One Last Trip For 2025 – The Maldives

It’s the end of the year, which means one last hurrah — and, much to no one’s surprise, we’re heading back to the Maldives. I held off booking for as long as humanly possible in the faint hope that Corinthia Maldives might materialise, only for them to boldly announce that their 2025 opening has been moved to the very reasonable year of 2028. Excellent.  It must just need an extra thick lick of paint to finish.

Still, all is not lost, because we are going to the absolutely-not-pretentiously-named-at-all HERE, which just so happens to be opening on the exact day we arrive. How charmingly serendipitous. Slight complication: it’s only half-finished. But the “all-villa” concept — and I do mean actual villas, all three, four, or five bedrooms — is extremely appealing. This place has real potential to be brilliant. Provided, of course, that opening day isn’t complete pandemonium.  Which it probably will be.

We’re also returning to The Nautilus, a place I genuinely enjoyed but somehow haven’t visited in years.

And finally, in a move that surprises no one, we are once again going back to Velaa for the billionth time. They’ve recently refurbished the kids club and one of the Residences, Kuredhi — which some of our lucky clients will be enjoying next year.

I’m forever moaning about the Velaa room product, so it is nice to see them inching forward and upgrading things. Granted, they’ve started with the $35,000-a-night rooms, so by the time they get around to the humble one- and two-bedroom villas that I’m in, my children may well be footing the bill while I’m drooling into a pool of my own piss.

Still, it’s a good chance to be back before Bulgari opens and (hopefully) shakes things up a bit.