5 Easy Budget Tips for the Maldives For First-Timers

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Everyone’s situation is different, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Maldives is not a cheap destination. Yeah, there are budget tips for the Maldives and ways to make it MORE affordable, yanno clearly cuz that’s what this whole post will be about, buuuut.

Before you get your hopes up.

In general, visiting the Maldives is not cheap. Especially if you’re from the opposite side of the world and are wanting a relaxing luxurious experience. The Maldives is an island country, with tourism providing the largest sector of Maldives’ economy, accounting for more than 28% of GDP. To give you some perspective: the most visited country in the WORLD is France, with about 75 million foreign visitors in 2022. For France, tourism only accounted for 9.7% of their GDP.

Tourism is the biggest money maker for the Maldives by a landslide, so that is one of the reasons why visiting is more expensive because it provides the country with the majority of its income. The other half is the expectations of a trip to the Maldives. Half the fun (arguably) of going to the Maldives is having that dreamy beautiful experience. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a factor in the price.

So how do you get that experience without being a millionaire?? In a place as expensive as this, are there ANY budget tips for the Maldives? I am clearly not a millionaire, unfortunately, and actually I’m arguably living paycheck to paycheck after taking on my mother’s medical bills (#AmericanThings) and buying a house in order to visit Antarctica (LONG STORY, check out my how to pay for Antarctica when you’re broke for the scoop lololol). But, I was somehow able to afford a trip to the Maldives? HOW???

See, I told you I would circle back to the point of the blog post hahah. Today imma give you the skinny on the biggest budget tips for the Maldives that I found (both the easy and the hard way) during my trip.

My Trip Logistics

To give you an idea of my own experience and expenditures, my first (and only so far) trip to the Maldives was in January 2023. Which…one I still can’t believe that I went at ALL, let alone this year. I did not travel there solo, I went with my partner for our anniversary, and we chose January because it usually has pretty good weather (less rain) than other parts of the year. And…that trend was spot on for us for our entire 5 day/4 night stay as we had 0 days/nights of rain! It was very humid and warm though, but I suspect that’s the same year round.

For flights and lodging we used points so we didn’t pay anything except the $29 USD (or somewhere around that price point) for airline taxes and fees. Normally though, flights from Portland, Oregon USD to Male, Maldives will run about $1,500-$2,000 USD roundtrip during that timeframe. We also stayed at the Hilton Maldives Amingiri Resort (because we had Hilton points), but if you pay out of pocket it will run you about $1,350ish USD (plus taxes and fees) a night. There is also a mandatory $300 USD per person transportation fee for taking a speed boat from the airport to the resort island. And…there is literally no way around it because it is the only way to the island.

While our rooms ended up being free, our resort did not offer an all-inclusive package. And again, the Maldives is expensive, so food racked up a pretty penny. We didn’t do any paid excursions or activities, but we did get massages and whatnot at the on-site spa, so that added to our activity budget.

TLDR: the following prices are for 2 people!

• Duration: 5 days, 4 nights
• Weather: 0 days of rain
• Flights: $0 USD (+ airline taxes and fees)
• Lodging: $0 USD (+ $600 USD transportation fees)
• Food & Activities: $1,491.44 USD

Honestly, not bad at all considering most people spend upwards of $10,000 USD on a nice vacation to the Maldives. So while I’ve only been once, I’d like to offer up some of the budget tips for the Maldives that helped me and my credit card stay under our limit.

Budget Tips for the Maldives

If you’re wondering how so many influencers can afford to visit the Maldives and stay in the most luxurious accommodations, I have news for you.

Most of them, on their own, probably could not.

Larger influencers are often hosted at these properties for free, and some are even PAID. It may be in collaboration with the individual hotel, or the hotel chain, or even a third party that pays them to stay at luxurious accommodations for content. Even if the influencer does pay for their trip out of pocket, they may be able to write it off on their taxes as a business expense so…it’s not quite the same situation as the average traveler.

Basically what I’m saying is please do not compare your ability to travel against an influencer that travels under a completely different set of parameters. Do not feel bad if booking 30+ back to back bucket list trips is not realistic for your situation. Despite what social media implies, it is not common for the general population to take more than one or two trips a year, let alone the Maldives.

While it certainly helps to be rich, you don’t have to be in order to visit the Maldives. These budget tips for the Maldives will help ya out, but don’t feel bad if it takes you a few years to get there – it certainly did for me!

Use Points!!

So to start us off, I’m going to drop the biggest and most important of the budget tips for the Maldives. Above all else – USE POINTS. Unless you live without a five hour flight radius of the Maldives, your flight is going to be expensive. That’s just how it is. From Portland, Oregon, the total flight duration was about 34 hours, so it makes sense why it’s so expensive.

If you don’t have one already, I highly recommend you signing up for a credit card that offers miles (or points that can be used for flights). If getting that kind of credit card isn’t in your wheelhouse, then at least sign up for the free airline loyalty program. Again, because it’s free so it doesn’t hurt, and you’ll eventually gain miles by flying or other offers the airline may promote.

