I have no plans to go to the Alila. My understanding is that the only bathroom in the units there is outdoors and not air conditioned, which is a non-negotiable dealbreaker for me.

Total time from clearing immigration at MLE to getting into our villa was 4.5 hours, but we were somewhat lucky in that our flight from DOH arrived at 3:55pm and Maldivian scheduled a 6:25pm nonstop to Kooddoo that day. On other Fridays, Flightaware showed that flight scheduled for 7:10pm. They don't schedule them until a day or two before so you really can't be sure, but the extra journey doesn't bother us. Well worth it to get far from the air and light pollution of Malé. The domestic lounge at MLE is not great, but at least we were able to use the little side room with comfortable loungers for the 90 minutes we were there.