UKTraveller4Fun

My instintive answer to this considering the hotel is very aware of the sunset flying rule and would know in advance which passangers were on which plane would have been sent to boats out rather than 1. This way both seaplanes could have been loaded with passangers at the same time. Weather does indeed happen, but the hotel should be accutely aware of this and do everything possible to ensure guests get to theior seaplanes.

Also its fair to say the GM would still be on the island when the passangers who had just gone on a boat for several hours to be returned to the hotel (as I think the GM boarding the seaplane would have been noticed) and it would have been appropriate for him to take the time to greet them at the dock and speak to them. Lead from the front, especially at a very new resort finding its feet during difficult times!

strbrynkrm

Just wrapping up a 7-night stay in sunset OWV 202 (first one on the dock, closest to Tabemasu). I’ve been to the PH, Conrad, and StR properties and thought LM was a fantastic point redemption, as long as you set expectations for a lifestyle (rather than luxury) property. I’m Gold Elite, so got 15% off F&B, but otherwise no special treatment.

Tips to make the most of your stay

• The service was exceptional and we were grateful for it. We spent time getting to know the team at LM and were always greeted by name and with warmth. Everyone was personable and went above and beyond to make our stay memorable, whether by preparing my specialty ice teas in advance or sending treats. From what I observed, the staff were always professional and responsive to guests, but it helps to treat people how you want to be treated.
• Cocktail class with Manoj was hilarious and delicious. He tailors the class to your interests, so let the front desk know what you’re after. It's not advertised anywhere, but I asked and received a private class for $50++ (they said the FT review was a promotional price). We had three takes on Negronis, with a classic, bubbly, and smoked version.
• We paid the $50 for the sunset OWV upgrade, but I wouldn't recommend it, if you're traveling in a stormy season like we did. Also, the sunset villas face the open sea, so the water is pretty choppy.
• Villas were packed in, but they’re grouped into clusters. Try to get a villa on the end caps and it will feel more open. We were at 202, with a villa to the left and Tabemasu off in the distance on the right.
• I generally find resort food uninspiring, but enjoyed the food at LM. Here are some favorites. The grill plate at Velaa is great value at $60 and enough to share—best cuts were the lamb chops, steak, and drumstick. Homemade pastas at Turquoise are cooked perfectly al dente—try the homemade ravioli and pappardelle. Ask for a cone with your sorbet at Le Scoop (I wish I discovered this sooner). Sanal, the barista, will make you delicious specialty lattes if you ask nicely. Smoothies and the bean burrito at Waves. Everything at Tabemasu.
• Supposedly the reef at the back of the resort has pretty good snorkeling, if you don't want to brave the 10-15m journey to the house reef. You can mostly walk to the house reef, though there is a 5m swim against the current that you will need to do. I went at low tide, but it was almost too shallow to snorkel, so recommend going at high tide. There is very little sea life by the OWV, which is the downside of new construction (according to LM).
• 60% of guests right now are American (followed by Russian, Indian, Chinese), w/a good % using Bonvoy to stay. Nilesh mentioned that listing as a cat 5 factored heavily into their covid-opening strategy, and said they’ll see how it goes. So consider booking a stay while the deal lasts!
• All equipment from the dive center to watersports is brand spanking new. We took a jet ski tour to look for dolphins and spent a glorious 15-min tracking them. But the activity isn’t for the faint hearted, especially if it’s a choppy day. We were out on the open ocean where waves were sometimes 3-4ft high and traveled all around the neighboring atolls. We loved it, but are pretty adventurous.
• As a former yogi, I appreciated sunset yoga with Raj, which was hosted at an intermediate level. The classes got more difficult over the week, as the regulars were all fit, if not yogis themselves. It’s a gentle vinyasa class with standing poses, sitting postures from Ashtanga, and Kundalini breathing. I also did aqua aerobics, which was a good workout. Three complimentary fitness activities are hosted per day.

