Hotel berhampiran Hadahaa, Hadahaa

We are regular visitors to the Maldives. We usually go annually and visit at least two resorts each trip. Park Hyatt Hadahaa (PHH) was our 11th resort in the Maldives. I will not comment on the general beauty of the country. That is well covered in other reviews. My comments will be more directed at matters that I consider important to me as someone who is lucky enough to have visited this lovely country multiple times BUT is still value orientated (lets be honest, Maldives is not cheap). EXECUTIVE SUMMARY I would return to this island for its beauty, incredible deluxe beach villa and lovely house reef. However, I am firmly of the view the F&B offerings are not competitive with similarly priced resorts and need to improve. Of course this is a matter of opinion and there are a number of reviews that rave about the food. While I have given five stars the food did fall short of what I would expect for the price point. As the staff more than made up for this issue five stars seemed fair. TRANSFER PHH is a domestic flight. It takes significantly longer than a seaplane or speedboat. I would not do it for less than seven nights (but to be clear I have booked a domestic resort for next year). I recommend packing a fan in your carry on as if you have a stopover flight (as we did both ways) you’ll be on the plane for about 30 minutes with no air moving and it is not pleasant. PHH does a very good job of making the experience as painless as possible. We were met at the domestic terminal (having overnighted in Male) by PHH who assisted us with check in and lounge access all the way through to security. On the return PHH again excelled keeping us on the island as late as possible and assisting with check in through to security at the local airport. What they could control about the transfers they did, and they did it very well. REEF Our primary reason for visiting the resort was the reef. I have been lucky enough to snorkel some of the top reefs in the country including Kandolhu, Kagi, Mirihi etc. Over the course of our stay we snorkeled multiple times and completed multiple laps of the reef (in multiple sessions, we were too lazy to do complete laps in one session). I found that the fish on this reef in abundance at sunrise and sunset. If you want a lie in, this is not the best reef for you. If you are happy to get up early there are plenty of fish. We had our best snorkels at about 7am island time/6am Male time. There are not as many turtles as other resorts (although we did meet ‘Ben’ the resident hawksbill a few times and a juvenile green sea turtle). Nor did we find it as sharky as other reefs. The visibility on this reef was consistently excellent. Very clear, not once did we get silted out and there are some wonderful areas where the corals have regrown beautifully. Coral regrowth is quite good close to the Residence. I suggest jumping from the jetty and heading straight left. There is also a clown fish anemon

We enjoyed a 5-night stay in an overwater villa with pool at The Residence Falhumaafushi over Christmas 2024. We booked the standard all inclusive package which was well worth it. It included a daily buffet breakfast, 2 courses at lunch and 3 for dinner which was a huge amount of food and drink! Villa 302 was large and clean and nicely decorated and in a good location to access the nearby reef for snorkelling. I would pick Villa 300 or 304 next time for privacy reasons, as villa 303 could see directly into our pool. These rooms are located on the western side of the island which is great to see sunsets from. The villa is separated into bathroom with outdoor shower, normal shower, seperate toilet, freestanding bath, bedroom, and living area. Bedroom is air conditioned and opens up onto the deck so you have a view of the ocean. The food was incredible - particularly LiBai (Chinese) and Long Island (Italian). We understand the resort has recently won an award for their food and we can see why. The food was also good at the Falhumaa, but the service was lacking on the night we visited most likely due to it being peak season. We arrived early and were told to wait outside in the heat, which didn’t happen at Long Island. We also ate at Cafe Del Sol for lunch and the Beach Bar. Food was good but service was always better on the busier side of the island. Cafe Del Sol had umbrellas and Beach Bar staff refused to put umbrellas out. Staff at all restaurants were accomodating and understanding with food allergies, which were noted on check in but seemed to need to be reminded when dining. Special mention to Jaavid at the breakfast buffet on the Falhumafushi island who went the extra mile with avocado and lemon at breakfast. Most restaurants are located at the other resort, which meant a bicycle ride or buggy ride away. But it was worth staying at Falhumafushi was a lot more quiet and less crowded. We understood the resort on this island to be childfree, but there did seem to be some families with kids so the rules must have changed? It’s good to allow up to 15 mins for the buggy to arrive in peak times. All restaurants were super clean. We had a slight hiccup on Christmas night, as we’d booked Long Island (which was confirmed) and there was special event scheduled there and we weren’t notified so we had to go to the buffet that evening. Also at one stage we were told by a staff member our choice of alcohol wasn’t included in our package when it was. I queried this with the staff member and advised him I could show him our package documents which listed this as included. We really shouldn’t have had to do this. In terms of activities, we booked the JetSki safari, which took us for snorkelling and to a sandbank. We were supposed to do this Christmas Day, but the staff recommended we reschedule due to weather. We were glad we did. It was well worth doing as the reef we were taken to was beyond the channel you could reach by swimming. We s