CITAZIONE
We booked a 10-night stay at Jumeirah Vittaveli, checking-in January 27. This was our 9th trip to Maldives, previous vacations included Constance Halaveli, Four Seasons Landaa Giravaaru, One&Only Reethi Rah twice, Taj Exotica, among others. Not to brag about it, just to say we have a fair experience of high end resorts in Maldives, and that we can benchmark a newcomer on the market place.
We had very high expectations, after the web site pictures, and the TA reviews. Damn sure we had ; this is a hell of a costly vacation, but then, we know about it.
We were the first out of the aircraft, and among the first to get our luggage, so we exited in the outside hall early -as early as we could after a 2 hour delay in Abu Dhabi. The Jumeirah staff was there, and wisked us to the waiting speedboat. Off we were, basically 5 minutes after walking through customs.
Welcome at the jetty by staff and a dancing group of musicians. Quick tour of the island on a buggy, and in-room check-in. Welcome amenity of a bottle of champagne (not a known brand) and fruit basket.
Villas are not far from each other ; yet they are very private, and you can't hear/see anything from your neighbours.
VILLA : We were assigned Beach Villa 30, on the sunset side. It sits 10 meters away from your stretch of beach, like any other, but is especially private, shielded with shrubs from the occasional passer by. Honestly said, the villa is nothing short of spectacular. Entrance to private garden through double doors on the side. Main entrance in the middle of the length. Extensive use of timber, in the ceilings, on the floor, in the furniture, imported from Indonesia or so we were told. The feel is highly qualitative. Plenty of natural light from 3 sides of the main room. The pictures do not make it justice.
Beautiful open-air bathroom, of which I am not a big fan personnally. The execution is faultless, extremely tasteful ; it includes high end fixtures, timber flooring, toilet in a separate room slightly air conditionned and marble clad (not polished, very nice), one huge shower with the same marble, one large bath tub in the open, which we did not use, another shower in the open. Large supplies of toiletries, although they are not from Penhaligon's, as pictured on the web site, but a mix from Gilchrist & Soames and Antica Pharmacista (same company), a tad more mainstream.
The highlight of the villa is the private infinity swimming pool, probably the largest we have experienced ourselves in the Maldives (not a mere plunge pool, like in other places). 1,2 meter deep, it is L shaped, and wraps around the villa, taking one third of the smallest length (7 meters) , and all of the built length (20 meters). Beautiful dark tiles, and you can access down steps either from the front of the villa or from the bathroom. You can really dive in there, with reasonable care for depth, and swim. It is gorgeous, all I can say about it. We loved it. At the front also sits a large sala, which we basically did not use, and 2 loungers on the beach, along with a large square umbrella.
Electricity is somewhat complicated to work out; it is advertised as being customizabe, which it is not. There are a number of pre set master switches, providing of number of moods, including in areas you can't see while operating them. On top of it, there are individual switches. We complained once that some parts did not work, then twice, then three times : we found out after three days that they did work, only through one master switch only, whose ambiance we did not like, but no one cared to explain about it, and I looked like an idiot -not that anybody even hinted about it. Nice touches include a night light under the bed, setting on as soon as you step on the floor.
Air conditionning is not efficient. We like it cold at night. It hardly reached 20° in the morning ; we asked for improvements, and even though they tried, the system is probably undersized for the cubic volume in the room, and the overall atmosphere ; one night we even went to bed with 26°, after blowing for several hours, and suddenly it started cooling down.
The bedding is, well, nothing short of out of this world. Probably the best we have ever had, and boy, have we slept around ... !
HOUSEKEEPING does a good job, once they understand what you expect from them. A simple request of toiletries in both shower stalls took 2 days to get straight. Another simple one of 4 bath towels at all times took 3 days ; then sometimes we got more, sometimes we got a mix of beach towels. Good thing is they always turned up as soon as we were out for breakfast or diving, and NEVER did we return to an unattended bedroom. Generous supplies of water and Nespresso capsules.
PATRONS : when we turned up, we found ourselves kind of overwhelmed in a crowd of people right out of the PRC, and my guess would be mainland China, not Hong Kong. What their job could be I still wonder ; with the price tags here, they cannot be fishmongers, although they certainly looked, sounded and behaved like they were right out of the fish market. There was a display of untravelled behavour, with too much of too new money, including not speaking a single word of english, chainsmoking at any moment, yelling at each other across the restaurant, kids carrying screaming toys while running around, raiding the buffet like they had never seen one (and that might well have been the case), spitting on the bach. This left us deeply worrying about the rest of the stay, only cheered up by the Maldivian staff, who assured they would be leaving soon, and God, did they look relieved, too. And indeed they left, leaving the floor to a mixed crowd of behaved people from Europe (German, Swiss, UK) and the Middle East (Bahrain, Dubai).
RESTAURANTS : overall the food is good, tasty, well prepared and cooked. My biggest regret is that the menus are not differentiated enough, apart from different levels of sophistication.
MU on the beach serves basic fares of BBQed surf and turf. Samsara, the main restaurant serves more elaborates fares. Fenesse serves haute cuisine. But all are basically European by inspiration. We would have hoped for one definitely asian oriented, and one with a middle east flare (even more so with a hotel operated by a Dubai company). They all shared an extravagant pricing policy. Saying that they were all vastly overpriced would not even be close to an understatement. Our first dinner in the main restaurant saw my jaw drop. Next evening in Finesse, the price tags gave me vertigo. This is when everything was available, which was rarely the case ; someone should work out the supply chain, we have never seen such a poor execution before.