Review

• The room was much more spacious than we expected, based on photos we had seen. Perfectly comfortable. No issues with power or internet, and we streamed lots of Netflix. Housekeeping and turn down was prompt and thorough—we never had to wait while they were cleaning our room. OWV are a little ways out, but we worked out that bikes wouldn’t be sustainable given the number of villas and the narrow road.
• Our arrival and departure was very smooth with Nadeem handholding the process. He apologized when our seaplane transfer was 2h out and said he was working on it. 15m later, we were rushed out of the lounge on an earlier flight. On departure, our seaplane was delayed, leaving us 2.5hrs to make our international connection. Nadeem was worried, so he hooked us up with an airport escort who helped us skip the long lines.
• The reception, check-in/out team were well intentioned, but more inexperienced. They were polite, but clearly still finding their groove. For example, we were dropped off at reception for departure, and while there were many agents milling about, it took awhile for someone to approach us to let us know what was going on. My checkout also took longer than necessary because the agent would answer the phone and get distracted. Most of my emails went unanswered, but I’m not sure if reception handles that.
• Service was EXCEPTIONAL and made the stay really stand out. Far better than my butler at the StR, though that may have been an anomaly. All of the staff were warm, personable, and responsive. People remembered our names and preferences, but beyond that, you could tell that the staff were really empowered to make your stay special. One morning, my mango iced tea was taking longer than usual because they had to hunt down the mango from the bartender. From that point on, Niza & Yoga made sure to take my order (what flavor iced tea) the day before to ensure it'd be ready. Choris noticed I didn’t drink and brought a welcome cocktail for my partner and a mocktail for me during our meal at Tabemasu. Sanil made us a special latte each day featuring passion fruit, banana, or mixed berries. Manoj noticed me chowing down on the ice at our cocktail class and joked that he could make me a gola mocktail, which is basically a snow cone—and he did!

ggb7135

This hotel is new so new you’ll see the hotel invites lots of “influencers” to come to the properties to promote it. But you will find yourself having dinners or drinks among them, and you’re just the backdrop and like a second class citizen as a paying guest.

if you’re ok having mediocre experience after flying 30hr plus to Maldives, this is an ok hotel, otherwise, I’d suggest not to come here at its teething time.

AC777300

This was very much my impression too. I think the sad part is the hotel was cheap and got pretty mediocre influencers too. Most of the ones staying were boosted Instagram accounts with purchased followers.

PbodyPhoto

Influencers are rampant at all but the highest end properties.

SkilleZ

Y'all are funny. I'm currently at the hotel.... This is so far from the truth and just indicative of personal biases. I doubt anyone talked with these "influencers", particularly about how they "boosted" their accounts. Interestingly, I've looked at the hotel's insta account every day here and there are only a few people with over 5k followers, and maybe one person that is actually an influencer.

The Waldorf and StR both had significantly more influencers than here.

I'll save my full review for when the stay is over, but for a preview... The service is very close to the StR and Waldorf. The hard product is nice, but you can tell it was cheap in certain places... But that's what you'd expect from a mid tier hotel. The food is good, again not mich starred, but good. Particularly the local and Indian food. If you don't mind doors that are hollow instead of solid oak, this place is great and I'd 100% recommend it at the price point. It is definitely out kicking category 5.

PM me if you have any specific questions.

PS:. I pretty much agree 100% with strbrynkrm review. Great review.

AC777300

Exactly our point. The hotel didn’t do their due diligence and has invited some pretty low grade influencers to the property.

Everyone has an opinion on the property based off personal experience. Doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. Calling people who have had bad experiences at the property liars just makes you look like a shill for the resort.

SkilleZ

Fair point. Yes... If people dressing up and taking pictures is going to dampen your maldives experience, AC is correct. You should not go to any maldives resort that you cannot rent a private island.

Sincerely though I did appreciate your comments on the sea plane fiasco and that was helpful in making sure we are very proactive.

