Ocean Retreat & Spa

Our 2nd week on Maldives having been to Maldives 9 years ago. New to this island. It reminds me of what Maafushi was probably like 20 years ago. I can see it ending up like Maafushi with 50 hotels and tons of restaurants. At the moment it is quite untouched. Very reasonable priced hotels. I paid £50 a night for our room for 2. This was more a rustic guest house rather than hotel. There is NO LIFT. I have severe walking difficulties so found our room on the third floor difficult to get to. Everything you would expect in this rustic guest house. Although there for 6n not once was ANY of our 3 rooms cleaned. No towels changed etc. Breakfast was sufficient but basic buffet. toast and croissants provided as well as boiled eggs, 'chicken' sausages and kind of turkey bacon. Usual cereals and 'fruit' juices/tea/coffee. Took about 10 mins to walk to bikini beach. Don't be fooled with the hotel photos as it looks like they have their own beach. There is a terrace on the top floor with an old indoor jacuzzi bath (but not switched on or any water). This terrace had beautiful sea views. Also bikini beach is very beautiful but not very good due to seating. It is clean. sea is beautiful but it lacks basic amenities. There are about 8-10 double sunbeds covered areas but that's it. There's the odd couple of broken damaged sunbeds but that's it. Only a couple of palm trees providing shade. Think this island could make a fortune if they had sunbeds for hire. As previously stated I have mobility issues so getting actually down on the beach is difficult for me so this impaired my experience. Limited number of places to eat at night and more expensive than other islands. Much quieter pace of life on this island. My party of 6 preferred this island than the busier Maafushi (however, I preferred Maafushi). I think in the future this will be a very populated island. So if you like rustic, quiet islands with very little to do it will suit you. But your options are limited here.

AVOID this hotel!! Me and my family, where 24 hours before arriving already in airport when a message on whatsapp came from them, saying that no more room availability due to a "system error"!!! Same message came also for another couple that was having a booking to same hotel. They are trying to put you in another hotel, saying that is superior (don't be fuelled by this strategy) - this behavior seems to be common in Maldives as we had similar experience on another island. Due to this behavior, I had to book another hotel as I did not wanted to accept other hotel (smaller rooms, etc) because also they CANCELED our stay to their hotel. Because of this, I lost time, MONEY and a lot of stress. DO NOT BOOK WITH THEM if you want an easy and nice vacation!!

We entered our room covered by dust everywhere and rapidly noticed that the safe was not working. We opened the fridge and found out that they did not empty it from the previous guests. We informed the reception and the only answer we got was "ok", yet no one care to come and empty it. The day after, when we came back around 16h from Bikini Beach and realized they did not enter the room neither for the housekeeping service nor to empty the fridge, we asked them again to come right away and take the old food and drinks inside the fridge. Also, we did not get any amenity during our stay, but a dirty and refilled mini gel (they could at least clean the cover). To end our stay, we found a bday balloon under the bed from God knows when- covered by dust. Clearly, they never bothered to mop under the bed. Definitely, not sure how they got the 1st position on stays in Guraidhoo.