Holiday Inn Resort Kandooma Maldives
Holiday Inn Resort, Kandooma Fushi, South Male Atoll, 00000, Maldives
We stayed for 3 nights and 4 days at this Holiday Inn resort using our Priority Club points. Following redemption options are available for stay with points
- Free award night – 25,000 Priority Club points (currently devalued to 35,000 points/night)
- Cash + Points: 30,000 Priority Club points + $30 USD or 25,000 Priority Club points + $70 USD per night
- The resort charges $189 USD + taxes /person for shared speedboat round-trip transfers to the resort.
Upon arrival at the airport from our overnight stay at the Fuana Inn, we were directed to the Holiday Inn counter inside the airport. The hotel representative tagged our bags and directed us to wait until all passengers were checked in.
After about an hour, the representative guided us to the speedboat jetty. The speedboat staff proceeded to load our luggage in the front of the boat and helped us get onboard.
Pretty soon we were on our way to the resort.
After 45 minutes we finally arrived at the resort
As soon as we arrived at the reception,a rep greeted us and guided us to our assigned table (no waiting at the counter for elites). Karen is a Priority Club Platinum member so we got a personalized table for check-in. We were also provided a welcome beverage (Virgin Mojito or something of that sort) and cold towels.
We had booked a Garden view room for 3 nights (75000 points). 2 weeks before our arrival, we got an email that we were upgraded to a Beach view villa. Upon check-in we were glad to have been given a further complimentary upgrade to a Sea view Beach House.
But since we were on a vacation and in a spending mood, we inquired about possible upgrade to a over-water villa. I blame it solely to our watching Couple’s Retreat a few times !! But all our anticipation turned to dust when they quoted us an additional 450$/night for the over-water villa. Hence, we settled on the beach house below.
And here comes the highlight of our room. Outdoor showers. I took showers every night below a full moon and stars. It was amazing !!
There are 2 main swimming areas around the resort. The first one is by the pool and cafe area and the other one is at the back of the resort by the overwater villas.
There were also some non-swimming areas around the island.
Swimming Pool:
There was one main pool (broken up into multiple sections) by the beach.
Restaurants:
There are 3 restaurants in the resort – Kandooma Cafe, The Kitchen and Bokkuraa Coffee Club.
For people who are in the basic half-board or full-board option dine at the Kandooma Cafe. Right next to the cafe is Bokkuraa Coffee club which sells pasta-pizza-hamburger-salad during lunch and reasonably priced entree during dinner (as reasonable as you are going to get in this island !!).
We opted not to go with either half-board or full board option and dined at the Bokkuraa for all the meals while we were there. Since we were not into pasta that much, we stuck with pizza and sandwiches for the lunchtime meals.
We selected the Red Snapper Fillet and Chicken Wings for dinner on Night #1 (sorry no pictures) and went with Pizza for the rest of the nights.
Other things available at the resort include (trip reports upcoming):
- A gift shop
- Water sports and equipment rental
- Complimentary Snorkeling lessons – Basic lesson at the pool and Intermediate/Advanced lesson at the house reef
- Evening entertainment outside the lobby (open air concert, movie nights, etc)
- Recreational room including game tables, face painting, etc
- Viewing area at the top of the Kitchen Restaurant
Thumbs Up:
- Can’t give enough praise of the beautiful views around the island.
- We rarely get upgrades even as Platinum’s. Getting a 2-category complimentary upgrade was amazing. We honestly felt that we got the best possible room category and location around the island. Even better than over-water villas (thank goodness we didn’t pay for the upgrades)
- The food was fantastic even though at outrageous prices. Karen loved it all.
- Complimentary snorkeling lessons. It was Karen’s first time and she enjoyed snorkeling at the open ocean.
- How can I not talk about the open air showers. It was magical. 🙂
- I could keep on going but to keep it short, its a two thumbs up Ebert and Roper style !!
Thumbs Down:
- Everything is ridiculously expensive. Its the Maldives after all. Heaven doesn’t come cheap.
- The Bokkuraa Club closes on “event nights” where they steer you towards overpriced menu at other restaurants.
- Overwater villas are a ripoff at this resort. I wouldn’t mind paying 300-400$ a night if the over-water villas had outstanding views. In this resort one set of villas were facing an inhabited island with not so pretty views and the other set of villas were facing ugly sea breakers.
- There were only 2 swimming beaches around the island. A big portion of the island had rocks and sea corals by the water which made it unfit for getting into the water.