​​​​

WasKnown

So if the influencers had more followers, would they have been less disruptive to your experience? What makes them low grade?

ggb7135

thank you! I will write a full review later. It was personally a very awkward experience to say the least. Perhaps the defending person is the “influencers” that disrupt other paying guest experience. I guess you never know.

Kacee

Reminds me of some of the posts in the Aegon thread (and on TA) raving about what an "Amazing" property it is after Lucky recounted his experience there.

svellmann

Just got here last night and thought I'd share some initial thoughts and information to give back to this community, considering how much I benefited from the information people have been sharing here. I do have add a disclaimer: we just spent 5 nights at the Conrad before coming here which was absolutely incredible and a perfect experience end-to-end in every sense but the cost...well, as they say: luxury has its price. So take what I write with a few grains of salt because I am fully aware this is not a fair comparison to draw but I think it's also good to put things into perspective and see what this place could be. While points rates vary greatly between the two (35k Marriott points here vs. 95k Hilton points at the Conrad), the discrepancy for cash rates is actually not as big between the two as you might think.

- arrival experience: some people were commenting about stopovers during the sea plane flights. I have to say you can't reasonably expect to have direct flights both ways and that this has nothing to do with the resort but is at the full discretion of TMA. Take the Conrad as a luxury resort: we flew there into the sunset which was unbelievably beautiful but ended up landing at the nearby Radisson Blu because the sun had set and we couldn't continue so we were put on a 10-minute boat ride with our bags. Big deal? I don't know, not to me. Back from the Conrad to Male, we dropped off some other passengers at another resort before continuing to the seaplane port in Male. You see what I'm getting at, this is perfectly normal in the Maldives in my limited experience. On the way to the LM then, we stopped at the Kuredu Resort before making the last 5-minute hop over. And you know what? I'm glad we did, because it really makes me appreciate the LM as a property. The Kuredu looked like an absolute zoo - there were snorkelers and divers swimming in the taxiway of the seaplanes to all four sides, they have two parking bays for sea planes that were occupied and we had to wait a good 15 minutes before we could taxi to to offload passengers and the beach and swimming area looked incredibly crowded. We had to get off the plane for a while to re-fuel so I had some time to look around. The whole place was brimming with people and when I looked up their rates, it's not exactly cheap either. So glad we are not staying there. The LM is absolute bliss by comparison.

- meal plan options and food: I think that has been covered sufficiently already but I can confirm that as Platinum you get 30$ discount on all plans if you choose breakfast as your elite benefit. We opted for Full Board Plus which is 125$ per person per day. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me after studying the plans for a while. As soon as you drink a glass of wine or two per day or some cocktails I think you already come out on top. It doesn't include the Tabemasu Japanese Restaurant so we did that last night for dinner and start our meal plan today. You can do a la carte the first day(s) but a meal plan must be for the final four more consecutive days of your stay. Tabemasu had fantastic food and I am so glad we did that. I will share some photos in a separate post. As a point of comparison, at the Conrad we had breakfast included and skipped lunch every day and only ate dinner but still averaged around 260$ per person per day there without drinking much alcohol at all, so food really is priced very competitively here although I am expecting it won't be as much of a gourmet experience as the Conrad. Breakfast was good today with decent spread, good quality ingredients and much variety. Cannot be compared to the Conrad in any way as they're not competing on the same level clearly. I think everyone will find some choices here that they will be happy with. Chinese, Indian, Western, it's all here. Fun anecdote on the side: I was joking with the missus that the meal plans were probably designed by a German, considering how complicated and somewhat convoluted they are, full of details, rules and additional terms. And wouldn't you know it, the f&b manager is German as I found out from the front desk lady who is his wife. She was totally cracking up when I told here this. I guess it takes a German to know a German.

