The W Maldives would mark our first visit to a W property in the Indian Ocean sub Continent. The W Maldives was among the original W Hotels worldwide, and has been in operation for eighteen years in the North Air Atoll of the Maldives. The W Maldives brand is generally brash and aggressive, so we’d be curious to see what our stay experience would be like. We would end up discovering a new favourite chic luxury resort, that had many of the feels of home.

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This post is one chapter on my trip to the Republic of the Maldives. This trip was enhanced through Marriott Bonvoy Elite Status, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan and Air Canada’s Aeroplan. For more information on how this trip was booked, please see our trip introduction. For other parts of the trip, please see this index.

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Review: The W Maldives, North Ari Atoll, Maldives

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“The W Maldives still shines brightly after eighteen years since opening. With lots of inclusions, a terrific elite breakfast and likely the world’s best snorkelling house reef, the W Maldives remains an essential visit on any Maldives getaway.”

Booking The W Maldives:

We had previously stayed twice at the excellent Park Hyatt Maldives. These days, my World of Hyatt balance isn’t anywhere near where it should be for the number of points needed for a redemption in the Maldives. As a result, we ended up researching the Marriott Bonvoy properties for a new redemption opportunity.

We were drawn to the W Maldives as a result of its reputation of a world class house reef. We were staying at the St Regis Maldives during a later time in the trip. While we also looked at the Ritz Carlton Fari Island Maldives, I was really happy we ended up booking at The W Maldives instead. The W Maldives would ultimately surpass our expectations in marine life and reef activity.

Marriott Bonvoy Opportunities:

We booked the W Maldives using Marriott Bonvoy points. Marriott Bonvoy points have moved to variable pricing, so my strategy was to book the property as far in advance as possible, then watch for potential price reductions.

The basic reward redemption room is the 1 King Bed, Fabulous Overwater Villa. The next room category up was the 1 King Bed Spectacular Overwater Villa, which is the same room facing inwards towards an emerald blue lagoon with the addition of a relaxing mesh net over the lagoon. It’s worth noting that the Fabulous Overwater Villas have the house reef immediately at your feet, whereas the Spectacular Overwater Villas you’ll have to swim a short distance to get to the reef, since the area underneath the villas are mostly sandy.

Booking about a year in advance, I was able to locate a rate of 386,500 Marriott Bonvoy points for a five night stay, with the fifth night free in the base 1 King Bed, Fabulous Overwater Villa. This worked out to about 77,500 Marriott Bonvoy per night.

About two months before our stay, I noticed that the price point for the resort dropped to 361,000 Marriott Bonvoy points for the same 5 night stay. This worked out to be a more reasonable 72,200 Marriott Bonvoy points per night based on a five night average with the fifth night free. As a result, I was able to cancel and re-book to get 24,500 Marriott Bonvoy points back, for a few clicks of the mouse.

For comparison, the paid cash rates were approximately $1,181 USD average per night. By using points, we were able to get $6,100 in room charges on a complimentary basis as a result of a great use of Marriott Bonvoy points.

If you value Marriott Bonvoy Points at 0.008 cents each, you’ll come out ahead by redeeming points against a room at the property if your room rate is above $580 USD. In the Maldives, you’re almost always better to redeem points as a result of the over the top costs of the hotels.

It’s worth noting that there is a Trans Maldivian Airways Sea Plane Transfer charge of $595 USD per person, and a service charge of 10%.

Although I had them, I wasn’t able to apply any Suite Night Awards at the W Maldives, since all rooms are considered Suites. While I understand their policy, it would have been nice to try and get a further confirmed upgrade with your elite status.

Getting to the W Maldives:

We arrived into the W Maldives via Qatar Airways Q Suites Business Class San Francisco – Doha and Qatar Airways Business Class Doha – Malé.

After arriving at Malé Velana International Airport, our bags were collected and we were checked into Trans Maldivian Airways. After passing through the Trans Maldivian Airways Coral Lounge Malé and the Trans Maldivian Airways Malé Noovuli – W Maldives Sea Plane flight, we arrived to the W Maldives. If you want to see more about this part of the journey, I encourage you to read those separate reviews.

