Fuana Inn
Hulhumale’ Beach Road Plot No.10107, Hulhumale
Since we were arriving at Male International Airport (also called Ibrahim Nasir International Airport) close to midnight on our Singapore Airlines flight, we had decided to spend the night at a local hotel and then go to the Holiday Inn Kandooma resort next day.
Searching through Tripadvisor and Hotels.com, I came across this small hotel approximately 15 minutes from the airport. For 1 night, I would definitely advise all visitors to stay on the same island as the airport rather than in Male. You would have to take a ferry to the city and even though its a very short ride, it still is not worth the hassle.
After arriving at the airport and clearing Immigration, we exited to the airport lobby where all of the hotels’ and resorts’ representatives were holding signs. We located our hotel representative and were instructed to wait till he had found all the other guests. Well that turned into a long, boring, 45 minutes wait.
Then exiting the airport, we wait for another 45 minutes for hotel transportation to arrive. What we later found out is that the hotel doesn’t operate its own bus but rather arranges some public bus to operate on its behalf. Well the bus showed up late and I was already cursing for choosing this hotel. We were the absolute last hotel guests to leave the airport premises.
All the passengers were loaded onto the bus (8 couples) and the luggage was stacked in the middle of the aisle. Heading towards the hotel close to midnight, driving down a dark two lane road, there was a loud boom and the bus grinds to a halt and the luggage starts flying everywhere. It appears that a tire had blown. Then we were informed that a new bus is arriving “soon”. Luckily this time the wait was only 10 minutes. We were put into two separate bus and made our way to the hotel. Luckily that was the last of the excitement for the night.
All the apprehension kind of went away after we arrived at the hotel. It is right on the beach where the sound of waves would drown out even the noise of jet engines !! Check-in was very quick, even with eight couples all at once, and we were shown to our room.
This is basically a 3 story hotel with only 4 rooms on each floor. The rooms are pretty small and only have very basic amenities. For an overnight transit hotel, I would still rate it as exceptional. Remember, you shouldn’t compare it to a resort but rather judge it on its merits as just a place to sleep for say 8 hours.
Before departing to the airport, me and the mrs. wanted to check out the beach. We enjoyed the nice views of the beach from the hotel.
Transit bus picked us up from the hotel to drop us off at the airport. It arrived promptly and thankfully there was no added excitement on the way back :).
Thumbs Up:
- Location. Location Location. It is in a quiet, safe neighbourhood, right opposite to the beach. There are some other hotels listed on Hotels.com/Expedia that had much worse locations than this one (either in a run down area or not close to water). If we go to Maldives again, I would stay at this hotel just for this reason.
- Very friendly and helpful staff. Seeing the staff you get the impression that they really wanna make their guest’s stay memorable. Even though everyone knows that guests book this property usually for one night only.
- Water pressure in the bathroom really good. Plenty of hot water available.
Thumbs Down:
- Uncomfortable bed. It was creaking all night.
- Really crappy choices at Breakfast. We are after all in a strict Islamic country therefore no bacon or sausage available. The orange juice tasted like soap water mixed with concentrate.
- Amateur arrangements for transportation to hotel from airport. If someone is charging 16$ / person for a 10 minute ride, they should at least have their own transportation where they don’t leave you at the mercy of a third party
- No amenities supplied. Not even a new soap or shampoo or conditioner. We had a soap in the wash basin that looked like it had been used by previous guests.