Soneva Fushi review: an exceptional island with clear room to improve

Context

We spent 7 nights at Soneva Fushi in mid July as part of a split stay itinerary with another resort in Baa atoll. Between day trips and weeklong stays, soneva is approximately the 25th resort island that we have visited in the Maldives over the last 9 years. I can say that our stay at fushi was overall outstanding despite some areas of improvement that require attention. I've outlined what we loved, what needs to be improved, and what in my opinion one needs to be mindful of prior to booking a stay at fushi:

Areas of excellence

(1) the island. Soneva Fushi is one of the few (potentially only) islands in the Maldives that we have visited the has a proper soul. This is not your dainty & cutesy little island that you can walk around in 5 minutes (in fact, I don't suggest you walk around as the pathways inside the island are much more conducive to biking than they are to walking). You can tell that this island has a history, has been lived in, and has been and continues to be loved. The vegetation everywhere is remarkable and you really feel like you are in a tropical jungle paradise. It is easily the most beautiful island I’ve been to in the Maldives.

(2) the sunrise beaches. I was a bit skeptical of the beaches at fushi prior to visiting but this “skepticalness” ended up being totally unfounded. The beaches at soneva are wonderful, especially on the sunrise side. During our stay, we found that there was hardly any erosion anywhere on the island, and especially on the sunrise side which benefitted from some of the most expansive and fully sandy beaches I've come across in the Maldives. The color of the water is a stunning baby blue and the seafloor is free from any rubble. I do not think that soneva has the BEST beaches or lagoon in the Maldives (it is not comparable to even some less expensive places such as conrad or como cocoa, for example, which have much more expansive lagoons and beaches), but with so many of the new 6 islands in the Maldives resorting to either tons of groynes or artificialness all together, soneva probably offers some of the best beaches in the 6 segment.

(3) the design. A big reason we decided to visit Soneva Fushi was our love for their ex-sister property Six Senses Laamu which we have visited twice. Everyone told us that fushi was the “bigger & better” version of six senses in terms of design. And nothing to deny here! The design at Soneva Fushi is captivating and just more evolved than at six senses. There have been quite a few resort chains that have tried to emulate / copy what eva has been able to design but none have successfully been able to do so. Every corner of the island felt take - almost fairytale-like. That is the best word I can use to describe the design here. It is - by far - my favorite design of any hotel chain the Maldives and realistically probably in the entire world too.

(4) the villa. This might be a hot take since not everyone loves rustic, but I truly believe Soneva Fushi has the best villas in the Maldives. They are magical in every way. We stayed in a sunrise facing crusoe suite (#22) and it is an amazing hard product with an incredibly scenic bathroom. Everything everyone else has written about this villa is true so I will not bore you with minute deatails. I will, however, say that not all villas in this category are created equal and I would avoid, if you can, 21 & 22, since they are objectively less private than any of the other crusoe suites. Since we were given a comp. Upgrade to this room, 22 fit our needs just fine, however if I were paying rack rates I would push for something like 16, 17, or 30. All rooms at soneva are different from each other (e.g., 30 is super private and set back, whereas 16 and 17 have much larger pools, bathrooms, outdoor deck area, and more vegetation…. But all these villas, including 21 and 22, are all the same price). So definitely get the best bang for your buck by doing your research and selecting the room that works best for you.

We also had a chance to spend a few hours taking pictures in the overwater villas and, again, just no words. The villas are totally amazing and more like mansions than anything else. I do think that Soneva Fushi needs to be experienced on land and therefore would not recommend staying overwater, but it’s hard to deny that these rooms are nothing short of magnificent!

(5) our barefoot guardian, anna. Anna was one of the sweetest and kindest butlers we have ever had in the Maldives. She was always super responsive on WhatsApp and on our last night organized a very special table for us at fresh in the graden. She is a huge asset to the team and a wonderful barefoot guardian. Thanks anna for making our holiday so special!

