Maldives

I mean really. Need I say more? This was by far the best vacation that Jared and I have ever taken.

Views of the beach and the water from the main restaurant.

For our 10th anniversary we had to do it big right? In all honesty I decided that our tenth anniversary would be Australia and Tahiti… unfortunately covid had other ideas for us. Jared and I were both kind of at a loss of where to go, my only ask was that we went somewhere with an overwater bungalow…. after a google search “Best Overwater Bungalows” (real original I know) we found that there were a ton of options in the Maldives. That led us to the next question… how to cost effectively make this trip happen?

Where to Stay

Normally when we plan a vacation we get our flights first because that’s the largest expense and usually the least flexible… in this case it was the opposite. We picked our hotel first. I can’t take any credit for the hotel pick this time. Jared found the deal and place all on his own. He found the deal on Luxury Escapes and we stayed at the Pullman Maldives. Check out their link below, Pullman has sooo much to offer.

https://www.pullmanmaldivesmaamutaa.com/

https://luxuryescapes.com/refer/INVITEJAREDH5F1D5

One of the reasons we chose this resort is because of the All Inclusive options, and included in the price was the airport transfer from Malé to the closest local airport Kooddoo and then a speed boat to the resort. Typically these transfers can run you about $400-$600 per person so definitely an added bonus if you can find a resort that includes it in the price. Luxury Escapes regularly has lux deals for 40-50% off. It’s still going to be expensive but who doesn’t want to save money?

I mean honestly this resort was absolutely stunning. The views are outstanding and I can’t say enough about how fantastic the staff was.

View of some of the overwater bungalows.

Flights

Once we decided on our resort, the next thing we needed to tackle was our flights. We live in North Carolina so finding deals from there, not the easiest. Usually I will add a Google Flights alert or look out for a deal on Scott’s Cheap Flights. Also, sometimes I will add an alert from a larger airport that’s easy for us to get to. So for this trip I added an alert for all NYC airports, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Those airports typically have more deals since they are airline hubs and larger cities. I usually keep an eye out for deals starting about 6-8 months from any planned trip. We wanted to go around our anniversary (late October), so I started looking for flight deals around April. At first I thought I wanted to use credit card points/airline miles for this flight but I always like to keep my options open just in case a great deal comes along. In our case The Points Guy posted a deal where Qatar Airways had a promo for up to 50% off their business class flights…

https://thepointsguy.com/deals/550-off-qatar-qsuite/

If you’re looking to maximize points I recommend using The Points Guy or Award Hacker. So using the promo code we were able to save 50% of the price of our business class tickets from Washington DC to Malé!

In our Q Suite.. spoiled for all future travel.

This was by far the best vacation we’ve ever taken together and 10/10 highly recommend. I’ll end on a photo dump of how much fun this was!! Let me know in the comments/send me a message if you want to see more of anything or want any other tips.