Ayada Maldives review: one of our favorite island stays

Context

We came back from our holiday at Ayada about a week ago and are really missing this beautiful island, This was our 6th holiday in the Maldives (first time at Ayada) and it certainly ranks as one of our favorite resorts. I'm going to try to give an overview of the transfer, rooms, beaches, food and reef as these are usually pretty important criteria people look at when selecting their resort in the Maldives.

Transfer

The transfer to this resort was probably the longest transfer we’ve had in the Maldives so far. We landed on the 8:15am Sri Lankan Flight but weren’t put on our flight to Kaadedhoo airport until 11am. We got sort of unlucky, as in the past we were always scheduled on the 9am flight to Kaadedhoo, but it didn’t seem to be scheduled that day so we had a longer wait. After arriving in Kaadedhoo there is about a 45-50 minute speedboat ride. Thankfully the ocean was as flat as a sheet for both our arrival and departure so it was smooth sailing but I can't imagine having to do this with choppy seas in the low season where I feel like it could take upwards of an hour and a half if its storming…

We probably reached the island at 2:30pm local time (1 hour ahead of Malé) so all in it took us around 4.5 hours between the when we sat down in the domestic airport lounge (around 9am) to when we arrived at the island. The journey was 100% worth if but definitely something to take in consideration as you can easily reach other islands either by speedboat or by seaplane in 1/4 or 1/2 the time.

Rooms

We were lucky enough to experience 3 different room types at Ayada: Sunset Beach Suite, Ocean Villa and Sunset Ocean Suite (we were upgraded to a SOS on our last night thanks to our wonderful butler, Mihad). I’ll preface this with saying that you can't really go wrong with booking any of the 3 room categories that we stayed in as they were all wonderful however they all vary vastly in price with the beach suite being the least expensive of the three options (by quite a margin).

Obviously, the nicest (and most expensive) of the three room categories is the Sunset Ocean Suite, there is no doubt about this. It was perfectly laid out and it was easily the nicest room we’ve stayed at in the Maldives to date. It has a very large living room with glass floor, a couch, a day bed and a very comfy chair. The bedroom and the bathroom have the exact same layout as the regular ocean villa and theyre very nice and spacious. The bathroom overlooks the the patio/pool and the windows/doors can fully be opened which we thought was a great feature. The shower and toilet area are also very creatively designed as they have a large window meaning that when you shower, you can somewhat see the ocean and sea life. The patio is extremely large and is comprised of 4 hammocks, a large private pool with jets (there are no jets in the regular ocean villa pool), 2 sun loungers and a sun bed which is in the shade for most of the day. There is also a very large 6 person table on the deck which is perfect if you want to order room service (which we did). The only “negative” thing about the SOS is that the reef can be somewhat far away if you don't get one of the villas at the end of the jetty (I'd say for optimal access to the reef you’d need (611-616). We were in SOS 604 and it was kind of far from the reef dropoff and not necessarily any more convenient than a beach villa would have been.

The ocean villa we stayed in was equally great albeit a bit smaller. It didn’t have a living room and only 1 hammock instead of 4 (first world problems, am I right?!). It also had 2 loungers and a sun bed although we didn’t find this sunbed as useful as it was in direct sunlight all day meaning that it got scorchingly hot and it wasn’t very pleasant to lay in it. The patio was also smaller in the ocean villa but nonetheless large enough for it to feel comfortable. Our Ocean Villa (531) was very close to the reef, much closer than our SOS was, however the views weren’t as great. The view from the Ocean villa was definitely our “least” favorite of our three views are the ocean wasn’t that milky Maldivian blue. This is not to say that the view was ugly, in fact it was far from that, but it certainly didn’t have the amazing colors that we experienced on the sunset side (or in other resorts in the Maldives). For closest access to the reef, I’d suggest the villas at the end of the two ocean villa jetties (527-533) and (515-520). We found the lagoon area by the ocean villas to be filled with coral bits and at high tide the water becomes very deep (more than 2 meters).

Finally, we also stayed in a sunset beach suite which was very nice. It was larger than our ocean villa but smaller than our SOS. The SBS had a large bedroom, step-down living area with 2 chairs, and a couch, and a patio with a 6-person table just like our SOS had. We felt that the pool in our SBS was larger than the pool in the ocean villa/SOS, but I can't confirm that with 100% as we. Never actually measured it, lol. The bathroom was beautiful with separate sinks, a larger shower (larger than in the ocean villa/SOS) an outdoor shower, and a bathtub. The outdoor shower area was very pretty with a lot of candles and foliage and some sand, too. The best feature of the SBS, however, was the VIEW. My goodness was the view wonderful. The beach area by the SBS is absolutely spectacular and is easily the most beautiful beach we have seen in the Maldives. The lagoon is 100% sand, no rocks or corals and has 100s of shades of blue. It was truly mesmerizing as you will see in the video I made.