To be perfectly clear, we know what to expect in that kind of place. We will not complain about a $8 Coke or a $10 bottle of Evian. This is 'normal'. What I resent, is a 50 to 70% difference over O&O Reethi Rah (admittedly one of the best / most expensive resorts worldwide) last year. I feel cheeted, and trapped. This is beyond comprehension, and has no justification whatsoever. Lobster is $170 + service + tax + side ! Caprese salad $30++, anyone ? Raise your hands for Baby Chicken +++ at $60. Ribeye, even Wagyu, $125+++ . Caesar salad with prawns is a $36++ starter. 3 ricotta raviolis at $40. This might be the consequence of a strategic decision : being the most expensive food in the Maldives. Then we should know before. More likely someone took a raincheck on the homework, and forgot to benchmark competition. Oups !
Breakfast is OK on day one. Boring on day 2. And from then on a let down. Apart from a huge selection of dried fruits (big deal), F&B cannot be proud of the offer on display. Cold cuts are ridiculous (never saw salami, ham, bacon). No live cooking station for eggs : you can order, but it takes 10 to 20 minutes to turn up. Orange juice not available every day (out of oranges, can you believe that ?). Croissants sometimes. Hot dishes wait in boxes, but they are watery and band. No dim sum, no sushi, no middle east mezze. Fresh fruits OK, but never saw a mango, not to mention berries. To make a long story short, extremely limited selection, never changing : the worst buffet breakfast in 9 trips to Maldives, I am sorry to be positive about that.
Service in restaurants throughout is very good, especially for a resort which started business 5 weeks earlier. Nice and smiling as always, which should be a prerequisite, but extremely well trained, and this made a world of difference.
DIVING : we dived a lot. Great crew on the boat, brand new equipment, and excellent diving guides (Soji, Razy). We had excellent tailor made dives, especially considering how close to Male, and crowded the atoll is. Crowded is not exactly the right word, though ... We were only missing a plate of fruits and biscuits, along with hot drinks,, which are usual at the end of a dive anywhere. The crew had the initiative to slice coconuts for us ; additional reason to tip them, which we would have done anyway.
SPA : we did not do any. Probably no more in the mood to spend any further than we were obliged to.
CONs : being a very new resort, we expected some teething problem. The point is one you call somebody attention to them, you would expect them to be fixed. It happened, eventually. Communication seems to be the issue ; you talk to someone, and 30 minutes later if nothing had happened, you call the same number and speak to someone else, and have to explain all over again. At a junior level, the staff do not seem to communicate. And they do not seem to take a lot of initiative.
The magician name in such case is Ian Phillips, resident manager. You give him a word, and he takes care of it. But you have to speak to him personnally, otherwise, if you ask whomever you are talking to over the phone to let him know, well, he will never know. This is finally easy, as Ian seems to be roaming the island a great deal of time. When he realized we were getting upset by the lack of attention and follow up, he took it personally to follow up on us. He works wonders ...
- ... unlike the GM. Now, this a character. He wrote the welcome introduction in the in-room documentation, and probably thought he had done more than his share. He devotes his time in his very own villa, the only one with a palatial entrance, and no number on the gate. The only times he is to be seen, is walking his way at huge paces to the restaurants, wearing inadequate outfits (white bermuda suits, replete with puffed handkerchief in breast pocket, carrying loafers in his hand, think Kennedy caricature at Kennebunkport in the 60s). There, he makes a bee-line to his friends table, ignoring bluntly any guest, and barely waits to be seated before grabbing the wine-list, chainsmoking chinese style, bragging at the top of his lungs how he made it to the L.A. Times, and I am only quoting a tiny bit of his fascinating conversations, heard from our table on the beach at a 20-meter distance, on a windy evening. This guy is an insult to anyone working hard on the island, and probably did not grasp what anything was about the hospitality industry. This is the biggest CON of all.
- Some works were still going on on the island (Presidential Villa, Lagoon Villas), resulting in drilling and hammering noises, unacceptable at these price tags. Honesty has it, when I pointed them out, they stopped ; but they will have to resume at some point.
- Some items had not been delivered to the island yet : we never got any matches, the sleepers we had after requesting them were right out of the Dubai properties (fairy tale blue with gold embroidery). No dish soap in the bathroom. No stationary.
- The DVD reader we requested was the wrong zone, and took some time to be fixed. They had no idea about that.
- We had issues with the swimming pool, which took 1.5 days to be fixed.
- One bulb failed one day and was never replaced, eventhough someone came up to check it.
- Some furniture was not the one pictured in any documentation, clearly a temporary one (no rocking chair outside). No curtains outside on the lanai or in the bahroom ; the rails are there note the drapes.
- Flowers in the room on day 1 were never replenished. No flower in the bathroom, ever. Same for fruits.
- No turndown amenity : bookmark, weather forecasts, activity bulletin, poem, nothing. And for the turndown food, we had some only three nights out of ten. Two of which were fishballs with ketchup, and vegetable samosa with ketchup. Isn't this yummy ?
- No GM party (you bet) : we were invited one night to a cocktail party for the launch of the new restaurant, and that's where we met the resident manager.
- No cold towels anywhere when arriving in restaurants.
- In the public bathrooms, no towels ; only boxes of tissues.
These are small details obviously. But when you are shelling out south of 20.000€ for a vacation, you expect every detail to be perfect.
Special mention to Prita, who went out of his way to make the difference; eventhough he is probably not at the top of the hierarchy, he has a full understanding of what service means. One example : he would bring us at the beach a full print out of French papers, and not just once.
Honesty has it, they more than adequately compensated for the sum of inconveniences. For the pool, they sent champagne and fruits and chocolates to the room. A substantial compensation was volunteered on the F&B invoice. They also comped the villa day use; it obviously made up for parts of it.
All in all, I am confident they will fix whatever comes up. This is a very good place, not an outstanding one, yet.