Why your Maldives Vacation may not be as Memorable as you think
Truth about Maldives Travel Agents
Since Covid-19 has started, everyone is locked inside their homes and not able to travel freely as we used to do in pre-covid times.
Hence when Lockdown was lifted, everyone just rushed to outdoors and overseas. Businesses related to Travel and Hospitality let go a sigh of relief. Because now they can see guest coming in their Shops, Restaurants, taking Flights.
One such country which saw huge boom since Lockdown was over, is Maldives. Now when hear Maldives, we always imagine exquisite beaches, fancy suites situated in those beaches, clean water, scuba diving and many more things.
Though these things are there, Maldives also hosts shady Travel Agents. This is my experience in Maldives but this might be happening in other countries as well.
So my company decided to send me overseas for the project(I am an IT professional). Now even though lockdown is lifted, countries still impose some restrictions while allowing visitors. Hence before arriving in my destination country I had to spend 15 days in Maldives. You must be thinking how lucky I am. Well I thought so too. Many of my friends were jealous that I was going to spend 15 days in Maldives. I was daydreaming about it.
My company had booked my stay in a hotel on Rashdoo Beach through an Indian Agent. Now the way it works is — Indian agent has contacts with local Maldives agents who will do the bookings as per package.
Now comes the day of my departure and arriving in Maldives. Since arrival my nightmare in Maldives began. As per package, it was decided I will be picked from Airport and via speedboat I will deported to my hotel. I arrived in Maldives around 4 PM. There were many local agents who were picking their guests and taking them to their respective beach hotels via speedboat. These agents work in collaboration. That means there are main agent who connects with an Indian agent. Then there are local people who will pick you up from Airport and then are Speedboat owners who take you to your hotels. Like myself many people are taking this transition from Maldives to Middle East countries.
Since arrival, no one came to pick me up, no one was holding card with my name which was already decided. I bought the local SIM and contacted the main agent who was supposed to send someone to pick me up. First few times he didn’t pick up my call. Then after sometime when he did pick up, he told that some man will come to pick me up. After the call, I kept waiting, after an hour or so I got the hold of the man. Now you must be thinking at last I can go to the hotel. You are very mistaken. This local person now tells me to wait for sometime so that he can pick his other guests and send them to their hotels. It must have been two hours since my arrival and I was watching people who came after me getting to their hotels first. And I was not sure why. That local person made me wait another hour. And when again I asked him to take me to my hotel, he said the last boat for hotel left at 6. This man kept me waiting for about 2 hours telling that the last boat had already left.
Imagine you are in different country and stranded in the Airport only. I furiously made call to the main agent and asked to arrange my commute. Again after an hour I was able to get on to the speedboat. So finally I thought this nightmare has ended. But I was so wrong.
After 3 hours of Speedboat journey, I came to know that the island on which boat left me was someplace else. It was not the island I was supposed to stay. So the main agent placed me on some different place knowingly. The reason he gave was that my Hotel is OVERBOOKED. How crappy was that. This was literally KIDNAPPING. Taking me to someplace without my consent and knowing. He didn’t even told me the problem and instead placed me to different island altogether. My company made advance booking, paid the money and did everything the agent was asking and now this guy says my hotel is overbooked.
He said spend the night in this island and he will shift me next morning. I hesitantly agreed, keeping my company informed about the situation. Now you’d expect, that it’s just matter of one night. So I went to the hotel, turned out it was local quarantine center for foreigners. Food they gave me was boiled rice and potato curry. That’s it. Nothing else. There were hardly two men for 25 people staying in that quarantine center. From next morning, the agent was hard to get on call and morning turned to evening still no sign of him or his men. Meantime the lunch was same as previous night but this time it came with a bug in it. Can you imagine??
As furious as I was, my company personnel decided that they will book any good available hotel and shift me there. They booked different hotel on the same island I was supposed to stay. Now the problem was commute. Since, beaches are far away, I had to book speedboat on my own giving my money(which was later reimbursed to me 😉). Only from one beach to another, I had to spend $200.
And only after reaching to my new hotel my memorable days in Maldives started. Finally I was able to see beauty of Maldives. Below are some memories I made in Maldives.