A great feature that all three of the rooms shared was a very high quality bluetooth surround sound system. We loved relaxing in our villa or by the pool with the music playing and this is something that we haven’t seen in any of the 5 other resorts we’ve visited. Hopefully more newer resorts adopt this as its a great concept.

So, which one was our favorite of the three? Well, if money were no object, the sunset ocean suite would for sure win for all the reasons I mentioned above. However, at the time of booking, a SOS was literally double the price of a SBS and quite frankly we did not feel like it was worth that much more money. Especially because room requests aren’t always guaranteed and if you end up in the first view villas on the jetty the reef is a very far swim away and the people in the Sunset Lagoon suites will be able to see on your deck. After giving it some thought, If we were to go back to Ayada, we would most likely stay in a SBS. It was larger than the ocean villa and the views were spectacular. Yes, the reef is far, but its still accessible and nothing beats lounging in the pool with that beautiful view. The VFM for this room is almost unbeatable.

Beaches

The beaches at Ayada are stunning regardless of which section of beach your villa is in. However, the beaches on the sunset side we thought were the nicest. For the larger part of our holiday (and I'm not sure whether this is seasonal or we just happened to be there when the tide was low) the sandpit/sandbar was showing which made for some great foto ops as it really is marvelous. The beaches on the sunrise side are nice, but they aren’t totally coral free. All in all we think that Ayada probably has the best beaches we’ve seen in the Maldives.

Food

We ate all of our meals either at Zero Degrees (beach bar) or Magu (the buffet restaurant) as we were on half board. I’d say that overall the food at Ayada was good but not “amazing” like we’ve had in other 5* resorts in the Maldives. The buffet area is large, however not huge, and there are a few live cooking stations. Breakfast is essentially the same every day and they have a nice pressed juice bar that makes daily ‘boosters’ which were all delicious. They also had sushi every day which was very nice and we hadn’t seen this at many other resorts.

Lunch at Zero Degrees was also always good, albeit uneventful most of the time. We thought that the prices were very reasonable and not much different from prices here in the US, actually. Sandwiches were all in the 15-25 dollar range and entrees were 30+. However we were oftentimes still pretty stuffed from breakfast that we generally were pretty light on the food. We never spent more than 60 US (inclusive of tax) for the two of us, and this was with us getting a plate each with a drink.

Dinner at Magu was also always very good but never amazing or out of the ordinary, but I feel like this is expected from a buffet. We liked that the food wasn’t totally geared at the asian clientele like we found at other resorts in this atoll, and they had quite a few dishes that were pretty european. I think our favorite night was Roast Night (sunday) as they had all sorts of meats and sides which were all very good.

Service

The service (and this is with regards to service at restaurants only) was actually the most disappointing part of our visit, and I think that this is due to the fact that Ayada is one of the larger 5* resorts. As I mentioned before, we oftentimes were left waiting for several minutes (sometimes even 10 minutes) before we were even given our menus at zero degrees, and at Magu when we ordered the check at dinner, they were always so slow to bring it out. Once, we even had to ask them 3 times.. Which we found unacceptable given how expensive this resort is. The personnel was always nice, but none of the service every felt personalized. Again, I think that this is because Ayada is such a larger island but in comparison to smaller islands we’ve visited, where multiple servers greeted us by name and were super attentive at any given moment, we just didn’t think that the service here was up to that level. Again, it wouldn’t stop us from visiting as we aren’t fussy about service, but something that we would take into consideration for next time.

Reef

A good house reef is our top priority in booking a resort in the Maldives and although we had been to Gaafu Dhaalu twice already, the info about the reef at Ayada was very scarce up until a week prior to our arrival when Moriad visited the island and kept us all up to date!

I can say that the reef at Ayada was easily one of our favorite reefs the Maldives that we’ve snorkeled. I think that the most impressive (unexpected) part of the reef was just how much live coral there was in some sections.

We thought that the best part of the reef started right after the arrival jetty, around all the water villas, and by the pool area (specifically by the Ocean Villas). We loved how large the reef at Ayada was and in our 8 days there we weren’t able to explore all of it (this is with multiple hours of snorkeling per day).

The reef by the regular beach villas (which we only snorkeled one) was weaker from a coral point of view (there weren't many live corals there but the fish life was very good regardless).

Final verdict

Would we return to Ayada? The answer to that is probably no (at least not in the near future), but not because we didn’t like it, but rather because we are against re-visiting resorts. There are so many wonderful resorts in the Maldives that we haven't yet seen that are on our shortlist, and this was our third year in a row visiting Gaafu so we fancy a bit of a change.

However, if we were to visit Gaafu again in the future, we would definitely consider a split stay with a week here and a week at another resort in Gaafu that we haven't yet visited!