(6) the food (especially fresh in the garden). The food at fushi is of a very high standard. We had a chance to dine everywhere and we did not have a bad experience at any of the restaurants. The service was always of a very high standard (shoutout to teddy at fresh in the garden at kombucha k at shades of green for making our dining experiences so wonderful). Moreover, we loved that the HB at fushi is FULLY dine around with no credit limitations at most restaurants. And when there is a credit, that credit is over $200pp so you can actually enjoy a nice meal even at out of the sea for example.

The food rooms (chocolate, cheese, cold cut, ice cream, etc.) are also a huge asset for guests. We went to these rooms multiple times per day and they are so well stocked. They effectively make the need for full board negligible (that is, as long as you are ok eating said things for lunch which we were).

Areas of improvement

(1) the reservations team (apologies if this long but I really need to highlight just how much improvement this team needs). If I had to give soneva just one piece of feedback, this would be it. The reservations team at Soneva Fushi might be the most disappointing team I've come across in the Maldives and especially in relation to how much a stay at Soneva Fushi costs. This is a big issue since they were my first point of contact at soneva and led to some pretty disappointing interactions. Let me give you 3 examples of where the team really acted below my expectations which admittedly were not high to begin with as I have yet to find an “excellent” reservations team in the Maldives… but this was particularly bad:

- when I had booked our stay back in october 2022, I inquired about the cost to upgrade from a sunset facing crusoe villa to a sunrise facing crusoe suite. As a first price, the team proposed a completely unreasonable $1,000 p/n surcharge to upgrade from the crusoe villa to the crusoe suite. This was particularly unreasonable as we were contemplating visiting fushi just last year in the 2022 low season, and the price we were quoted at the time(by the same person, BTW) a much reasonable $250 p/n. After an unnecessary amount of back and forth, the team so graciously offered to compromise on $500 a night (despite 7 out of 7 crusoe suites still available at the time of request). When I contested this again, the response of the team leader was “Please note that a special exception I might have made last year may not be valid for all future requests”… I'm sorry but what kind of a response is that especially since it’s not like they were low on inventory?!? It felt like negotiating at the flea market so I just dropped it as clearly they were not interested. The team did grant us an upgrade on arrival, but I presume this was more due to the fact that they are not selling the room category that we originally booked more than (Charles the GM mentioned that the crusoe villas and Soneva Fushi villa suites are out of commission currently)!

- in november of 2022, the Maldives government decided to increase the GST from 12% to 16% for all 2023 stays. We come to the Maldives A LOT and in 2023 alone we will visit 8 resorts. Admittedly each resort handled this GST increase differently - some resorts generously decided to absorb the cost on behalf of their guests (not soneva), while others did not and gave the customer the option to either take on the cost OR pre pay for their stay by EOY to avoid the increase. Whether passing it onto the consumer was the right or wrong thing to do, those that passed it on emailed me with several weeks of advance notice so that I could get the payment sorted out. Soneva, on the other hand, sent me an email on the 24th of december demanding payment by the 29th of december in order to keep the booking at our current price (that's 5 business days during a week where nobody works). At the time I was on vacation abroad with my family, with limited access to wifi and phone. I was planning on doing a wire transfer but my bank in my home country was unwilling to process the payment in due time given the holiday period. After an unnecessary amount of emails and stress, the team agreed to settle and absorb the cost on our behalf but the emails the team sent came thru with such sense of entitlement and lack of empathy that I nearly canceled my holiday here altogether. The cherry on top is that at one point they stopped responding since most of the team was on vacation for the holidays (go figure!!!!).

- when we arrived on the island, the res team had no record of the castaway picnic which was included as part of our booking. Thankfully, I still had the email excerpt of where they had committed to including the castaway picnic otherwise I do not think they would have honored it since anna informed us that the team did not have any of this on file… poor organization….