The only comment I would make about this journey is that The W Maldives only pays for a seemingly low 44 lbs of checked baggage allowance. Trans Maldivian Airways charges $5 USD per kilo of overage excess baggage fees. This means that if you’re travelling with a 50 lbs standard baggage allowance suitcase, you’re likely to be over weight by $20 USD right away; more if you happen to be travelling on a business class ticket like we were.

In our case, we ended up paying for $60 USD in baggage overage before we even arrived to the resort. This isn’t something that we experience with our transfer to the St Regis Maldives, which provided a more generous 50 lbs checked baggage allowance. For a luxury resort, my only comment to the W Maldives would be to allow (or pay for) for a more standard 50lbs baggage allowance. It’s a bit of a sting when you’re already paying for a transfer charge of $595 USD per person.

The W Maldives is located in the North Ari Atoll in a westerly and slightly south location from the airport city of Malé.

It was about thirty minutes flight away from the Malé Noovuli Sea Plane Terminal, making it a mostly convenient hop from any international flight.

Checking into the W Maldives:

The check in activities for The W Maldives occurred at the Trans Maldivian Coral Lounge in Malé prior to your sea plane flight Your room assignment occurs in Male. Our Marriott Bonvoy Elite level was Platinum for this particular stay, which entitles a guest to the best available room at check in, including Select Suites.

While we’ve seen reports of travellers being upgraded from the 1 King Bed, Fabulous Overwater Villa to a 1 King Bed, Spectacular Over Water Villa, we didn’t get any further upgrade on this visit. Not withstanding the lack of upgrade, we were pretty happy with the assigned and booked 1 King Bed Fabulous Overwater Villa due to it’s proximity to the house reef. I wouldn’t see the need to book a higher room category on our next visit.

We also confirmed selecting Breakfast as a Marriott Bonvoy Platinum Elite Welcome Gift, which would entitle us to a full breakfast buffet at Kitchen Restaurant on a complimentary basis.

After a welcome drink on the arrival jetty, and an introduction to the resort management team, we were put onto a shared gold cart and given a tour of the resort property.

The Room: 1 King Bed, Fabulous Overwater Villa

We were led to our assigned Fabulous Overwater Villa #210. Our assigned villa was exactly seven villas out on the pontoon; just enough not to be far away from the island, but not too close that we could hear any noise.

Our host dropped us off from the golf cart to explore the villa, promising to return after he had dropped off the other guests we shared the golf cart with.

The 1 King Bed Fabulous Overwater Villa is a large 146sqm/1,571sqft one bedroom over water villa with every possibly amenity. Despite the villa being eighteen years old having opened in 2005, the room shows in excellent condition and almost “as new”.

Our host returned and provided us with a personalized tour of the room. Upon entering the room, you’ll find yourself in the large one bedroom with a king sized bed. The bedroom is tiered, perhaps a little controversially. There is a small step down to the lower living level. The lower level contains a couch and table, along with a work desk.

The lower tier of the living room floor could perhaps cause a little mis footing when trying to navigate to the washroom in the dark in the middle of the night. However, we didn’t have any accident issues with it, during our stay.

The lower tier also offered a small round window into the water below. While we didn’t use this feature all that much at the Le Meridien Bora Bora, there seemed to be a lot of needle fish that surrounded this space at the W Maldives. As a result, we enjoyed peeking in on them from time to time during our stay.

There were great views out of the bedroom on to the outdoor deck space and beyond. There is nothing that I couldn’t appreciate about that unlimited sea view that went to the end of the skyline.

The room was colourfully decorated in blues and other coral themes that fit the surrounding area of the Maldives. While it is not a look that I would choose for my own home, it certainly added to the colour and vibrance to the room.

The W Maldives left us a terrific Marriott Bonvoy Platinum welcome amenity consisting of a plate of macaroons and a chilled bottle of prosecco sparkling wine.

