Agreed. Pure greed here. You can shear a sheep many times but only skin them once though.

I still can’t get past the photos of this giant ignorant cruise ship on the horizon.

we were at Conrad last week and it was our 4th time. The deluxe beach villas are renovated on the lagoon side and gorgeous. That said, we will not return. The breakfast at Vilu is no longer polished and it just feels like the hotel is catering to large groups. We turned off our dnd on the last day and within 20 seconds the Butler, gardener, and golf cart were hurrying us out. The seaplane was full of tourists going on international flights so they delayed our departure since we went to another resort. It’s just not as relaxing for us and the food was just ok. After hearing about the cruise ship, it’s definitely not a place for us anymore. Too much investment to get to the Maldives for a less than optimal experience. In fact, much feels different with the new bridge and the seaplane terminal coming. Just feels less intimate I guess.

Re the cruise ship matter...

Ignore what, if any, the legal rights & obligations might be for redress. What’s people’s feeling on here as to what would be fair in their mind - which is personal and each with differ. Enough caveats from me, what do people think?

I was thinking last night when I read all this that I’d be wanting the whole day written off by the GM - I.e. my bill for that day, including room charge plus everything else I spent that day - without exclusion, in my efforts to extricate myself from the mayhem and prevent it destroying my entire stay on the day thereafter - to be zeroised on my bill.

I then reflected on that and ended up feeling that even if the GM agreed to it I’d still not feel suitably compensated for the disruption to what I had bought which is a full relax for the whole duration of the day, and day in the middle that destroys that impacts the entire stay not just that day’s stay.

It’s not the prefect place it was 10 years ago; it’s not the really good place it was 5 years ago; it’s not the place that had odd flaws starting but still such wonderful things that more than compensated a couple of years ago; it’s now got flaws that are capable of damaging the highs in aggregate. It’s difficult to see how to write the annual cheque for Ł20k for a stay there - much of which is written because you accepted that included a decent premium for the guarantee of a wonderful experience.

(To be clear - I’m not on the island so wasn’t affected by what went on yesterday.)

My post is really just to simply ask what sort of redress, ranging from zero / suck it up right through to a fortune or more - people think they’d be after personally....

Reading your post now Spotly has me worried! We were last there 6 years ago. Has it really changed that much since then? It’s costing us a lot of money to get there, I don’t want to be disappointed!

It’s hard to judge I think: I think the first time you do anything it’s all so new and perfect that you don’t see some of the flaws etc and even doing the same thing again and again (we’ve been there a dozen or more times in a row) is going to lead to it not feeling quite as good even if it’s exactly the same in reality...

However, my personal perspective on what’s not as good over the years (some of which have absolutely nothing to do with Conrad changing things within their control):
- reef is dead versus 100s if times more colour and life
- food/menus not anywhere near as special or complex
- every aspect of resort open every day versus odd bits closed on certain days
- villas versus those in new resorts
- nature of other guests staying there
- scale of island feeling less intimate
- lack of innovation / new things
- standard of guest services (genuine interest and listening to you rather than heading off mid conversations to a speak to a more important guest)
- inconsistent service (not flowers on bed)
- a huge number of penny pinching measures that take the edge off everywhere
- the feeling of scarcity and hence value (eg you had to book a table at restaurants whereas now you can just pitch up and they’re empty so there’s less atmosphere etc)

There have been notable improvements (Uefa is new, quiet zone is new, cocktails are excellent, and new versus -10 years) but in aggregate for me the new flaws exceeds improvements.

But if you spend 80% of your time in your room looking out at perfection then not a thing has changed and it remain a place like nowhere else on Earth (although parts of Seychelles, Bora Bora etc could probably argue that)....