Speedboat Transfer Experience in Maldives

The Speedboat

The Maldives is a beautiful bunch of more than 1000 secluded islands well known for beautiful beaches, blue lagoons, and extensive reefs. It’s a very good option if you want to get away from busy city life and enjoy clear beaches and water activities. This all is coming from my own experience of a stay at Bandos Island resort for 5 days and 4 nights. I am writing this blog to describe my end to end speedboat transfer experience from Male airport to Bandos Island Resort.

Before going to the Maldives, I was anxious about the transfer as I could not find any satisfactory article describing same. Questions like How would I find the boat? What if the guy does not show up? Is it reliable etc. were unanswered. Hence I am sharing my experience about the exact process of how It went for me in detail. Now, why to worry about the transfer is something you may think of - Since Maldives is a group of islands and airport being one of those, you will need to hop from male Airport island to your destination island. Speedboat or Seaplane are only conviniently ways here. Local ferry is another option but frequency is very low, timings are absurd and ferry won't go to most of the islands. Forget about those.

I took a speedboat from Male airport to Bandos Island Resort. Let's start

Take a Private island speedboat or Some Local speedboat. 
The Resort I had booked had their own private speedboat that was arranged at an extra cost. I got it right at the airport waiting for me as soon as I landed in Maldives and directly took me to my resort without wasting any time, we literally traveled in a straight line...

Another option is to ride with local speedboat owners. This may take a long time as they will go to multiple islands and the cost depends on negotiation skills. Local vendors can be cheaper if you get a good deal but mostly, you will end up paying more. Hence, I would suggest you go with your island speedboat.

In my case, I took transfer service from my hotel and here is a picture of the nice, clean speedboat from Bandos.

Speed - 25 knots (50 km/h)
Seating capacity - 25 people

SpeedBoat Waiting at Airport

Inside the boat

Booking speedboat - through Hotel aggregators or hotel directly(call/email)
I had two options to book the boat, Through Hotel aggregators (at time of hotel booking) or directly with the hotel (you have to call/email the hotel). In both cases, the boat is same, but the difference is in cost. And if you are ok to save a few bucks like me untill and unless there is no hattle, keep reading..

My Resort, Bandos was 8 km away from Male airport and the two-way 'transfer fee' quoted on booking.com was 94$ per person. If I would have booked the speedboat directly with resort via call or email or even after landing at the airport, the two-way cost would have been 75$ per person. The difference in price is probably due to the commission…
I would suggest you not to book a transfer with hotel aggregators and email/call the resort. They are very professional and reply within a day or two.

Locate the help counter
When I booked the resort, I got an email from Bandos about their help counter at airport which was at Zone-A, Counter-02.  As I came out of airport, I saw some more than100 counters of most of the resorts I had checked before booking.

Various Zone at Male Airport

Zone A

So last thing I had to do was to locate the Bandos counter at male airport walk up to them and rest was taken care, it was prety easy, infact they were waiting for me.They carried my luggage and requested me to wait for 10 mins after which we hopped in a speedboat that waiting for me near the airport gates.

Bandos Counter

I have heard islanders not picking you up from the airport at times but transfer experience in Maldives was a breeze for me. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section.