- Rooms: I had only been able to book the Beach Bungalow on points and then was upgraded to a Beach Villa with Private Pool. Unfortunately there were issues with the room and upon pointing them out to the front desk we were kindly upgraded to an overwater villa after the first night which I really appreciate. So I'l be able to say a bit about both room types. The Beach Villa with Private Pool felt like a rather hard landing from the Conrad which had to be expected. It is not very spacious and feels a bit basic but big enough and has a nice shower. The toilet is inside but the sinks and shower are outside under a roof. The design is nice but the walls around the pool are just plain white and makes it look a bit dull. The fact that your tooth brush and toiletries will be outside at all times is not a big issue I guess but I couldn't fight the thought that lizards, geckos or bugs could be creeping all over my toothbrush and other stuff at night. If you went to the bathroom at night and then went outside to wash your hands, there's a possibility you step on a crab or a lizard. Both of them were living in the pool area of our backyard which is actually cute and doesn't bother me but could be an issue for some people. It also bears a chance that one of them could run into your room when the door is open. Leaving the door open turns the AC off which is perfectly fine, except when two people are getting ready for dinner or for bed and are going back and fourth between bathroom and wardrobe, the AC will be going on and off all the time or you just leave the bathroom door open during that time but the room will warm up. First world problems, I know, but just pointing out improvement potential in an otherwise very beautiful place. If you walk back to your room over the beach after dinner, you cannot unlock the patio door with your room key from the outside. You either have to leave your villa unlocked, squeeze through the bushes beside the villa to get to the front door and let yourself in or skip the beach walk and go via the main path which is dark and has frequent buggy traffic. The Conrad had nice touches like a towel laid out by the patio or entrance and a container with water to rinse your feet. None of that here, so it's near impossible to keep the sand out of the villa. The devil is in the details. The safe is also too small. It won't even close if you put an SLR camera into it, let alone if you have multiple valuable electronics. None of these were reasons we asked to move to another room, by the way. All in all, considering the Beach Villa with Pool retails for 1k+ USD I could honestly not recommend it for that price. On points it is probably still worth it though since it'll be hard to find a better deal on points in the Maldives. It is beyond me why the retail price of the Sunrise Overwater Villas seems to be around 20-25% lower than the Pool Villa then. It doesn't make sense to me. While at the Conrad I was actually glad that we got upgraded to a Deluxe Beach Villa with Pool instead of an OWV (or at least I would be indifferent because both are fantastic but the renovated pool villas there are just so stunning and spacious), at the LM the OWVs are a big step up from the beach pool villa IMO. Enough has been said here about the OWVs and yes I don't love pink walls either but for what they currently cost on points I think it's an absolute no-brainer to just go and do it, even if you're spoiled by other properties. You will have a great stay here regardless and won't be breaking the bank on food either like you may in other resorts around the Maldives. Food is expensive here, too, compared to where you may be traveling from but it is not for where it is.

Whoever is around these days, feel free to pm me to meet up for a drink or something. Always great to meet like-minded miles & points nuts in person. I'm around until end of this week. Also if anyone has any questions or wants me to find out any information while on the ground just lmk.

Pics of Tabemasu dinner and current meal plans coming up shortly in separate posts.

svellmann

Some impressions from dinner at Tabemasu. We went for Omakase, "trust the chef". He served up an excellent 6-course meal at 130$ each. 20% Plat discount applies and it basically cancels out the 22% VAT and Service Charge. Food was perfectly cooked, the courses well-balanced and all ingredients of highest quality. We were very full after this meal. Highly recommended - it was absolutely delicious. If you're going for half-board or full board plus and don't have Tabemasu included, do it like we did and have dinner here on the first night and start the meal plan the next day.


Dessert: mixed fruit platter

Teppanyaki area, on request

Tabemasu seating area at night

Main course: tenderloin, cooked to perfection

Salmon roll with avocado and cucumber

Assorted tempura

Hamachi nigiri

Tuna Tataki

Tabemasu bar

svellmann

Current meal plans. All plans 30$ off the price you see below, per person per day, if you're Platinum. Tax and service charge already included. One staff told me full board plus cocktail choices may not be 100% strictly enforced.

MarkCron

@svellmann How late is breakfast served at Turquoise? Thanks