Forget Butlin’s – take your kids to the Maldives!
THINK family holidays and minds often turn to Butlin’s or Center Parcs. But the Maldives? Yes, the preferred destination of dewy-eyed honeymooners is now actively welcoming families to its crystalline shores.
With approximately 100 island resorts vying for the newlywed pound, aiming for families is a smart move. Additionally, if, as is feared, the island chains are at risk from global warming (with some predicting they could disappear within 30 years), who better to champion their preservation than those who fell in love with them as children? Assuming they want to return without scuba gear that is.
And so my wife and I decided to take our sons George, seven, and three year-old Rafferty on holiday to the twin island resorts of Finolhu and Amilla Fushi, which are separated by a bracing 30-minute speedboat ride.
Finolhu is the younger and funkier of the two, full of Instagram-ready set pieces (campervans are dotted around the island expressly for envyinducing photography).
Stilt walkers and acrobats keep your children entertained at meal times and overall it has a looser, more bohemian feel.
Amilla is more as one imagines the Maldives to be – acres of virgin jungle where it’s easy to go hours without seeing another soul. Space and solitude abound.
The rooms at both are, of course, spectacular. Five-star villas with ten-star vistas. Outdoor showers. Prodigious beds. Private pools. Sugar-white sands. Aquamarine, bath-warm seas. Emerald-green palm trees.
It is often said that certain cultures love children – and it is certainly true of the people of the Maldives. Within hours of our arrival, the staff knew our children’s names and were whisking them off to see sharks on the house reef while we enjoyed our first (excellent) G&T.
The food on both islands was grand – and again the kids are at the forefront of the resorts’ thinking.
While both have a buffet option, there’s a plethora of other options too – Italian, Japanese, Chinese – and at each children are offered their own menu. This means you can enjoy sea urchin or saltimbocca or any other dish sure to turn your little ones green, safe in the knowledge they have their pick of pizza or pasta. Furthermore, their meals always arrived first – a simple yet life-saving gesture if you’re used to combating table-based fidgeting.
If mum (or dad, of course) fancies a massage at the spa on either island, then the kids can be safely deposited at the free and excellent kids’ clubs, where they have their own pool, playgrounds and activities.
Beyond that, you are left to enjoy the simple moments that become long-cherished family memories: swimming in your private pool at any time of day or night; spotting ostentatiously coloured fish while snorkelling; or playing on your own deserted beach.
It may well be the case – as it was with us – that tiny tears are shed on departure day.
So don’t worry about whether you’ll bother the recently hitched, nor whether your children will get bored.
In fact, don’t worry at all. Just go. You and your family will never forget it. The future of the islands may depend on it.
Book with Indian Ocean specialists Best At Travel (bestattravel.co.uk) and stay in a Lagoon Villa at Finolhu for seven nights all-inclusive from £2,979pp. Seven nights with a free upgrade to half board in an Ocean Reef House at Amilla Fushi starts at £3,499pp.