Maradiva Villas Resort and Spa

Very nice place not too crowded nice kids club with nice staff

Stayed here for 5 nights for a special occasion. Positives: As Hilton member, got an upgrade which was greatly appreciated. The room was excellent and the heated pool, while not private, was warm and nice. The grounds are beautiful and were very quiet. Aki was our point of call as butler and was available on WhatsApp for any issues and he was excellent and an asset to the hotel. There is free ample carparking if you have your own car. The beach was pretty much deserted at the south end of the resort, where we were but there was a beach hut/ bar which was manned all day and the service was superb by the attendants. There is also a buggy service if you need to move around the resort which we never really used apart from check in and check out but hey always offer even when you were seen walking around the resort.

Now there were some negatives. Food- We were on half board and breakfast was at Cassine which was excellent although local Mauritian cuisine choices were limited but there were plenty of options. You can choose to have dinner in any of the restaurants apart from the Teppinyaki place without a supplement. There is a half board inclusive menu at Cassine, Cilantro (Indian), Haiku (Japanese/Asian) and Beach House Grill. You need to make a reservation with your butler daily. The HB menu only changed at Cassine each day which was disappointing. The dinner at both Cassine and Cilantro were only ok rather than excellent. The beach house grill menu looked the most interesting but it will only open if there has been no rain since it is fully outdoor and we only had the chance to eat there once since it gets booked quickly since it is quite small. Sadly while the food was the best for dinner there, my wife got severely sick after and this really should have been dealt with better by management. The manager did come to speak to me about it personally the day after when I enquired about the issue. Also if you want to eat out of the HB menu, you can but the cost was prohibitive and the HB compensation hardly covered the cost of the starter!!

House keeping- The time when they come to clean the room was very hit and miss and on one day when it rained, we returned back to the room and it did not get cleaned till almost 3pm.

Air conditioning- It failed fully and it took them the whole day to sort it but I was very impressed with the engineers who worked hard all day to sort this out. Just meant we could not use the room for a very long time but no options were given to help when we couldn't use the room.

Overall still would recommend it since it is a great place but there needs to be some changes to the food offerings since the dinner options were underwhelming mostly and HB menu needs to change daily in all restaurants and more local breakfast options would be welcome. Staff overall were all really friendly, helpful and work hard but some areas mentioned above needs polishing. Aki- our butler was excellent and would highly commend him for his help.