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Beach

Very overpriced resort. Pool villas are absurdly overpriced and need of renovation desperately. The pools have fallen mosaic tiles. Very shabby. Choose Halaveli resort, there are super luxurious villas in perfect condition and you get super quality for a much lower price. Kandolh is not what it used to be. It is totally overpriced and you can see that the company is not investing money in renovations.

Very disappointed! In any case 5 star resort!

Wouldn’t return.
Dated island, staff over friendly in a strange way & manager & wife in bar every night- not a comfortable experience.
Had to change room as OWV not pleasant- like staying in a box with 1 window!
Not much to do if weather is bad. Gym quite small & limited equipment.
Food not great & not pleasant eating in a place where staff always seem to be eating too.
Worst Maldivian island I have been to….definitely won’t be returning.

Worst Maldivian island I have been to.

Upon arrival we were greeted by the management & staff & shown straight to our room, a beautiful beach villa.
Soft fluffy large bath towels, high quality linen, toiletries, beach bag & a pair of large beach towels were provided. Choice of pillows & a mattress topper were available.
One complimentary bag of laundry was included for our stay which was returned to us in a wicker basket within 12 hours.
The minibar & wine fridge were well stocked & refilled daily along with snacks.
AC was very good as was the fan, the bathroom was a little warm though.
Our room was cleaned daily to a high standard by a secret ninja who seemed to know when we left as we rarely saw him. The evening turn down service & little treats were a nice touch too. 
Our room view was exceptional & private as we requested. Often it felt as though we were the only guests. The beach outside the villas is suffering dramatically from erosion on this side of the island unfortunately.
Our sun loungers were extremely comfy with thick padded mattresses, we had a sun umbrella, day bed, table & 2 chairs too. The foliage separating the beach villas provides shade all day, however due to beach erosion it was difficult to place a lounger in the sun.
The reef is amazing, with some stunning healthy coral but also some which has suffered from bleaching. The anenome garden is thriving with lots of clown fish. The sea life is varied & plentiful with sharks, rays & turtles & we saw dolphins too.
Staff are very friendly & know your name from day one, always asking how you are & having time to talk. The managers are visible & accessible, a nice touch.
Food & drink are excellent, with chefs happy to amend dishes to your taste. We preferred the Sea Grill but all the restaurants are excellent. Sometimes the bar service was a little slow.
Particular thanks to Estella, Maan, Zinadh & Elvira (for the kind loan of her fan to stop me melting) for their attentiveness & kindness throughout our stay.

A very enjoyable stay.

I have waited a while to write this review, we have been to the Maldives 21 times and this was to be our last time, so we went in a strange head space, getting to the island was as efficient as always and we had a great welcoming and shown to our beach villa number 112 the villa was ideally placed it was the last of the beach villas. It had a lovely view and a nice piece of beach out the rear door. The villa was comfortable and well equipped. Food in the main restaurant The market was well presented and prepared but each day it was the same menu which we found repetitive, the staff there were quite good, Zinadh was the best waiter but most were helpful, we found it a little strange being referred to by our first names all the time by the staff, but I am sure some people wouldn’t mind it. We ate in Olive a few times and the food was excellent, we eat there on our wedding anniversary and the staff were excellent and we were very well looked after.
All staff on the island try their very best and provide an excellent service, the food is very good even if as I said repetitive.
Why the delay on submitting the review, well as I said it was supposed to be our last visit to the Maldives so we wanted everything to be perfect, firstly something that the island is not responsible for, it was peak season but the weather was awful 5 days of rain and strong winds, no one was snorkelling it was that rough, so the first five days were spoiled by the weather not the islands fault but still didn’t get off to a good start. We then had two days of sunshine when snorkelling was possible  but the sea was still quite rough, I was a little disappointed with the reef which wasn’t in good shape, visibility wasn’t very good, but again not the islands fault but still disappointing. The remainder of our holiday it was rain and sunshine.
The above wasn’t the islands fault, but these issues were. Firstly we woke up one morning to find a large cockroach and ant walking about on the sheets, I know there are cockroaches on the islands but we haven’t seen one for over 15 years, the room boy was told to spray the room every evening, he did it once we had issues with cockroaches on several days,Also in the room when we arrived was a bowl of fruit, it was fully infested with very small ants that were everywhere in the room I moved the fruit and the ants came from behind a mirror and moved onto other shelves looking for food, they were on all surfaces I sprayed a few times but the room boy wasn’t interested in my opinion. The other main issue was our flight to leave the island was early morning so the evening before the restaurant staff arranged for a box to be brought to the room with some snacks for our breakfast, when it arrived I placed it straight into the fridge, at 4am the next morning we opened the box to have our breakfast, as we opened it a huge cockroach climbed out…needless to say we didn’t have any breakfast.
The management are aware of these incidents and have replied privately to me. What I would say is the island is small and very nice, the staff are excellent especially the chefs and waiting staff, the food is excellent quality and well presented I am sure in consistent good weather the snorkelling would be good, I did have several meetings with nurse sharks and friendly turtles on the two days I snorkelled.
The cockroaches and ants were an issue that the island could have dealt with.
We are going to have to go back to the Maldives for our last visit again, would we go to Kandolhu again, unfortunately for us No, you only get one chance to create a first impression and whilst not all the issues were the islands fault it wasn’t the holiday we hoped for.

