Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi

This is a wonderful journey. The hotel is built on the edge of a huge lagoon. The wind and waves inside the lagoon are relatively small, which providing an excellent snorkeling experience. The service are very good in resort. our butler Mr. Nurali help us a lot. He arranged everything excellent. we're grateful for his services and hope to come to this place again in the future.

What a disaster. I cannot stress strongly enough if you are considering travelling to the Maldives and going to a luxury 5-star resort, this is NOT the place for you. (For context, I came here with my mum, this is our 5th time in the Maldives, and we are lucky enough to have travelled extensively around Europe, Asia and Africa, so we know what to expect from a 5-star hotel, especially in this area). Our problems began before we even arrived in the Maldives. A week before, we were told this hotel was no longer associated with Fairmont/Allaccor. The problem with this is that we were told too short notice to cancel the trip, and did not receive the benefits an Allacor membership offers. Additionally, whilst sitting in the airport in London, I decided to check the hotel website, only to discover it no longer existed! Google even showed the hotel as closed. We had no communication about this, so had no idea how to get in touch with the hotel (especially considering they didn’t even have a working contact page up and running). Eventually, I got through to someone on Facebook messenger (is this 2008?!). I was told there was a whole new website (which is only one page with no option to see accomodation options, prices, etc). Our problems continued from the moment we arrived in Malé, where we were told we would have to wait 4 hours for a seaplane. Another 2 couples who arrived at the same time were allowed on to the earlier seaplane, whilst my mum and I, along with another mother/daughter duo, were made to wait. This was the start of being treated as second-class guests because we were a mother/daughter travelling, as opposed to a couple, or even a man. Just to flag as well, this hotel no longer has its own lounge in the seaplane terminal, so don’t expect that- although many of the other luxury hotels do. Accomodation: The room was actually quite nice and spacious. The first, quite minor issue, but irritating nonetheless, was that our room had no hammock, which it was meant to have. When we asked about this, we were told they had ‘run out of hammocks’?! Eventually, after stating that they can’t falsely promote a room, they managed to magically find a hammock to put up. Additionally, there was a leak in our ceiling (which was eventually fixed to be fair). There were also long power outages with no back-up power on our penultimate day, despite it just being cloudy, so not sure why the power failed. This meant the aircon, fridge, WiFi, phone etc all stopped working. We received zero communication from anyone during, or after, these outages. Food: The food in the buffet was very good, especially the salads at lunch/dinner and the pastries in the morning. Meat dishes were also cooked very well. However, I would say the hot food at kata (Japanese) was below average, I had a Japanese katsu curry, which was watery. Also, the hotel had limited & repetitive vegetarian options, which was disappointing. Scenery The island is very beautiful, lush and green with amazing swimming opportunities. However, so are countless other islands in the Maldives, so this is not really a selling point if the rest of your experience is bad. Service The friendliness of most staff in the restaurant was good. However, the speed of service was abysmal, every single morning we waited at least 30 minutes for a cup of coffee, and longer for a simple omelette. During lunch/dinner if you managed to get anyone’s attention to order a drink, you could expect to wait 20+ mins for someone to pour you a glass of wine. Service was so bad, I would physically walk up to the bar and take my drink as I could see it had been sitting there melting for 10 mins. Departure To top off this holiday, we asked if we could check out of our room at 2pm as opposed to 12 (which was included as a complimentary perk when we booked- but then taken away when fairmont left this hotel). We were told it would be $200. We decided just to use the departure lounge instead, as we have done so in other hotels in the Maldives. These usually have showers/ water etc, so you can still enjoy your day and freshen up after. Oh my gosh was their departure lounge terrible (pictures included). It was a dingy room with random mismatched tables and chairs thrown around. Not even a drop of water in sight. There was however, 5 boxes of tissues, an empty water bottle, paper cups, and 2 dirty glasses with mysterious yellow liquid inside. To make this even better, we asked if we could have lunch included (as we had paid for all-inclusive), we were initially told no (as we had lunch on the day we arrived). We complained, as we were told that our arrival lunch was complimentary for all the issues with the seaplane. My mum (who had complained to reception) was interrogated by the man at the desk, telling her this can’t be true as it’s not hotel policy. After my mum explained who had told her this information, the receptionist started calling the people in front of her to corroborate her story and ask if she was telling the truth?! I actually cannot believe this happened, I wouldn’t expect this behaviour from ANY hotel, let alone a ‘supposed’ 5 star hotel. It was such a horrible experience I truly could not wait for the seaplane to arrive and be done with these rude individuals. There needs to be a serious initiative to teach some BASIC hospitality skills, as I don’t know how this hotel will survive otherwise. Also, not once at any point in the holiday, nor at departure, did ANYONE ask us how our stay went, which is a basic rule of good hospitality.

This is my first time traveling to Maldives for honeymoon. The staffs here are really professional and friendly ,especially our butler Nurali who is from Uzbekistan. He organized everything for us cautiously and perfectly. If we have chance to live here again, I will definitely choose Nurali to be our butler. Besides, the sunrise villas where we live are really awesome! The bed is so comfortable and big that we all have good sleep every night. I recommend resturant Azure and breakfast in Raha where have delicious meal. Dinner in Raha and Kata is not as good as we expected. Anyway, we have memorable honeymoon here. Thank you all.