The room featured a small curved desk space that was more suitable for dropping laptops and telephone devices for charging than it was for actual working. There were a number of charge points. This space became a home for GoPro’s to charge, along with other underwater cameras.

The desk housed the Bluetooth Stereo that allowed you to play your music library indoors and outdoors on the Bose Sound system. Our host set this up for us on arrival to the suite, and it worked throughout the duration of our stay.

On the opposite site of the room, there was a curved storage chest that housed the in room refrigerator, mini bar and snack bar.

Being a W Maldives, there was a full snack and bar containing alcohol spirits. The pricing was pretty reasonable at $55 USD ++ ($70 USD) for a small bottle of Absolute Blue Vodka or Beef Eater Gin.

It’s worth mentioning that all the non alcoholic drinks were available for consumption on a complimentary basis. Accordingly, we had access to all these non alcoholic drinks for free; refillable on a daily basis. This was another example of some terrific inclusions for this resort.

W Hotels always offer proper glassware and every combination of beverage possible. Our room contained martini shakers, wine glasses and a full coffee and tea set available for those early morning coffees, along with sundowners on the outdoor deck.

The Bathroom:

The W Maldives Fabulous Overwater Villa offered a large bathroom with a double vanity sink. There was a large stand up rain shower, which was heavenly. Being an older hotel, the water pressure in the shower was strong and heavy.

The featured bathroom toiletries are by Momo of Bottega. These were featured in environmentally friendly dispenser tubes, that felt a lot more luxurious than your local Four Points.

Along with every room from the Fabulous overwater Villa, there were terrific views from the large soaker tub and the bathroom.

Outdoor Space:

The W Maldives Fabulous Overwater Villa offers a great outdoor deck space. The deck space offers two reclining loungers, a covered gazebo for dining (or lounging) and a table and chair for two combination.

Despite a north facing orientation with the Fabulous Overwater Villas, we were able to get full sun all day on the outdoor deck.

There was also a smaller infinity plunge pool. Given the heat of the Maldives, I used this for cooling off during the day. While the sides of the interior of the pool are a little rough around the edges and can scrape some knees, I didn’t have any scratches or scrapes throughout our stay.

Given that the upkeep on property in the Maldives is a major exercise in itself, it’s expected that some resorts will show some wear and tear. In this case, this turned up in the overall condition of the outdoor deck.

While the inside of our villa was in pristine condition, the outdoor deck had easily seen eighteen years worth of wear. There were a few lounger scratch marks and paint peeling occurring on the deck. While this wasn’t a deal breaker, this was easily the only part of the resort that looked older, as compared to other aspects of the resort.

The view from the outdoor space from the Fabulous Overwater Villas was terrific, and we couldn’t have been happier with the unlimited ocean views landscape.

Overall, the Fabulous Overwater Villa room was possibly the best “entry level” room I’ve ever experienced. With a fully featured bar, and a large outdoor space, we were really happy with the room. We wouldn’t feel the need to stay at a higher room category on a future visit. The housekeeping was also excellent and personable, with items being restocked to a level that was much more than was needed.

Around the Hotel Property:

Overwater Pontoons:

Every step outside of your overwater villa leads you to colourful overwater pontoons over an azure coloured sea. The W Maldives has a contemporary design of over water pontoons, with angles that lead out towards groups of three villas from each pontoon.

The W Maldives Beach:

The W Maldives Beach is centrally located. The W Maldives Beach features a west facing sunset orientation near the foot of the over water villa pontoons and the arrival jetty.

The beach is quite long in tidal length, and features a smooth entry into the water. While there aren’t many children at the resort, there wouldn’t be any issues with young children (or waves) at this particular location.

There are a limited number of resort chairs located high up on the beach. Despite being onsite for five days, I never saw a whole lot of people using the resort beach. I also never saw the area fully occupied, as a result, there wasn’t any issues getting seating on the beach.

The south side of the W Maldives island does continue to have solid beach front. This area doesn’t have any resort beach chairs as it contains Beachfront Estate frontage

The W Maldives Pool “Wet”

The W Maldives offers a pool area. Given that this is an older resort, the pool isn’t as sleek as some of the newer options. The pool does offer a plunge pool that runs the length of the boardwalk.

