Gili Lankanfushi review: the second chance that changed my mind

Why I returned

If you’ve been following this forum for a few years, you probably know that Gili & I don’t exactly have the best history. However, I do believe in second chances, and Gili is so well loved by all my clients, so I decided to give good old Gili another shot after 5 and a half years, this time staying for a shorter stay in a Gili Lagoon Villa (which, in retrospect, is the villa we should’ve booked in the first place on our first visit given our preferences).

We landed in Malé bright and early to very sunny skies on the morning Etihad flight (I wish I’d known these were the last we’d see for the rest of our trip, would’ve savored them a bit more!!!) and were escorted almost immediately to Gili. After a 30-hour trip from Chicago, this was just what I needed.

Most of the time I (and I know many on here too) default to a speedboat resort on the second leg of the trip for an easier trip home, but there’s something to be said about the convenience of hopping onto a speedboat after such a long flight and being in your villa by 7am. 20 trips to the Maldives later and I’m still discovering new things…..

Since our very first “stay” at Gili in 2021, I’ve probably had a chance to visit 35+ additional islands and my preferences have definitely shifted. A couple of years ago I was overly fixated on location, views, and a perfect lagoon 360° around the entire island. And while those things are still important to me, with time I’ve also started to value other aspects of islands: the service, the food, the facilities, the quality and craftsmanship of the villas, to name a few.

The arrival and transfer

The boat ride to Gili is not my favorite one because, for the most part, you are passing by a bunch of skyscrapers, built-up resorts, dredge sites, or very industrial-looking islands that have little charm. However, no more than 20 minutes later, the Gili backdrop (and Villa Nautica… and Himmafushi, to be entirely accurate!) entered our view. We were greeted by a whole group of team members and were informed that our villa was already ready and that we could also have some breakfast if we wanted to, which was very welcome. Gili was operating at sub-40% occupancy, which was a bit of an outlier as the rest of the resorts we visited were all nearly full.

Lagoon Villa 44

We were whisked immediately away to Villa 44 by our butler, Naph. Villa 44 is the very first GLV, and is very charming: Soneva DNA seldom disappoints.

In my opinion, it does not quite compare with the newer villas at Jani (although others will undoubtedly argue that they prefer this one over Version 2 of this villa at Jani for the simplicity and shade), but it has some amazing design features like this covered outdoor living room, a nice rooftop, and a very large lower deck for tanning.

I think that for anyone who is looking for a nice lagoon, this is a wonderful room number (closely followed by 43) as it has the largest stretch of blue lagoon. We were lucky enough to have gotten there just a few days after they finished their yearly lagoon cleanup of seagrass, so the lagoon was 100% pristine, almost like they had planned it just for me LOL.

During our last stay I definitely did not remember this villa being this nice. I remember it feeling sparse (it does not) and having a lot of issues with privacy on my last visit (and to be clear, privacy is still IMO not really a thing at Gili. You have to embrace that at some point someone will probably see you naked, or at least in your underwear, between the open-air living room, the lower deck, and the rooftop)… but not having any neighbor to the right definitely helped.

Food

Food was excellent across the board. The buffet breakfast spread is not huge, but they do have some nice salads and I also loved that they had beef carpaccio for breakfast. There is a live cooking station that rotates daily. Dinner was equally fantastic at both by the sea (sushi was amazing) and also at the buffet - the indian spice route was fantastic. The only disappointing meal we had was a shrimp salad for lunch… the shrimp, despite having a really nice appearance, was super tough and tasted very bland.

Lagoon, seagrass and island notes

In terms of areas of improvement…. I will probably die on this hill but I still think that the back lagoon can definitely (!!!) make use of some large-scale seagrass cleanup, especially behind the spa and in front of the first 2/3 villa suites on all sides of the jetty so that at least you can take a dip on this side of the island without walking on the other side.

The seagrass here is still very thick and very prevalent and, to me, does not match the idea of what a Maldivian lagoon should look like, but that’s a me issue. I would say if I were to book a Villa Suite, I’d definitely request 35-37 in first place, followed by 8, 9, 10, and 11, as the seagrass in this area is not quite as thick, you have partial sunset views, and the outlook onto the back of the Crusoes is a very iconic view.

For anyone looking to book a Crusoe Villa… the Sunset Crusoes are currently out of commission (I did not get a clear date on when they'd re open) and the general future of the 7 Crusoes in genral  is a bit unsure at the moment. There are talks of potentially adding pools to the Island View Crusoes to make them more appealing, as they are having difficulty filling them because of the views, so let’s see what’s to come.

The reef

Finally a couple of words on the reef - I would say that calling this a proper reef is a stretch (I would say its mostly rocks), BUT there was a good amount of sea life like sharks, rays, turtles, schools of fish and the reef was relatively easy to access from V44, so another reason to stay on jetty 3!

Service and final verdict

I wanted to end this recap with what really stood out to me the most about Gili, which was the service.

I’ve been lucky enough to visit places in the Maldives that are considered much more “luxe” than Gili and cost 3 times as much, but none of these places have had the level of friendly, down-to-earth, relaxed, but also incredibly personalized service that Gili has. Every single staff member knew our name from day 1. The team is able to craft such a special, amazing atmosphere that makes you feel right at home even if its your first time here

I can’t wait to return (but for me, only in a lagoon villa)