Our stay at Pullman Maldives followed our stay at another resort in an overwater pool villa that was absolutely exceptional, so our expectations were quite high.

On arrival, we were given a tour of the island and the basics were explained to us (how to request a buggy, how to make dinner reservations, where they were needed etc). When we arrived at our villa we realized it was not the sunset side as requested and confirmed. Disappointment #1. The villa was nice and clean. Nothing to complain about here other than it wasn't the side we requested.

We found the beach in front of our villa nice, but a bit riddled with large broken shells, etc. Again, we were comparing this to the pristine sand beaches of our prior resort. There was also a berm of sand bags on the beach in front of our villa which does detract from the beauty somewhat. Also on the sun rise side, we had sun on our pool all day and it was smoking hot. The trees/vegetation blocked any breeze that may have cooled it off. In hindsight, we wished we booked an over the water villa here instead of a beach villa.

We ate at Melange the first two nights. Buffet food was good, and the drinks were even better. We appreciated the friendly staff and great selection of beer, wine, and cocktails. We also dines at Phat Chameleon and Souq Oven which was our fave.

We were told to book activities and reservations a day in advance (note that to my knowledge, you are not permitted to book activities in advance of your arrival). We arrived on a Saturday evening and Sunday we went to the dive centre to book diving. We were surprised to find the earliest availability was Tuesday, which, given we flew out on Thursday, was the last day we were able to dive. We booked two morning dives. We were toying with doing more dives, but that wasn't available for us.

At the same time we booked the sunset cruise for Sunday night, and then headed to the watersports centre to book jet skis. The earliest possible booking for jet skiis was the day before we left (so we booked them) and were told that only one jet ski was available, so we weren't able to take them out together as we hoped.

Following this, we went rent bikes (which were almost fully rented out so there were very few options),

Well.. c'est la vie, let's get back to enjoying our holiday!

Overall, the Pullman is a scenic resort with fairly nice facilities,but I found it lacking in level and quality of service as well as availability of activities and optional services.

The good:
- food is quite good. Especially at Souq Oven. The drink selection and bar/wait staff were great everywhere, and my husband enjoyed the free sisha hour at the bar on the sunset side. We also enjoyed the singers/entertainment in the evening at the Hub bar and the HIGHLIGHT of our trip was the diving. Incredible! We saw turtles, sharks, rays, and many fish all just in the first 10 min of our first dive. The equipment was good and our guide very good. Also our sunset cruise that turned into a dolphin cruise was awesome.

The bad:
- buggy service is unpredictable , slow, and at the main places, a bit of a line up at times. You have to wait in the heat so you can see when they arrive.
- the fact that you can't book in advance
- garbage in the surrounding bay and beaches
- lack of privacy in beach villa (grounds workers walk through the front)
- some of the staff don't seem very keen (and certainly not empowered) to provide service... generally complacent.