I really enjoyed the stay at Pullman, so much that I extended 3 more nights! The good: + The island was huge and the most beautiful island I’ve seen, with gorgeous beaches and picturesque water color. The water was pretty shallow and it was really amazing to see all the wildlife. Also the corals here are out of this world! Would high recommend snorkeling or any activity to see the coral reef. + The food was surprisingly really good. I had my doubts as it was an all inclusive resort and in the past I haven’t had good for in really expensive Maldives resorts, but I really loved this resorts food. Loved the buffet, especially the Indian section. I pretty much ate Indian every meal. The chefs really deserve recognition for their amazing effort. + Buffet chefs: they were all so nice! Especially in the Indian and middle eastern restaurant! I really enjoyed going there :) + The room: one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve stayed at in the Maldives. The two bedroom villa was amazing, with a large pool and a huge area to walk around and chill. + Watersports: Everyone who worked there put in so much effort to make all the activities fun, and I did so many watersports when I stayed. The best island in my opinion to do watersports + Management team at front desk was great and accommodating. From coordinating an extra long stay, to accommodating a guest arriving on a different day, they made a huge and great effort to solve all of my problems. Areas to improve on: — Staff training: Although I am sure all the staff members are great people, many, many staff members truly lack proper training and there seemed to be a huge problem with the hotel being short staffed in general. For example, once my partner and I hopped on a buggy because the driver was going towards our room and the driver said he WILL drop us off at our room, 305. People started to come into the buggy on the way and the driver decided that he was too lazy to drop us off to our room and asked if we can meet half way and walk. I said it was a no, since my partner was post-op and could not risk his finger getting wet from the rain. Staff member didn’t care. It was a major “too bad” attitude. Another example: We went to go eat lunch and apparently there was no room for us and we were almost denied food, even after arriving 15 minutes before last order. There were 2 tables open, one for 4 people and one for 2 people. There was another man in front of us waiting for a table for one, and staff put him in a table for 4 people and said we could not get lunch... After talking to them for 10 minutes and expressing our frustration, then we finally were able to get a table even before ‘last call’. Sometimes I feel like staff was just lazy and didn’t feel like accommodating us. Only after we were visibly angry and I was upset to the point of tears, did we get treated very nicely. Hospitality is about being nice all the time, not after threatening to call a GM. — Not being able to use certificates. Like other people have mentioned, if you don’t book your activities the first few hours of arriving, count yourself out of them. We had to lose our sunset cruise/fishing/snorkeling certificates. We had our cruise cancelled, fishing trip cancelled and snorkeling cancelled. I understand the bad weather, but we were responsible and booked our trips day one. After our activities were cancelled, there was NO option to rebook because all bookings were reserved 3 days out! If you cancel a whole groups activities and see that there are no other options for activities in the near future, why don’t you offer some credit, some paid activities or basically anything?? We pay full just like anyone else, but don’t enjoy the resort in full.... I was not even able to enjoy a massage as they were fully booked out for 3 full days... Even the bikes were fully booked (don’t even get me started on paying 200 usd for some rusty cheap bikes when every resort gives them for free) — Buggy services. This hotel is huge. You can’t just quickly walk from your room to a restaurant, etc. Most resorts offer every single villa nice bikes. This resort makes you pay (and even so, have a shortage of bikes!) so without a way to get around for everyone we had to wait for a buggy. Buggies didn’t always come around every 15 minutes, sometimes 20-30. Even when we were waiting for 15 minutes and asked staff to call us a buggy, no one would. I feel like I wasted a whole hour of everyday waiting for there buggies, which many times were full and had no seats! This resort even wrote how they have NO on call buggy service, like they are going out of their way to make your stay bad. Like they really really don’t want you to have a luxury experience. At st Regis (and other resorts I’ve stayed at, which were much smaller as well!) for 800 usd a night, I got personal buggy service. I don’t get why we can’t get on call buggy service for 1.6k a night. It’s a lot of money a night and we deserve to be pampered. In general, the service was really poor apart from upper management helping with booking and the people who worked at the buffet ( the chefs were all amazing and nice!!). I would not give the service more than a 3/5. It’s so unfortunate as the property is gorgeous, room is gorgeous and just so much potential for this resort. This really took a lot from my whole experience and I tried really hard to make sure it didn’t get to me throughout the trip. There were times where I felt like crying after getting treated so poorly. This resort’s service seems more like a DIY rather than a luxury resort. We were paying luxury prices, but we didn’t feel treated like we were in a luxury hotel. Overall, I would stay again, but I really really hope that the overall service, attentiveness and attitude towards guests really changes a lot. There are so many great things that really made my stay memorable, and I really tried to forget about the small, unpleasant things that would really upset me. If this hotel can improve staff training to the caliber of other luxury hotels, have more staff in general, then the whole experience can be out of this world amazing. Many hotels are not as lucky to have such amazing architecture or land, so I hope more can be done because there is so much potential to this hotel!
Dear Marta, I wish to thank you for your detailed review about your stay at Pullman Maldives Maamutaa. It was a pleasure welcoming you as our guest and it served as a compliment that you had extended your stay due to your satisfaction. Your warm words about the island, the spacious rooms, the generous food offerings, marine life, Watersports team and the general assistance with your inquiries are much appreciated. With 3 restaurants and 3 bars, serving a large variety with different cuisines, our Culinary Team always aims to impress the taste buds of all our guests. Your kind comments about the quality of the food as part of the Generous all-inclusive, serves as a reward for the entire Culinary Team. I am surprised to note some of your disappointments in your review, after speaking to you several times during your stay. You have always highlighted how satisfied you were with your stay and it is with deepest regret that your concerns were not highlighted before and that I could not have assisted you while you were still with us. Nevertheless, your candid feedback is very valuable for us and rest assured that we take it very serious. We always receive raving comments about the hospitality of our Heartists, and it is therefore sad to note that you did not experience the same in all areas. On behalf of the team we wish to extend our humble apologies for the discomfort that you encountered in the highlighted areas. Your experiences have been shared with all departments for further review but also to complement their teams on the great efforts to make your overall experience a relaxing one. Trust that the necessary actions will take to emphasize on trainings which will improve the Buggy services and the communication and accommodation in the restaurants. According to our records, after the cancellation of House Reef Snorkeling excursion, you have participated in the Dive Course. The next day you were booked on a Snorkeling Extravaganza, in which you eventually did not join. As part of the package, an alternative of Snorkeling are the Sunset Cruise and Sunset Fishing, which both you did not utilize during your stay. Our resort does indeed not provide bicycles for all guests but are available for rent upon interest. We sincerely apologize for the inconveniences you encountered in regards to the lack of bicycles and the delay in buggy services. Rest assured that we will address that internally to ensure smoother operations for our future guests. Again thank you very much for your candid review and we sincerely hope that the sweet memories will remain. I hope to see you again at Pullman Maldives Maamutaa. Best regards, Martine Vera Strous Guest Experience Manager