Visitor Information

Resort Islands in Maldives
There are more than 86 resort islands in the Maldives with over 15500 beds.
Probably due to the competition and scarce resources available to develop resort islands, the number of cruise and safari yachts/boats have been increasingrecently. These boats offer most of the facilities available in a standard resort island - though they are not as comfortable as a Resort Island with private beaches. However, to compensate the guest there are other advantages when one is on the move - such as exploring different reefs(for divers) and visiting many more islands and enjoying and experiencing the Maldives at closer range than usual resort visitors.

Resort Islands in Maldives are self contained - they have their own power, water,
telecommunication, food outlets, transportation, storage and other facilities which are essential to sustain a small town - these facilities are of international tandards.
Therefore, the guest has no excess to other Islands for the entire stay unless he/she wishes to take a boat ride to the neighbouring resort/island for some reason.

Tourism
Tourism was introduced to Maldives in 1972 with only 2 islands (Kurumba Village and Bandos Island) developed as tourist resorts. However, within the last 29 years it has become economically the most important industry in Maldives. At present, there are over 89 Resort Islands with more than 15000 beds. The resort islands are built with modern facilties and amenities to a 2- 5 plus star standards.

A number of older resorts have also been upgraded to such level. However, from a visitor's point of view (especially Europeans), the favourites are still the good old resorts of Maldives that have kept the their style of service unchanged inspite of adding facilties and additional service areas.

Transport - Resort Transfers
Each resort island in the Maldives, maintains a fleet of slow and fast(speed) boats.
Resort islands closer to the Airport use speed boats for transfer of clients from and to the Airport. However, air transport (seaplanes) are mainly used by the islands located further away from the Airport. In additiona to the air transport, some of these resorts use larger speed boats as well.

There are 3 air transport companies specialising in transfer of clients. The largest is Maldivian Air Taxi which maintains a large fleet of seaplanes.

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