Welcome to the Maldives, the world’s most PRISTINE and sublime beach vacation. There’s a lot that goes into planning a trip to the region, so we’re here to share the TOP TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO TO THE MALDIVES!

After ten hotels and endless plane rides around the country, we have learned SO much about what it’s like to travel to the Maldives. In this video, we will tell you the most important things to keep in mind when you book a trip to the Maldives.

Whether you have booked a hotel already or are looking for advice on what hotels, what room types and what the heck the transfers are about, we have you covered.

While on some vacations your arrival or departure times don’t really matter because all you have to do is get to your hotel via taxi or car, arrival and departure times in the Maldives can make or break your trip. It is critical to pay attention to your flight schedule for a few reasons.

Since the Maldives is a country made up of many islands, your transfers include sea planes, regular planes and boats. If your transfer to the hotel is via sea plane or boat, those hours are pretty limited to daylight. Planes are a little bit of an exception, but they also operate on somewhat limited hours. If your flight is set to arrival around 9pm or 10pm as many do, you will need to spend one night on Malé before transferring to your hotel. The best arrival times are early morning to ensure you are able to catch the first transfer out to your hotel. Now, that’s just one of the most important things to know about traveling to the Maldives – if you’re looking for something specific, feel free to skip ahead!

Finding hotels can feel quite overwhelming – where do you even start? The great thing about the Maldives is that there is truly something for everyone. Big brands like Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton offers great experiences where loyalists can earn or spend hard earned points, but there are also dozens of 5-star brands that you may never have heard of.

My favorite thing to do is to search on trivago.com . Trivago aggregates all the major booking platforms and displays every hotel available on the internet and the prices related to each of the hotels across different platforms. There are a few ways to transfer to hotels in the Maldives: boat, plane or sea plane.

Depending on the distance from Malé, your hotel may offer a boat transfer. Boat transfers are often less expensive than flights and have more flexibility around hours of operation. One of the most difficult decisions you will have to make are whether to choose a beach villa or an overwater villa. I know, tough life. But really, this is important. People always ask us what our preferred room type is or assume we will always pick the overwater villa, but that’s not necessarily true.

Not all overwater villas are created equal. Some hotels will offer overwater bungalows, but they will be smaller and darker than their beach villa counterparts or simply not over desirable water. Sometimes, the beach villa is significantly nicer, larger, with access to gorgeous sandy shores and blue water with a bathroom the size of the room itself. We have stayed at properties before where we have actually moved rooms due to the overwater villa being far less appealing.

For example, one overwater hut we stayed in, you could actually not swim from the balcony due to the grassy bottom and six inches of water. We decided it was much more pleasant to stay in a gorgeous beach villa that accessed pristine teal water AND had a private pool.

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