The pool offers peek – a – boo views to the W Maldives Beach. The pool doesn’t offer too many advantages, aside from perhaps being close to the bar- making it easy to get a drink on demand.

Gym:

Above the pool area is the W Maldives air conditioned gym. My younger self would have been using this every day. However, I didn’t make it there this trip; preferring sleep to overcome the jet lag instead of exercise.

The gym offered a nice daylight space for exercise. The space was also attended by a full time gym attendant.

Away Spa:

At the southern end of the island, W Maldives offers its Away Spa. The spa offers small format over water rooms for spa treatments.

For those that don’t want to trudge along the beach to their spa appointments, you can also take the well paved sandy walkways through the island to the Away Spa. You’ll find a number of Wonderful Beach Oasis rooms.

House Reef:

It goes without saying the house reef is probably the reason that you’ve travelled all this way to the Maldives.

Arguably, the house reef is among the best house reef’s in the world. The reef is absolutely packed and teeming with underwater life. The coral formation are mature in nature, and there are exceptionally large coral farms full of fish and life during the morning and evening hours.

We found the best snorkeling on the W Maldives island to be right at the foot of the fabulous over water villas. While we did snorkel around the south end of the island, we did find the most interesting corals right underneath our villas.

Much like many other reefs, the best activity was in the morning around 7 AM, and in the evening after 4:30 PM. The house reef rivalled some of the best snorkeling we’d had at the Park Hyatt Maldives; another property that has an excellent world class house reef.

Food and Beverage:

When you travel to a private island, the types of restaurants available are important and make a difference in any stay. The W Maldives offered a variety of dining choices that are enough to keep you satisfied during any week long stay.

Kitchen

Marriott Bonvoy Platinum Breakfast

The Kitchen is the resort’s all day dining option. It is the only option open for breakfast, which started at an early 7:30 AM and ran to 10:00 AM. Kitchen is centrally located and is just off the resort pool “Wet”.

Kitchen features both an indoor and an outdoor seating arrangement. The outdoor seating arrangements offered “in water” seating, which was handy as there weren’t very many shady spots located outside.

Moving indoors, there is a large air conditioned dining space that was nicely decorated.

I am really happy to report that a Marriott Bonvoy Platinum Breakfast consists of a full buffet breakfast offering. We’ve seen many North American hotels attempt to upsell or up charge an additional fee for the full breakfast. It was really pleasant to not have to go through this transaction in the Maldives and just get the full buffet breakfast. We ordered coffee and egg orders off our servers.

The buffet breakfast offered a complimentary free flow prosecco, along with Bloody Mary’s made to order.

The hotels’ breakfast selection was among the high points of the food and beverage program at the W Maldives. The staff were exceptionally friendly and worked very hard to make sure the guests were fully satisfied.

The breakfast buffet had more than enough food to keep anyone happy for a week long stay. Essential for a resort of this size, an egg station can make or break a resort buffet.

Along with an egg station, there was a fulsome buffet with fresh baked breads, muffins, doughnuts. There was an Asian Station with rotating dim sum every morning. There were cold cuts and cheese. There were heaps of various fruit smoothies along with fresh juices W style.

One of the more unique features of the buffet was the fresh fruit station. The W Maldives offered freshly cut fruit to order.

The W Maldives also offered the ability to get dozens of types of smoothies anf fresh fruit juices.

There was the excellent Maldivian Tuna Mashuni; a tuna dish mixed with coconut, onion and spice, along with many other dishes available for breakfast. We enjoyed french coast with coconut banana compoté, along with several other western and Indian breakfast dishes.

During the course of our stay, we also happened to dine at Kitchen for dinner. On the day that we arrived to the W Maldives, we enjoyed a Club Sandwich and a Margarita Pizza. The dishes were generously portioned. However, the western food was definitely the weaker spot(s) on the menu and a bit bland tasting.

