Soneva Fushi Resort and Spa

We stayed at Soneva Fushi for a week as the final stage of our honeymoon and were in a Crusoe Villa with pool on the sunset side of the island.
The island is a beautiful one and less densely built then other Maldive resort islands. Our room was charming, many of the staff were friendly and one or two took the trouble to remember our names. The food is generally good and the resort prides itself on using fresh organic produce sourced locally or from the island itself. Management, and presumably the owners, have a pioneering approach to sustainability and eco-tourism which is impressive. As honeymooners we were invited on an evening dolphin cruise, had a torch lit dinner by the pool in front of our villa on the final night and had one 50 minute spa treatment each.
There are a number of points I would urge anyone thinking about coming here to consider:
(1) Not all the Crusoe villas (with or without a pool) are two storey or as large as advertised on the website. Ours was single storey and seemed rather smaller than the 235sq mt advertised, in fact closer to a hybrid between a Rehendi Room and a Crusoe villa (whilst still being charged at a Crusoe villa rate). I raised this on arrival and a day later our “Mr Friday” said that a Soneva Fushi villa had become available. As we would have had to pay for the upgrade we decided to stay put. Whilst the room was more or less fine it wasn’t what we had thought we would be getting – surprising as many a resort would upgrade a honeymoon couple. I would suggest anyone booking a Crusoe Villa to specifically request a two storey one.
(2) The sunrise side of the island is much nicer than the sunset side. The sea is calmer and there is less coral immediately offshore which makes swimming in the sea much easier. Additionally, a lot of rubbish and debris seems to get washed up on the sunset side and many of the villas (including ours) overlook a nearby local island that has a number of radio masts and other industrial looking buildings on it (the red lights could be seen from our bedroom window and during the day large fires that give off heavy black smoke are lit at the end of the island) – not quite the “remoteness [that] is central to its charm” the marketing lingo promises. In fairness the resort cannot control what other nearby islands look like or what is in the sea around it but nevertheless if you are going ask for a room on the sunrise side.
(3) If you sign up for any activities or experiences whilst on the island check very carefully beforehand what you are getting. Our “Mr Friday” asked us if we wanted to sign up for a “barbeque on the Sandbank” at US$170 per head. The “barbeque” turned out to be a plate of paella (which concededly was delicious) followed by fresh fruit. Anything else (wine etc) was extra. When we got to the Sandbank about ¼ to ½ of the people there as guests were actually resort staff (general management, dive centre staff et al) and we were left with a slight feeling that we had been recruited as punters to make the outing viable. This feeling was not lessened when, half way back to the island, the boat turned around and went back to the Sandbank to collect a number of the staff who had decided they wanted to get back as well. The mark-ups on most things on the island are exorbitant (and if you buy a bottle of wine in a restaurant but don’t finish it for goodness sake take it back to your villa otherwise you won’t see it again) and the “Fridays” seem to operate as much as product salesman as assistants to the guests (ours rather gave up on us after day 3 when we hadn’t signed up for much). So, if you go, question yours closely;
(4) Don’t have dinner in the main bar. We did on one night at the suggestion of our Mr Friday (in fact we had to as the other bar was closed for most of our stay) and the food was decidedly average (but still over US$100). We were more or less alone in the place and when we were lucky enough to pin down one of the itinerant barmen we had the privilege of paying US$18 for an extremely weak cocktail that filled only half the glass. The place felt like a service area for the rest of the island and this was not helped by the sound of the construction work on the new restaurant they are building next door.
(5) Think quite carefully about bringing your diving kit. I brought my PADI stuff with me hoping to do some diving but a single dive (assuming you do fewer than 5 dives during your stay, use their equipment and travel to the dive site by boat) costs US$105. On my one visit to the dive centre to make enquiries I found the place deserted except for one sleepy Maldivian man who had no information about dive sites that were scheduled for a visit, diving conditions or options for my wife (who had done a “Discover Scuba” course but wasn’t certified). His sole comment was “only 3 dives?” (a reasonable number if you are only there for a week) and he directed me to fill in a liability waiver even though I hadn’t signed up for anything. I asked for someone to call us with more information – no one did so I eventually collared one of the dive masters at the Manager’s cocktail party. She said as I hadn’t dived for a couple of years I would need to do a test dive off the house reef – at full price of course – before being let out on a proper dive. We had seen the house reef when snorkelling. Wasn’t tempting.
(6) Finally, and if you read none of the rest of this review PLEASE READ THIS, lock your villa/room door at night! At 2.30am on our last night on the island my wife was awoken by a strange hand moving up her leg which she quickly discovered wasn’t mine. An intruder had come into our room and was moving about the floor, no doubt looking for things to steal. We woke up in a panic and shouted at him. Strangely, when he realised he had been spotted, he didn’t immediately leave but kissed my wife’s leg and scuttled into the corner. We were packed ready for an early departure so a torch wasn’t readily to hand but we glimpsed the silhouette of a (presumably local) man in a sarong as he escaped through the villa door and ran away up the beach. We have no idea who he was and what he was doing – perhaps he had meant to go into the villa next door where it seemed to us that a single woman was staying – however the experience was profoundly unnerving. There is a large amount of construction going on on the island (a new central restaurant and a number of villas) and there is a fairly large resident colony of guest workers so perhaps one of them had been tipped off by hotel staff that we were leaving and our things were likely to be out of the room safe. Or perhaps some locals came over from the neighbouring island in a small boat to try their luck (the manager thought this unlikely due to the reefs around the island). Either way, and in all fairness, the general manager could not have been more apologetic and our room bill was waived. However the security guard who did eventually turn up at our villa 20+ minutes after the incident couldn’t have less interested. He had no torch and didn’t even come into the villa to see what had happened or follow the intruder’s footprints up the beach (which the villa staff helpfully raked away the following morning). He just said “I am here so now your villa is safe” and left. The General Manager told us that the island has comprehensive security with night watchmen stationed on the piers and patrols around the island paths. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t but we certainly never saw any security guards around the place during our week on the island. And if there are 24 hour patrols, why did it take so long for someone to come to our villa after we had called security? We warned a number of other guests at breakfast before we finally left and several said that they slept either with their villa doors open or unlocked. Be warned!!
Overall, I wouldn’t write the resort off but I am not sure I would recommend anyone trust it for their honeymoon as we did. I am sure a good number of the staff are real professionals and try their best – but not all do. Memorably, we found the breakfast staff mimicking our (apparently amusing) English accents one morning when they thought we weren’t looking. Perhaps they were just being witty or perhaps we should have been flattered that they thought they knew us well enough to tease us but at the time it certainly called to mind the unfortunate incident on another Maldive island when a couple renewing their wedding vows were abused by the hotel staff in a language they couldn’t understand. Either way it wasn’t very professional and it certainly wasn’t “intelligent luxury”. When you are paying US$00s a night and a normal dinner routinely costs US$250 for two you expect better.
When we got home our travel agent sent us a feedback form and, as the resort hadn’t told them about the intruder incident, they heard about it first from us. Our agent didn’t see the funny side of it and (on top of the room bill having been waived) they obtained further compensation for us. The offer was a refund for the room cost or a voucher for a week at another Soneva resort. Why Soneva imagined we might have been interested in going to another Soneva operated resort after our stay on Soneva Fushi I have no idea. We chose the refund.