Tips for Maldives honeymoon: How to reduce the cost of a trip at any resort 

The Maldives are renowned for a number of things: overwater bungalows on private islands, stunningly clear water and vibrant marine life, and extremely high prices. After spending a fortune to get there (or not, read on for more…)  you may want to save some money while you are staying there. Here is one of the most important tips for a Maldives honeymoon – This is how you can reduce the cost of a trip to the Maldives, no matter what resort you are staying at.

Even if you book a hotel with points, as I did, it is very difficult not to rack up huge room charges as resort restaurants charge through the roof for their menus given the incredibly pricey costs and their captive audience. You get a fairly good idea of how remote a destination the resorts in the Maldives are when you arrive via seaplane, so of course it must be pricey to bring in lamb chops from Australia, ghee from India, and Tiger beer from Singapore. However, $45 plus 10% service and 10% tax for a chicken biryani is quite a lot to stomach. Still, a man has to eat, doesn’t he? 

Luckily there is a way to significantly reduce the money you spend on a vacation to a Maldivian resort. And here’s a hint: it doesn’t require staying at a budget resort in Maldives. 

Tips for Maldives honeymoon: How to reduce your resort costs

How so? Well, with ramen, peanut butter, crackers and dried fruit. Your hotel room will almost certainly have a kettle and while I’ve heard some stories of being charged for bottles of water once you drink a certain amount, we asked for additional bottles almost every day and didn’t have to pay extra. Bring whatever you like to snack on at home and create your own room service with some of the best views money can buy. 

We ate a lot of dried mango (these were delicious and had no added sugar) and Shin ramen, but get creative – you have a mini fridge and kettle at your disposal! We even had just add water Korean tteokbokki one night!

It’s not particularly glamorous, and housekeeping will likely chuckle when they find ramen packaging in the trash cans, but when it’s all said and done, most people don’t focus on the food aspect of their trip to the Maldives, and this is coming from a dedicated foodie! And since when do the tips for Maldives honeymoon need to be glamorous? That’s a job for the Instagram pictures! Anyway, I’ve got no issue paying for food when it’s spectacular, but something told me that hotel food in the middle of the Indian Ocean where literally everything except for a handful of herbs is brought in by boat might not be worth the price tag. 

As a Marriott Bonvoy Titanium Elite member, we were able to avail a free breakfast which would have cost $44 per person otherwise. Often, we had breakfast on the later side to tide us over until lunch so we were really only on the hook for one meal. 

The lowdown on food and alcohol in the Maldives

We stayed at the W Maldives for five nights and eating packaged food for lunch and dinner for that long was too tall an order for me. One way to make it feel like you’re getting your money’s worth when you finally do hit the hotel restaurant is to make a reservation for some sort of special theme night which will likely involve an all-you-can-eat-and-drink menu.

For us, this was an event that the hotel called Smokin’ Hot, which was a BBQ buffet on the beach. For $185 plus service and tax per person (!!!), it included all-you-can-eat grilled lobster, steak, crab, sea bass, lamb chops, salmon, etc. etc. etc. along with a large selection of tandoori items. It was all remarkably tasty and at three lobsters a piece, 10 beers total, and a number of other items, we definitely felt like it wasn’t a ripoff. With a couple of bottles of Evian water (normally $12/each), a dessert, and some salads as well, if we’d eaten everything a la carte, it would have come out to far more than $185 a head. 

And speaking of beer, unfortunately, you can’t bring down the bar tab by bringing in your own booze. The Maldives are a devoutly Muslim country and it is forbidden to bring alcohol into the country. Alcohol in the Maldives can only be bought at the hotels in the country. Before you get too clever thinking that you might be able to smuggle some alcohol in, you should know that at baggage claim, all carry-on bags are x-rayed and if they find a bottle that you’ve bought at duty free earlier in your trip, it will be confiscated.  

So that’s how you can bring down the price of a Maldives trip while you are there, but are you struggling to even come up with the money to get there in the first place? I’ll be honest – I would not have been able to get there if it weren’t for a credit card signup bonus which put me over the top. 

Chase’s Sapphire Preferred Credit Card will hook you up with 60,000 bonus points once you hit the spend requirement during the first three months of opening the card. You can transfer these right over to Marriott, which is almost enough for a free night at the W Maldives. 

The Maldives are a spectacular destination which every intrepid traveler should check out at least once in their life. It’s expensive enough to go there before the insanity of the food prices hits your budget, and there’s no shame in catering some of your own meals.

Do you have your own ideas about what you would eat to bring down the cost of a trip to the Maldives? What are your tips for Maldives honeymoon? Let us know in the comments!