The check for a club house sandwich and a margarita pizza, a corona beer and a glass of rosé was $111 USD including service charge (10%) and tax (6%).

Fish:

The W Maldives wouldn’t be a seaside resort without featuring a restaurant that offered terrific seafood. At the W Maldives, that restaurant is Fish.

Fish is located over the water on a pontoon just off shore. During the night time hours, you’ll get an intimate setting close to nature with the sounds of waves crashing ashore.

After checking out the catch of the day, we were led over to our table over the water. It was very quiet at the restaurant with only 4 other couples dining on a patio with seating for about 20. There was a little wind outside on the pier but the wind cooled down the skin from the sun burns.

Through some spot lighting into the water, we were able to watch a bit of the night tine reef activity in the waters below. These included small reef sharks looking for a little food which kept MrsWT73 entertained throughout the dinner.

For the main course, I enjoyed a Maldivian Tuna Belly. It was cooked through, with some light spice. Very light on the mango sauce.

MrsWT73 went with a lighter ravioli dish; which received decent marks in terms of a lighter portion control.

The check for a two entrees and a bottle of white South African Wine was $177 USD including service charge and tax

Sip:

The W Maldives offers a sunset cocktail bar in the form of Sip. Sip is located right on the water on the southern side of the island.

Cocktails at Sip were priced at $23 USD to start, with wine priced at $16 USD to start.

The nice about having whole island to your self is that you can roll up 30 minute before sunset on a Saturday night and get a prime unobstructed ocean view seat at sunset.

Visiting Sip was enjoyable and the views were pretty pleasant. Despite this, it didn’t form part of our regular daily stay routine while we were here.

Managers Reception:

During our visit, the W Maldives held a reception event every Friday night for Marriott Elite members. During our stay, it was between 5:30 – 6:30 PM. The event was held on the arrival jetty which featured a good sunset exposure.

There were about twenty people on site when we went; obviously signs of an elite heavy property. Adding to the ambience was d-jay spinning jazz music. The event was also used by the staff as an opportunity to get feed back on various areas of the resort. The whole event was very personable with all the managers on site.

The property was quite generous with the drink refills. In the space of an hour, I enjoyed at least three Cocktail with purple berries and dried pineapple inside it. MrsWT73 enjoyed several glasses of Babich Sauvingon Blanc.

Checking Out of the W Maldives:

Our departure plans had us transferring from the W Maldives to the St Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort. Although these resorts are reasonably close to each other by distance, our transfers had us returning back to Malé by Trans Maldivian Sea Plane to connect to another outbound seaplane flight.

Since sea plane schedules aren’t finalized until the day before travel, we received an email indicating that our departure time from the W Maldives was at 10 AM. We were assured a departure time to the St Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort of 12:30 PM on a relatively early flight allowing us to get settled at our new resort and still enjoy some of the day.

Our final payments for meals and incidentals were processed in the lobby of the resort. There weren’t any surprises on the bill and our overall bill for five days came out to $1,891 USD with two sea plane transfers, a 200ml bottle of in room Absolute Vodka, and three dinners. It was pretty reasonable price point for a five day stay in the Maldives.

Bottom Line: The W Maldives

The W Maldives exceeded our expectations for this particular stay. While we were thinking that we would end up at an older property, the warmth of the staff and the amount of inclusions more than made up for any perceived disadavantages.

We were treated to a full breakfast buffet including free flow champagne, a complimentary bottle of sparkling in the room, several plates of complimentary macaroons and snacks delivered in the room, free in room soft drinks and juices, and a weekly elite managers reception. While I may have been expecting one or two of these items, I was really impressed to see all of them and they added value to the stay.

Lastly, the staff at the W Maldives were absolutely terrific to deal with. They made sure our stay was comfortable, pleasant and that we were taken care of. It even rivalled some of our stay experiences at the St Regis; they were that pleasant to deal with.

Overall, the W Maldives is highly recommended. Despite being an older resort, i found great value for our Marriott Bonvoy points, and I would easily return without any hesitation.

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If you have stayed at the W Maldives, what was your favourite part of the island visit ?

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