As you can see, overall really poor (and FYI I would have rated this as poor even if staying at a 3* property which fushi is clearly not). THANKFULLY, this is a stark comparison to the customer service that one actually experiences on the island. So my advice to management… please check up on your reservations team and improve your communication to your clients…

(2) staff handling loud families. I know this is a bit of a touchy subject as I was also a child once and I understand that children are full of energy. However, during our stay, there were certain families that repeatedly acted in a way that was just a disruption for so many people. During one of the buffet nights, there were hoards of children running around chasing crabs in the sand disturbing many other guests and couples who were I can only imagine hoping to dine in peace. On several mornings, we had to leave breakfast early because families were being so loud (one day the entire family started screaming and imitating the noise of the crows and the staff members did not intervene or stop them). After bringing it to the teams attention they were mindful about where they seated us, but really, this should not be happening in the first place at a resort like soneva where the ethos is all around tranquility and being grounded with nature and relaxation (the team takes your shoes off as soon as you arrive for a reason!).

(3) the mandatory 2x weekly buffets. I don't believe that any guest coming to soneva is paying 1-2k per night on the low end to be forced to eat at a buffet twice a week. I understand that in villa dining is an alternative to the buffet, but I personally also do not come all the way to the Maldives to eat in my villa especially when soneva has some of the most scenic restaurants I've ever seen. Further, I spoke to several employees who agree that buffets night are utter chaos and are just a pain to set up and orchestrate. So why does soneva keep doing them or forcing them if quite a few people done enjoy them?

(4) crusoe suite density. If soneva decides to build more crusoe suites especially on the sunset side, these suites should be built further apart from one another. While I loved the villa itself, the positioning of the villas is so very close to each other especially in comparison to some of the older, more historic one bedroom villas that exist on the island. So much of the island remains undeveloped it seems a bit counterintuitive to sandwich the suites so close to one another………

Points to know before booking

(1) the sunset side. Eydhafushi is unfortunately forever going to be a problem for anyone seeking total seclusion. While it is not the most unsightly local island I have come across in the Maldives (himaafushi at gili or maafushi at cocoa are much worse, IMO), it is the most intrusive one I have come across that is not in the Malé atolls. This is an important distinction to make because soneva is a seaplane flight from Malé, which entails more effort to get to and with this extra effort lots of people might expect for the resort to be totally secluded. Not the case here at all.

I think that while this is not fully under the control of soneva, I am sure that soneva has some influence with how “aesthetically pleasing” eydhafushi might be when looking onto it from the sunset side & out of the blue. This includes speaking to the city council and potentially suggest planting more palm trees and vegetation on the side of eydhafushi that faces soneva so that rooms that face the sunset side do not feel like they are staring at a small city with tons of lights at night (yes, you can see car lights moving as well).

(2) ongoing construction. Soneva is always evolving so at any given time there there will be a lot of construction (especially on the sunrise side these days). They have demolished the few legacy Soneva Fushi villas that remained on the sunrise side and are in the process of building some mega 6-8 bed mansions as part of the villa ownership program. This construction, in our case, did not impact the tranquility of our stay, however there is a lot of “movement” (for lack of a better term) of staff members and building materials all around the island. You also do hear the occasional hammer or electric tool when walking around, but not in the villas (or that was the case in our experience at least).

(3) soneva is expensive. I know this is one of the top properties in the Maldives, but some things are just really unreasonably priced (like 3 pieces of sushi at out of the blue for 40++ if not on HB… as one example of many). Or house water at 12++ per bottle when you’re already paying at least 1.5k p/n to be there. It can feel a bit money-grabby at times. And soneva is only going to get more expensive moving forward since the entry level crusoe villas and Soneva Fushi villa suites are no longer going to be sold, making the buy in price for soneva somewhere around $12-14k per week in low season, assuming they use the same pricing structure as this year for the crusoe suites. We loved our stay but I am not sure we loved it so much to commit to a 5-figure low season 7 night stay each year so TBD as to when we will ultimately return in the short run.

Final verdict

Overall……. Despite what might seem like quite a few areas of improvement, I can say that soneva is one of the best places we have stayed in the Maldives. It if were slightly more affordable, it is a resort that we would 100% come back to year over year or even on every visit to the Maldives. Unfortunately (or fortunately!) we visit several islands per year, so we need to budget accordingly and not every year will have room for soneva.

Soneva is an island that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for a relaxed 5* experience as it encompasses everything that the Maldives should be - understated but luxurious and most importantly NATURAL. For those seeking a once in a lifetime holiday - book this place, you won't be disappointed.