We stayed for 10 nights in the Beach Villa on the Ultimate Inclusions package for our 15th anniversary and had an amazing experience throughout our stay. The service was not "stuffy", which we prefer. The hotel staff across the various areas; restaurants, bar, dive centre, spa etc, were amazing. The service and our interaction we had with the Kandolhu team was fantastic, super helpful, hospitable and really really friendly. You can actually get to know them and have some great conversations. Huge shout out to a few of them... Elvira, Geraldine, Vita, Sinaan, Jiro, Pat, Mae and many others.
We loved our Beach Villa and where we were situated on the island. You have some fantastic views of the sunset. We did toy with the idea of upgrading to a water villa for a night or 2 to experience the novelty, but we just love the idea of just walking straight out to our part of the beach.
Highly recommend going with the Ultimate Inclusions package which we were on. You're not then concerned with what you're ordering and the bill. Plus the mini-bar is more than sufficiently stocked and replenished which is amazing. A nice little touch is the "sweet treats" that they leave for you in the evening as part of the turn down service.
We brought my own GoPro for recording video but I love the fact that they provide you with a GoPro and a waterproof case so you can take photos while you go out snorkelling or diving. Our provided GoPro came with a 4GB microSD card which is good enough for photos, but if you'd like to record video, recommend you bring your own higher capacity microSD card.
If you have slight interest in star gazing, make sure you bring a decent digital camera and lens so you can capture some shots of the Milky Way directly overhead on a clear night. We were in awe with how much you can see.
Even though we were there for 10 nights, there's so many restaurants with such a wide variety of high quality food and dishes, so you never get bored or feel like you're repeating the same menu. Additionally, some of the restaurants have special dish nights, such as "biryani" and "risotto" night, which also mixes things up and adds variety.
My wife has some allergies to certain foods, but this was never too much for the serving staff or chefs. They are so happy and willing to accomodate our requests. So if the drink or meal contained an allergen, they recommend alternatives or substitutes. What was incredible is we mentioned her allergies as soon as we arrived, and by dinner the day, the staff were already aware of this; what fantastic attention to detail! We were never concerned from that point on.
To sum up, we've been to some amazing places but we've never repeated the same place or resort. But this is the first place we would definitely come back to.
