we saw 6 dolphins on one dive.

That was the good. Now the downside. The food was truly awful. Dinner didn't start until 8.30pm (til 10) and was buffet style. There was always a stampede at 8.30. We waited until 9 and often the food was cold. The choice was very limited. We saw rats in the restaurant on three occasions.
There weren't enough staff to cope with the number of guests. Our poor waiter had to deal with 15 tables.
The coffee shop, which had an a la carte menu, wasn't any better.
Both of us had dodgy stomachs over the fortnight and lived on immodium (not good when you're diving!!!).

We saw lots of rats on the island and even had a dead one outside our room ( we reported it to reception - four hours later the gardener kicked it into a bush).

There weren't enought sunbeds for the number of guests (someone worked out that there were 10 guests per sunbed and with lots of italian and german guests the towels were out very early!) And even if you managed to get a sunbed they were very uncomfortable and sunbed cushions were even rarer. This wasn't really an issue for us as we were diving a lot but other guests complained about it.

Ellaidhoo also charges everything in euros (almost every other island uses US dollars) and a lot of people hadn't been warned of this and had brought dollars. So when you pay your bill to leave they present it in euros but if you want to pay by credit card (as most people do) they then convert it - at their exchange rate - into US dollars. So you get stiffed by dodgy exchange rates twice!

We wouldn't go back to Ellaidhoo but would like to find a nicer island (with decent food!) in the same area as the diving was so good.

I would use the holiday company, Regaldive, again as they were honest about the standard of the island and were very helpful.

There wasn't much evidence of tsunami damage underwater and we only saw a bit of damage on Male near the airport hotel.

This resort is one of the very few places abroad we've evere been to which is exactly like the photos in the brochure! Quite simply stunning!!

Transfer from the airport is 1h 15mins by speedboat and as soon as you leave the harbour at the airport the 11 hours on the plane is forgotten.The resort accomodation is superb, in detached bungalows 8-10 yards from the sea, which is a calm lagoon created by a man made breakwater. Out of the lagoon snorkelling on the reef is out of this world the colours and variety of fish is so great.The rooms are all air-conditione which is a must as daytime temperatures in Jan were touching 45C.Clean bedding and towels and even beach towels supplied every day.
The staff are excellent and nothing is too much trouble for them.

We found several drawbacks however:-
1-It is very expensive. Water E3 for 2l. Beer E5.5 per litre . Spirit and mixer E6.75
2-We were informed by Thomson that the local currency was $US. This resort has changed to Euros. They still accept $US but at their exchange rate which is 10% less than world rates!!
My advice Take Only Euros no matter what your tour operator tells you !!
3-The food was very hit-and-miss in terms of choice and quality.Somedays excellent choice others poor choice and served cold.

All in all we had afantastic time and for the most felt as if we were in paradise.If you cannot switch off Aand must be doing things all the time then its not for you, all that there is to do is snorkel/dive or sit in the sun and read. But we will be going back next year despite!!