dvo1029

I am a little confused. I was looking at booking a room for 5 nights in May. For points it is 310,000 for a wonderful beach oasis and 310,000 + $2,250 for an upgrade to a spectacular overwater villa (or 760,000 points), which is the lowest points cost for an overwater villa. When I look at cash bookings, the fabulous overwater villa is showing as the lowest price option at $638 prepaid. Am I missing something or why would I chose to book the overwater villa with points when the overwater villa would only cost me $940 extra plus I would save 310,000 points and earn points on the cash paid room? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Adriano Viterbo

I got it from the hotel thanks !

bgriff

$638 per night is definitely on the very low side for a cash rate for an overwater villa at this hotel, and any hotel will look bad on points when it happens to be a low cash rate set of dates. If you have decided you want the overwater villa no matter what, that cash rate looks appealing, although you have to weigh for yourself the costs of the nonrefundable rate. Also make sure you click through and understand what additional taxes and fees may come along with each rate (the seaplane will be the biggest and will apply to both cash or points rates, but not sure if the $638 includes all taxes and everything).

TravelerIT

Checked-in today, upgrade to spectacular OW. Till now very impressed!!! ������

tylerc

Have you stayed at any of the other Marriott properties in the Maldives?

TravelerIT

No...first stay ever in Maldives!

iazflyer

Im going through the same exercise now. I’m not sure what the difference is between the two OW suites, other than location and the fact that Spectacular is $500 more than the Fabulous. But, does your upgrade fee include tax and the resort fee?? It might, whereas the $638 prepaid rate may not.

rvlcr

not sure what the difference in rates might be, however i do know that the only difference between the two suites is just location (i.e lagoon facing vs open ocean facing). the lagoon views are nicer since you can see the different shades that are in the lagoon however i doubt that theyre THAT nice to justify such an increase in price! whats especially weird is that when i originally booked for W using cash (rather than points) this past march, there wasn't a distinction for these two rooms... they just had fabulous overwater oasis on the website and no mention of the spectacular. i emailed the resort and put in a room request for a room facing the lagoon side. they said that they'd try to accomdate it and i checked the app a few weeks later and my booking was switched to a spectacular room. not sure if this was just a one-off as im only a Gold member or what, but very nice of them and a great first impression.

iazflyer

I just checked with the hotel. The Spectacular OWV has a lagoon view and is ~$500 more than the Fabulous OWV, which has an identical floor plan, but views the ocean instead. Interestingly, the Fabulous is roughly the same cash rate as the Beach villa, however you can’t book the Fabulous with points. Further, you can’t upgrade from the Beach Villa to the Fabulous with a cash supplement. You can only upgrade from the Beach Villa to the Spectacular OWV for a ~$500 cash supplement.

Adriano Viterbo

Checked in today - upgrades available $300/nt but was not offered one. I thought gold got upgraded if there was one available?

bgriff

Interesting. For a while after the SPG-Marriott combination they had seemed to discontinue the Fabulous vs. Spectacular distinction, which made sense to me as when I was there the property map still labeled the two separately but I really couldn't discern much difference between them. The lagoon-facing rooms (the south-facing ones I think) do have better (any) sunset views, which frankly if I were running the show I would lean on more heavily than the lagoon vs. ocean view as it is a more notable distinction, and other resorts like the St. Regis manage to market the sunset view distinction to great $$$. But the lagoon rooms are also less private since they're generally visible from the main beach and Sip, especially the ones closer in, so I don't think it's necessarily a slam dunk to say that they're better.

As for the differences in what you're able to book and how much it costs, it sounds like they may be trying to play games with what they offer on points and how they extract cash copays out of points bookings, but who knows. This property has changed what you can book on points and how quite a few times over the past ~18 months with the transition to Bonvoy and the ways they've made the changes haven't always made a lot of sense.

bgriff

At "normal" hotels golds are offered a limited upgrade, like to a higher floor or better view, but not usually bigger upgrades like to a suite. At this hotel all the properties are suites already and the steps up beyond that are fairly big, so I wouldn't necessarily expect any upgrades for a Gold member here. Officially, as an all-suite hotel, they don't need to give any upgrades to any elites, though there have been some data points of Platinums and above getting moved up at check-in.

Adriano Viterbo

Got it! Thanks.

DenFlyer23

Anyone here over the past week? Based on Instagram stories it looked the underground nightclub was open?

tylerc

Has the club been closed? I didn't see any mention of 15 Below even existing on their website when browsing the other day...