Filitheyo Island Resort

Filitheyo failed miserably to live up to our expectations. It is quite an attractive island and is very well maintained. We stayed in a beach villa, but this description was stretching it a bit - we were so far away and had so many trees in front of us that we couldn't really see the sea. The villa itself was nice, but rather dark. The outside bathroom, fairly standard in the Maldives, was spacious.
The restaurant served vast quantities of excellent food and was the redeeming feature of the island. The waiting staff were appallingly bad – it was like being looked after by a bunch of work-shy hormonal 14 year olds. Central bar was quite nice, but far too small – there is another bar at the end of the island, but this too was staffed by the terminally disinterested. In fact, the ONLY thing that staff seemed to be interested in was getting you to sign for any drinks you had. If you are on an AI basis, you sign for their record keeping, but not normally before you’ve received your drinks. Any order larger than two drinks seemed to cause confusion and was so slow that we took to ordering two rounds at a time, just so we wouldn’t die of dehydration whilst we waited for the next order.
One night we, along with eight new friends, decided to go the beach barbecue with traditional entertainment. This was priced at $40 each, so we were expecting something a bit special. It was not. The barbecue consisted of a chef cooking a few bits of chicken and fish on a gas barbecue and you could then choose your accompaniments from a selection that certainly were not of the same standard as the main dining room. I’ll let them off the gas barbecue bit, as it was raining, but there was no effort in the meal at all. The waiting staff were very difficult and initially refused to let all ten of us sit together, even though we had told them that we would want to.
Having been to other Maldivian islands, we could see that the problem with this island was the management, who did not appear to want you to enjoy yourself. This attitude passes down to other levels of staff. We also were told of a number of incidents of beggars on the beach – these must either be members of staff or people who know members of staff – and “peeping toms”. We, and many other people, discussed all of these issues with the very friendly English speaking rep, who presented our feelings to the management. We learned that this was not the first time she had had these conversations, to no avail, with the managers, but it was the last, as she handed in her notice and left the island the same day as us.
Don’t go to Filitheyo if you want good service provided by pleasant people – the only waiter who smiled was the one having a fling with a Croatian lady guest!