About
A Maldives travel guide written from the water
aMaldives is an independent travel guide run by a Maldivian founder who splits time between Perth and the atolls. No PR agencies in the loop. No affiliate network picking what gets recommended. Just detailed, honest coverage of the 1,200-odd islands most people never get to see properly.
Meet the founder
Mohamed Fayaz
I'm Maldivian. I grew up around these atolls long before most of today's resorts existed, and I've spent the last two decades working on and around the water — in hospitality, in marine operations, and in yacht design.
Maldive Mosaique was a luxury liveaboard I designed and initiated. She belonged to Shore Investments Pvt Ltd, a family company owned by me, my younger brother and my late father. After I moved to Perth, my brother took on the day-to-day operation, and last year we sold her on. The years she spent working the atolls — guests crossing from one side of the country to the other, weeks at a time on house reefs, seaplanes, speedboats and dhonis — are a big part of why I know which resorts are genuinely worth the transfer, which dive sites deserve their reputation, and which ones don't.
I'm now in the middle of building Mosaique II — another luxury yacht, this time powered largely by renewable energy. That work is splitting my hours between Perth and the Maldives, and it's the other reason I spend so much time thinking about how people actually move around these islands.
I built aMaldives because every Maldives site I searched felt the same: recycled resort PR, scraped photos, and generic “best of” lists that read like someone had never set foot in the country. My readers are people spending real money on what is, for most of them, a once-in-a-lifetime trip. They deserve better information than that.
So that's what this site is: the resort briefings I wish existed when I started helping friends and clients plan their own trips.
Why aMaldives exists
The Maldives has roughly 170 resort islands, 26 tourist atolls and thousands of dive sites. Most travel guides cover the same dozen luxury names and ignore everything else. We think that's lazy, and it's also why so many travellers arrive having booked the wrong resort for the way they actually like to travel.
Our goal is to give you the detail you need to pick the right island the first time — whether that's a water villa at an ultra-luxury resort, a diving-focused all-inclusive, or a ten-dollar-a-night guesthouse room on a local island with a great reef two steps from the door.
What we cover
Everything you need to plan, book and actually enjoy a trip to the Maldives — in one place.
75+ resorts reviewed
Full profiles covering villa types, dining, house reef quality, transfer logistics and honest pros and cons.
Every tourist atoll
Atoll-by-atoll guides with seaplane and speedboat transfer times, dive highlights and the resorts that sit there.
Local islands, not just resorts
Guesthouse islands like Maafushi, Thulusdhoo, Fulidhoo and Hulhumalé covered on their own terms, for travellers on real budgets.
Diving & snorkelling
Dive sites, manta and whale-shark seasons, reef conditions and which resorts actually deliver for underwater travellers.
Getting there from anywhere
Flights from Australia, the UK, Europe, the US and Asia — and what the seaplane or speedboat transfer actually looks like at the other end.
Honest assessments
Pros and cons on every resort. We don't pretend every island is paradise. Some aren't worth the transfer.
How we stay independent
We make money two ways: affiliate commissions from booking partners (Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Stay22, Travelpayouts and similar) and occasional display advertising. If you click a “Check availability” button and book, the booking partner pays us a small commission from their margin — you pay the same price either way.
That model means we have no incentive to push you toward any specific resort. If two resorts in the same atoll are a realistic match for your trip, we'll tell you which one we think is better — even if it pays us less. If a resort has genuine problems, we say so in the “Room for improvement” section of the review, and we've left plenty of those in place despite the affiliate relationship.
Resorts cannot pay to be featured in our rankings. We don't accept press trips in exchange for positive coverage. Where we do publish a sponsored piece (rare), it is clearly marked. Read the full affiliate disclosure if you want the detailed version.
What you can expect from us
Editorially independent
Affiliate links pay our bills, but they don't decide what we recommend. If a resort is overpriced for what you get, we say so — commission or not.
Budget-inclusive
The Maldives isn't only for honeymooners with $15K to spend. We cover luxury water villas and $40-a-night guesthouses with the same level of detail.
Written by people who live here
Not rewritten press releases, not AI-scraped copy. Every resort write-up is informed by direct knowledge of the islands, atolls and logistics involved.
Questions? Corrections? Stories?
If you've stayed somewhere and our review doesn't match your experience, we want to hear about it. If you're a resort and something on your page is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it fast.