Anantara Dhigu review: a lagoon-lover's island that falls short of five stars

Context

We spent 4 lovely nights at Anantara Dhigu this past September. We are seasoned Maldives travelers and have visited nearly 2 dozen properties over the last decade. We found Anantara to be a solid resort, but not quite deluxe enough to warrant a 5 rating; 4.5 would be more adequate based on our experience in Maldives. I have outlined what we liked and some areas of improvement…

What worked

1. Transfer: we arrived from Amilla Fushi and despite arriving at an “off hour”, Anantara did not have us wait in the speedboat lounge for other passengers to arrive. We essentially had a private transfer to ther resort, which was fantastic. Likewise, we were able to stay until after dinner since we had a 1020pm departure and were allowed to stay in our room until around 7pm. Just wonderful.

2. The sunset side lagoon: This was easily one of the best (if not the best) lagoons we’ve experienced in Maldives out of the 20+ islands we’ve had the chance to visit. It is sublime. Entirely sandy, no coral rubble, no sea grass… just pure perfection. I have only had a few, complete, jaw drop moments in Maldives when it comes to natural beauty, and this was certainly one of them.

I cannot stress enough how much better the sunset side is to the sunrise side, which has rough sand, and very poor views of Veli and Naladhu. You could not pay me to stay on the sunrise side, when the sunset side is so beautiful

3. Location: Despite dhigu being quite close to Malé, you still feel relatively secluded. The location is much better than, for example, Como Cocoa or Gili Lankanfushi where maafushi and Malé/paradise/other local islands are much more visible and intrusive. There is also very little noise pollution in terms of seaplane traffic and airliner traffic, which was a welcomed surprise.

4. Sea.Fire.Salt and Baan Huraa: these restaurants are very nicely located and offer amazing good. Baan Huraa has some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had and the quality of the food at SFS is fantastic and the portions are generous Plus the locations are unbeatable.. Lunch with the lagoon backdrop at SFS feels like a postcard.

Rooms and privacy

1. The rooms: sadly the rooms at dhigu were probably the weakest point of our stay, and what in my opinion take away at least half a star if not a full star from the overall star rating of the resort.

From a design standpoint they are fine (nothing spectacular but also not dated), but the density and privacy of these rooms is far far from 5 level. To give you an idea, the thatch from the roof of our villa (56) literally touched the thatch of villas 55 and 57. This was the case for most of the beach villas around the island. I have experienced much better spacing at entry level 4 properties that cost half as much. It is particularly sad that not much can be done here unless in the future the resort decides to reduce the overall number of rooms by 30-40% (which I am guessing will never happen!)

2. The vegetation on the sides of the sunset pool villas: I know that these rooms are newly refurbished rooms, but PLEASE do not leave the vegetation of these rooms as it is in current state. It is not really understandable to me how all surrounding vegetation was removed to build the pools, when in my opinion the resort could have just worked around the existing beautiful palm trees and bushes.

As of right now, there are zero trees that divde each of the sunset beach pool villas so all you see are these sad looking, relatively short wooden fences that quite frankly feel totally out of place. It almost feels like you are vacationing on half finished artificial resort, especially when you consider that the rest of the island is so well manicured and lovely. I would be very hesitant to book this room category again, unless more palm trees were added to beautify the deck area and make the atmosphere more private.

Reef and lagoon details

3. The reef: one thing that totally confused me was the reef and which parts of it guests are allowed to snorkel. I took the snorkel boat from the main island to the snorkel island and spoke to the lifeguard just to make sure I could snorkel as far out as I wanted, as long as I stayed along the drop-off (this is protocol at literally every other resort I’ve ben to n the Maldives). I made if clear I was a strong swimmer and told him to not be alarmed if he saw me go far out as I am very used to long snorkel outings even against the current. He seemed to agree…

I got in the water and saw quite a few fish even though, as expected, the coral was all dead. I swam for 5 minutes southwardly, turned around and saw the lifeguard on duty was quite literally freaking out, flagging me down, etc etc. and I wasn’t even in deep water or past the drop off! It seems that they aren’t used to snorkelers here. So while the reef is not terrible and something I would have liked to explore more of, I’m just not sure how much of it people are allowed to snorkel. It would be nice to have clearer guidelines on where guest are/are not allowed to snorkel, especially after speaking to the life guards on duty.

4. The hammock in the middle of the lagoon: this hammock, which nice in theory, takes way from the beauty of the lagoon and is superfluous. It also promotes “congregation” of people and influencers, and ruins what would otherwise be a totally unobstructed view.

Dining policy and water

5. HB policy and water: we had a bit of an unfortunate dining experience when dining at Aqua.. Another example of why this isn’t exactly a 5 property. One evening, we I wanted to order 3 courses (as allotted in our HB plan): a pizza, a chicken dish and a dessert. After placing my order, I was informed that this could not be accommodated since pizzas are not considered appetizers. I did not want to make a scene so I switched up my order but this was the first time I have ever been denied a flexible 3 course dinner at what is advertised to be a 5 property. In fact, at other resorts, the F&B department encourages ordering 2 appetizers + 1 main, or even 1 appetizer and 2 mains to accommodate whatever guests prefer. Here, since the pizza was not specifically under the “appetizer” section, it was denied. A bit silly, no? Especially since a pizza is far from what I would even consider a main and more closely resembles an appetizer.

This was somewhat rectified when we raised it in our mid-stay survey, but it should not have been an issue to begin with.

Moreover, house water is not served at lunch. Rather, you are forced to order either pellegrino or aqua panna at a lovely 12++ per bottle (or maybe 15, I can’t quite remember). That is quite a silly policy if you ask me. Hose water should be available at all meals, not just dinner!

Service and breakfast

6. Villa host service, despite being included in our villa, felt like a little bit of an afterthought. It certainly was not as personalized as villa service we have experienced at other properties (I.e., our VH was not present on departure, as one example of many).

7. The breakfast buffet/eating area felt a bit mass market and noisy since AD does cater to families. I also was not super impressed with the quality of the buffet as some of the dishes did not feel super fresh (especially after coming from Amilla which had one of the best breakfasts I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in Maldives). I wish they offered an alternate, ALC breakfast at SFS for those that want to enjoy a more peaceful ALC experience with a nicer setting.

Final verdict

Overall we had a really nice stay at Dhigu, and we would like to return one day, as we really enjoyed the lagoon. The only thing that would stop us is the vegetation around the villas, the overall density and consequently the VFM that feels a little bit iffy in some regards, especially when considering the main season pricing for the basic villas.