Some good some bad

This was our first Maldives holiday in over a decade so we wanted to make sure that we chose well. I can say wholeheartedly that we did!

There'd been a few less than glowing reviews in the weeks leading up to our visit and this did make us a little concerned, but the reality was that the resort fully lived up to our expectations....and more  

It's not one of these Dubai-style hyper-luxury resorts where everything is buffed to within an inch of its life and the staff are hot and cold running minions.  It is however, extremely well maintained and lovingly looked after by a team that genuinely seem to care about the place and its guests.  

The staff (all of them) managed to maintain a balance between being friendly and engaging, and remaining professional.  That is one heck of a balancing act.   Our first names were used by some of the staff, but weren't 'worn out' from over-use like you get in some places. Again, the balance was just right (in our opinion).  Also, as others have stated, some of the management team do use the bar and restaurants, but I just see it as a way of them engaging with guests, so a positive rather than an issue.

On arrival we were told that our Duplex Villa (113) wasn't looking it's best due to erosion of the beach in front of it, so were offered a Pool Beach Villa (102) as an alternative.  After 20+ hours of travelling we were a little put out by this, but the team couldn't have been more helpful in making sure we got the best option from our perspective.  We weren't pressurised into moving and several other options were discussed. As it turned out 102 was the perfect room for us. 

I should also say that the conversations re the room situation were had with Monica, the General Manager, not delegated to other staff to deal with.  No shirking of difficult conversations, just a willingness to work for the best outcome for the guest. Great management style.

I think anyone who has been to the Maldives has probably experienced the issues that these (more natural) resorts have with erosion.  It's an ongoing battle.  Whilst we were there the maintenance teams were working hard to complete the sea defences to protect the beach on that side of the island.  It didn't look great, I'd much rather that approach than see an island with a concrete seawall around it.

Anyway, once settled into our room it became a daily round of eating, drinking, reading and snorkelling.  We were on the Ultimate All Inclusive tariff and very glad we were, as it removed the 'bill shock' at the end of our stay.  As others have said, there is a well stocked minibar (actually a full size wine fridge) plus another full sized fridge for soft drinks, beers etc.  The range of wines was good across white, red, rose and prosecco. We didn't feel the need to go for the 'paid for' upgrades such as champagne as the choices included were perfectly adequate.

The food was on the whole very good.  We were particular fans of Sea Grill and ate there whenever it was open (it is not available a couple of times a week due to 'themed' menus i.e. Indian night and seafood feast).  The menu is built around fresh fish and meat cooked on either a charcoal grill or tandoor oven.  We loved it and were really well looked after by the chef who really went out of his way to provide us our favourite dishes.  Ata Roa was also great and Astrid, the chef on duty there at lunch, was lovely and produced some amazing food (albeit from a limited menu).  We thought more could be made of that restaurant e.g. bigger menu, more seating etc.

We ate breakfast and occasionally lunch at the Market and, again, really liked the food (bit less ambience that the other restaurants perhaps, but you got a great view out onto the sea, so no complaints).  

The only restaurant that didn't tick our boxes was Olive.  It felt like it was pitching itself at being slightly more 'sophisticated' than the others, but didn't quite hit the mark from our perspective.  I know that it's very subjective, so that's all we'll say. Others seemed to enjoy it.

The waiting staff seemed to mover around from restaurant to restaurant so you always knew who was looking after you.  A big thanks to Elvira, Estela, Nasru, Sharif and Zinadh who were all great.

A big draw for us to Kandolhu was the snorkelling.  Whilst we were there the weather was very changeable and we probably missed out a bit on the volume of snorkelling we'd planned to do.  A couple of days (out of 13) it was just too churned up to see anything. Other days we had to pick our times and locations to make the most of the clarity of the water.  The reef looks in pretty good condition and there's the usual array of reef fish, sharks, rays and turtles. We also did the manta snorkelling excursion, which was a bit of an adventure.  We got to swim with a number of mantas (difficult to tell how many as they come and go - we did see 3 together though) which was amazing and on my wife's bucket list,

All in all we had a great time and were in agreement that Kandolhu is our favourite Maldivian island to date.

Lovely place, lovely people

Even in the Maldives an island so perfectly formed as Kandolhu is rare The island is lush with wide sandy beaches surrounding the emerald green and is home to one of the most colorful and lively house reef in the MaldivesEven in the Maldives an island so perfectly formed as Kandolhu is rare The island is lush with wide sandy beaches surrounding the emerald green and is home to one of the most colorful and lively house reef in the Maldives

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Kandolhu Maldives