Komandoo Island Resort & Spa — Hotel in Faadhippolhu

We have returned home and are looking back on our eighth fabulous visit and superb holiday on Komandoo with the fantastic champions, and we can’t recommend it enough.|We were met off the seaplane by Madhah and Amar and then by Alex, in reception. Madhah is currently looking after Komandoo. The greeting is something we always look forward to.|The island itself is beautiful, with gardens which get better each trip – there have been improvements since our last visit a year ago. The green ladies and garden champions do a fantastic job.|This time we stayed in an ocean jacuzzi water villa. We were initially looked after by Ahmed, with a lovely “welcome home” bed decoration on arrival. We were then looked after by Ibrahim who created a number of bed decorations including a beautiful one on our anniversary and our last day - we cannot thank them enough for keeping our room cleaned to a high standard.|The snorkelling is a highlight for us, and it didn’t disappoint. The reef is starting to show some coral re-growth, which is very encouraging. Amongst the many things we saw were moray eels, lion fish, sharks, turtles (of course), and several beautiful eagle rays, as well as a guitar ray and ornate eagle ray. |The executive chef, Alex, continues to improve the already excellent food, in both Aqua and Falhu restaurants. It is worth noting that the chefs won a number of international awards (Lily International Food and Hospitality Asia Maldives 2025). His passion, enthusiasm, skill and ideas will continue to further enhance the overall dining experience.|We dined in Aqua several times, as part of the all-inclusive, which included our anniversary, when Alex and his chef cooked us an amazing meal.|Most of our meals were in the buffet restaurant Falhu. The chefs are superb - Kumar, Arrikumar, Rajan, Godson and others. The live cooking station and barbecue are always good. We were looked after by Jumaan and Wahhab in the restaurant, as well as Riza, Asim, Leem, Dickshana and others, all a credit to the champions.|And then there is the wonderful Amarjith. He is always keen to ensure that guests are well looked after, and genuinely cares that they are. He looked after us so well during our holiday. Thank you Amar!|There are two bars. Thundi, the sunset bar, is a great place to watch the sunsets, and often has live entertainment.|Kandu, the main bar, is a very relaxing place to sit. The evening entertainment is low key - we love Fazeel on a Sunday evening, with his singing, saxophone and keyboard playing. A big thank you to him for entertaining us, and playing our favourite songs. Hope we see you again soon. Friday evening is the Maldivian cultural night, performed by the champions in their own time, when they perform traditional music and dancing. We had a great time, joining in every week. Thank you to all, especially Jumaan for his singing, and Sanwar and Leem for their energetic dancing. One of the bar champions, Susantha or as we call him DJS entertained us with a DJ night mixing the music very skillfully, we had a great time dancing.|The champions in the bar deserve a special mention. They also serve the lovely infinity pool, which we used quite often. So many have become friends over the years - thank you to Shimal, Sanwar, Vipin, Susantha, Biji, Santhosh, Dipendra.|Duniye Spa is always a treat and my wife had a number of fabulous treatments. I would like to thank Suparti for looking after her so well.|There are many champions at different levels behind the scenes who don’t always get a mention, and they all do an amazing job helping to make our holiday so fantastic, including, Senthil, Anoop, Mohamed, Bishan and many more.|We were lucky enough to meet up with Solah and Lisa, during our visit.|Komandoo is fortunate in having Madhah managing the island. We hope he will continue to enhance what is to us a beautiful paradise island.|There are a number of experiences on offer including fruit carving, which we had great fun joining in with, expertly tutored by Mahesh.|I’m sure there are things we have missed, so just want to reiterate that each and every one of the champions deserves credit - they all contribute to our holiday! We were very privileged to meet many more of them on this trip.|Many of them got up early to come and say goodbye to us on the jetty, so thank you to everyone.|Can’t wait for the next...

We just returned from a ten night stay at Komandoo and it was outstanding. Easily the best holiday my wife and I have been on.

Rooms We stayed in the Eagle Ray sea villas, which are those cool ones you see in the fancy photos with your own staircase directly into the sea. The rooms are well appointed, the bed is super-comfy (first time the pillows on a holiday have been actually good!) and the setting is just out of this world. The sea villas are situated within the lagoon of the island with almost direct access to the surrounding reef, making it awesome for snorkeling.

