“Good hotel on a disappointing island”
Common areas and our room were beautiful, room was spacious, beds were very comfortable, view from our room was great, food was okay. However, the island itself was very disappointing. If you're planning a visit to Hanimaadhoo, read this. Despite being one of largest Maldives islands with an airport, Hanimaadhoo seems almost deserted. There's very few locals around and almost no tourists: I saw 4 foreigners inside hotel and didn't meet any on the streets. Large swathes of land with very few people here or there. There is no (real) bikini beach on Hanimaadhoo, not anymore. Manager told me they removed all sunbeds and everything from bikini beach. Now the "bikini beach" is just a hard to reach piece of sand with nothing on it (no beds, no shades) and not a single person there. There is no house reef, only a few small corals and fishes. It's shallow for 500 meters (20 min of swimming), after that there's no drop-off = nothing to see there either. It's a large island, unlike other Maldivian islands you may need to walk 1-2 kilometers or call a taxi to get where you want. For example, to get to an ATM – there’s no ATM in the village, only in the airport. I wanted to dive, but there were no divers except me! Hanimaadhoo has two dive centers: Barefoot Dive Center, which only serves clients of Barefoot Eco Hotel, and Hanimaadhoo Dive and Watersports which serves everyone else. I went to the latter and found I was the only diver who wanted to dive in the next several days = only diver on Hanimaadhoo, except possibly Barefoot. This is not the fault of Viluveli, I just want to inform other travelers who are considering to stay on Hanimaadhoo. Barefoot customers may have a different experience, they at least have a nice beach. I decided to cut my stay short and leave Hanimaadhoo asap, earlier than planned. If you're planning to visit Hanimaadhoo, read the above (placed there to avoid review size constraints). What I didn't like in Viluveli: manager of this hotel is a sneaky person trying to squeeze every dollar out of clients: 1. As mentioned above I decided to cut my stay short. The booking was not refundable at this point, so I lost money, but didn’t charge Environment Tax ($6 per person per night). Yet, manager insisted I must pay tax for the full length of stay, including the unused nights. Why - because I paid . How is one related to the other? I didn't pay this tax to . Government takes the tax. Pretty sure he will inform government that clients left early and pocket the money for 2 nights. 2. During argument about tax, he said the tax is for each period of 0:00 - 23:59. It’s not true: Booking calculates it as $6 per person per night. 3. He wanted to get paid in dollars or euros, not Maldivian rufiyaas (MVR). When he saw I don't have full sum in rufiyaas, he said he can only accept full payment in MVR or full payment in USD, not partial. It was clearly a trick to make me pay in USD. Having seen the manager clearly lie to me in points 2 and 3 above, I don’t believe I needed to pay government tax for unused days, he’ll probably pocket these money
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