Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi

Wow what an amazing place! I can’t say how beautiful this island is with the most amazing service. I have to start with Narelle the Manager, she has gone above and beyond to make our stay the best. Our host Jai has gone out of his way for any of our needs! Breeze the chef has catered for my wife’s dairy and gluten intolerance so well that she have never had so much choice of food in any hotel we have been to! Thank you Fairmont Maldives we are in paradise!!

Wish I didn’t have to come home! Fairmont Maldives was amazing. Minor issue was that it took 4 days for them to get us bikes. Another was the cost of drinks - drink packages are super expensive and individual drinks add up fast. Don’t want to sound negative - really it was an amazing trip and we’d go back tomorrow without hesitation. Location is gorgeous. Scuba and snorkelling was great with sea turtles, manta rays and a million fish. Food was fantastic. Staff extremely friendly and accommodating. Dive staff was amazing - very supportive and helpful.

I've struggled to reconcile the effusive reviews of the service at the Fairmont with what we experienced during a week long stay. On the positive, the view is stunning and the hotel itself is beautiful. We had an overwater villa that was a pleasure to spend time in and we absolutely loved the pool; the most beautiful pool I've ever seen. There were also some outstanding employees, especially in the spa, the bartenders in Onu Onu, and our guides during a jet skiing expedition. We also met a bunch of fun fellow travelers from all parts of the globe who really made the experience unforgettable. Unfortunately, just when one is deep in the "I'm in the Maldives and its beautiful!" mindset, that blissful feeling would get jolted by mistakes, service lapses and encounters with some employees who appeared positively miserable. When we arrived, we were not properly checked into our villa which meant the phone did not work and we couldn't get on the wifi. Promised bikes were not present at our villa. Drink orders were chronically wrong, and getting them corrected was difficult and took forever. Getting water in a timely fashion in Raha market was challenging. Getting the right glass of wine was a game of ordering a specific wine and getting a cheaper, similar offering with the statement "Have this one instead, we are out of the other one." Most of the waiters had no idea what they were serving. (Maybe because we were on the deluxe drink package as a part of our overall prepaid package there was no incentive to give us anything but the cheapest option. And they weren't out of the wine, it was a lie.) While the food was generally good to excellent, our waiter in Azure, the seafood specialty restaurant, couldn't tell us what the catch of the day was or how any of the entrees were prepared. He also looked like he wanted to jump off a bridge, he was that miserable. As the week went on, the mistakes and unmotivated attitude of too many of the staff added up. We found that our fellow resort friends felt similarly regarding the often poor service. There just seemed to be a real lack of service training for much of the staff. On our last night, we were excited to eat at Kata, the sushi restaurant with gorgeous sunset views. We had a reservation. We showed up and it was closed. Apparently the resort suddenly changed the day that restaurant would be closed without notice. The confusing "resort policies" was my other frustration during the stay. There are too many packages and no one seems to know the "rules". People were given different menus and told different things on how the specialty restaurants worked, as apparently those "policies" changed as well. Despite being on an "all inclusive" package, we found a lot was not included: room service, mini bar, and maybe or maybe not the specialty restaurants or maybe some food in specialty was included or maybe there was a credit...we never really found out for sure. We were able to get some charges removed only to be confronted on check out about why the charges were removed. In the end, we have beautiful memories of the amazing color of the water, amazing sunsets and fun times with new resort friends. The memory of the service, best forgotten.