Food We were full board rather than all inclusive (more on that in a minute) and meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were served in the buffet restaurant. The quality and variety was such that we never once felt tempted to eat at the a la carte restaurant, Aqua, while we were there. Every night was themed (Turkish, BBQ, Italian, Maldivian etc) and the quality of everything was top notch.

Facilities I'm not one for sitting around on sun loungers or on the beach, but this was different. The island has a pool, which is largely superfluous when the surrounding ocean is like bath water anyway, a watersports centre with kayaks, windsurfing and paddleboarding gear or even catamarans. There's also an on-site dive centre run by ProDivers, which operates a range of daily activities like snorkeling tours and training - most notably the scuba diving, which I tried for the very first time. The instructors are awesome, very friendly and I felt safe and looked after the whole time.

For diving, we went onto the Komandoo reef itself, which is superb, and also onto two other nearby reefs which are equally impressive and exciting. I'll be back to do my full PADI next time!

Staff Super friendly and accommodating. Nice welcomes every day, if you need anything they'll all go out of their way to help you, whether it's the hard working groundkeeping staff raking the sands every day or the receptionists organising everything for your stay.

Full Board vs All Inclusive Before going we did some rudimentary maths to work out whether AI was worth it for us. We are not the biggest drinkers in the world, so just for the added alcohol it didn't necessarily seem worth it, but the cost of drinks in the Maldives is higher than normal (everything thas to be shipped in all the time!), so it was worth checking. The cost difference was about £600 per person between FB and AI. Allowing a couple of drinks each per day for my wife and I, it was going to be roughly £700 total... so we chose to go full board.

By the time we checked out and settled our bill, we had definitely saved money over getting All Inclusive upgrades. Just for info, I'd have maybe a couple of draft beers per day and my wife would have a cocktail (by the end of the stay we were bothing having a couple of the fun tiki cocktails in the evenings though). The calculations will be different for everyone, but if you're not a heavy drinker then it's worth checking. It would keep things easier, but may well save you money to go Full Board instead. The bar prices are all available on the Komandoo website so you can check...

This was our 4th visit to this wonderful island paradise. Booked through Travelbag and included in the price we paid was a free transfer using the domestic flight.|We took the direct flight with BA from Heathrow which got us to Male for approximately 0900hrs. Met by the Komandoo representative we were told to report back at 1030 and taken to the domestic terminal, about a 2 minute walk. The flight was at mid-day and took roughly 20 minutes. After a short wait for our luggage we were escorted to our transport, a speedboat which whisked us off to Komandoo...we were on the island for 1410hrs, island time, and taken straight to lunch.|Our island host, Haazim was our room boy when we stayed last year. After finalising check in details he took us to our room, Turtle05, on the sunset side of the island. We have always stayed on sunrise side so thought we would mix it up a bit this year.|Our room boy this year was Ath-Hur, he was our invisible magician; cleaning our room whilst we were at meals and also providing some of the best towel art we have seen...!|At meal times we were greeted by the ever smiling, ever happy Leem and Dickshana, our waiter was Asim who ensured we kept hydrated and knew our drinks of choice after the first couple of days. He was also one of the waiters at Aqua so we had a different waiter on each evening, except on a Monday.|Food at all meal times was excellent... such a wide choice and so very well presented. Alex, you have a great team that you must be so very proud of. Kumar, thank you for your delicious omelettes, Naren, your naan breads are the best we have EVER had anywhere, Godson and Rajan, the food at Aqua is amazing, such a beautiful menu and presented so beautifully. Riza, Yousef, Wahab and the newly promoted Kaleem along with all the other waiting staff keep the meal time service running so smoothly.|Drinks service by the pool was also excellent, provided by Suraj, Biji and Dipendra, along with a couple others which we didn't note names. A special thank you to Biji who helped us from the sunset bar one afternoon after locking ourselves out!!|Beyaa, the General Manager is an ever present at breakfast and around the island, interacting with guests and staff, ensuring all is well in his paradise 'kingdom'...|During our 12 night stay, yes we did have rain, although all in all was about 30 minutes worth so nothing too much to worry about and it did not spoil our stay at all.|Alas, all things must come to an end.... our boat transport to the domestic airport departed at 0530. Flight from Madivaru was 0550 (Male time) and we also stopped at another island to pick up more passengers. Arrival into Male was 0650hrs and our check in for our flight home opened at 0830hrs.|A massive thank you to ALL island champions for making our stay on...