If you are in Portland like me, I highly recommend looking into getting an Alaska Airline credit card. They may not have many international flights (yet), but they are partnered with some of the best variety of international airlines that fly all over the world. I’ve traveled to China, Dubai, and Qatar all on partner airlines using my miles! And guess what, their partner Qatar Airways also flies to the Maldives and that was how we were able to get there just with the points!

I also use the Chase Sapphire Card for flights (and a Citi travel card that I honestly don’t really like soo not going to name it) and a Hilton AMEX card for hotel points. If you want a referral to any of them, I’ll eventually have a post all about them but in the meantime feel free to email me for the referral!

That said, I don’t want it to sound like getting points is some kind of magic and once you sign up you’ll automatically just have enough points for all the trips you want. You have to spend money to get points, so I’d recommend waiting until you have a big purchase coming up (needing new furniture, before gift buying season, etc etc) before getting a card because you usually have to spend a few thousand dollars in the first three or so months to get the maximum amount of sign on points/miles.

If you don’t have any need for big purchases coming up, ask your friends if they have any and if could put it on your card and they pay you. Obviously only if you trust them to pay you back haha. Or ask your friends and family to let you pick up the dinner/entertainment tab for a bit. It’s one of the ways you can ask your friends and family to help you travel more without really much extra effort on their end.

It took me a full three years to save up enough hotel and airline points and miles for this vacation, and it completely paid off. No pun intended. By using points to cover your flights and hotels, you can EASILY cut out 2/3 of the costs of your Maldivian trip! So hands down the biggest of the budget tips for the Maldives.

Don’t Be Tied to One Resort

The next budget tips for the Maldives I have, assuming you are not covering your lodging with brand-specific points, is to not be set on one particular resort. I cannot stress this enough:

THERE ARE MANY HOTELS WITH OVERWATER BUNGALOWS.

You don’t have to stay at the Four Seasons or the Ritz-Carlton. You can get that same view and overwater experience at a more affordable property. You can find affordable overwater villas in the Maldives for a much more reasonable price, like the Summer Island Maldives Resort. If you’re not married to the idea of staying in an overwater villa, then you can save even more money! And really, is it that much more difficult to walk a few steps to the water?

Also, the further away you are from the main island of Male, the more expensive (in general) transportation costs will be. So for sure, the resorts ON Male are even more affordable. It’s the Maldives. Even the “busier” island of Male with a whole international airport has incredibly blue water. I stepped out of the airport in AWE of how beautiful it was.

The rainy season in the Maldives, May-November, has lower prices as well. The trade-off is that it’s rainy…but honestly with how hot the Maldives are, it may help cool you down. And the downpours are usually sporadic and don’t last all day, so you can pop inside for a quick nap or happy hour until the skies clear.

Be open, and you can find some really great deals. In fact, being open is a great budget tips for the Maldives AND great financial travel advice in general.

Get an All-Inclusive Option

The next budget tips for the Maldives on the list is to TRY to get an all-inclusive package. It may seem like a lot upfront (and honestly since the Maldives isn’t CHEAP, it probably will be), but it will pay you back ten-fold.

Our biggest expense once we landed in the Maldives was food. Our resort was only a year old (a few months shy actually) and we did not have an all-inclusive option – not sure if they intend to add it on later. To give you an idea of why getting an all inclusive option is one of the best budget tips for the Maldives – food (a basic burger) will run you $50 USD -$100 USD depending on the meal.

Because we were Hilton diamond members, we had free access to the morning breakfast buffet (the only breakfast option) which retails for $100 USD plus tax. So we literally saved $400 USD just by staying with our hotel loyalty. We were also invited to the diamond-members-only happy hour which gave us free drinks (alcoholic and NA options) that saved us a bit more on snacks!

One tempura roll for lunch was $34 USD, a simple sandwich was $39, and dinner was usually about $100-$150 a person with no drinks (1 app each tho). So…yeah, it adds up. And add even more to that if you like a nice beverage with your meals.

This is not one of the budget tips for the Maldives that works for everyone, but if you can…ehhh…you can potentially skip a meal. I don’t mean this in a diet-culture way, hear me out. At the breakfast buffet, we literally GORGED ourselves. Like bulging at the seam kinda eating. Then we were wander around for a bit and once it got hot, we would retire to our room to dip in our pool and/or nap through lunch.

If we got peck-ish, we had a few snacks that we had packed (protein powder is a good one). Then our next meal would be the free member’s happy hour and we would try to eat a late dinner to last us through the night.

It’s not fun to budget your meals though, so if you can, opt for an all-inclusive. It’s easier and much tastier.

Bring Your Own XYZ

And on that note of bringing your own snacks (and potentially your own cup of noodles), BRING YOUR OWN EVERYTHING. If you forget something, it’s going to cost you a whole mortgage payment to buy it at the resort. A small bottle of sunscreen at the resort was $30 USD PLUS TAX. I haven’t seen those prices for basic necessities since I was literally in Cuba.

Don’t worry, I will be writing a Maldives packing list so you can make sure you don’t forget anything, but it’s always better to overpack. Bring your own sunscreen, bring your own snacks, bring your own sunglasses and do not assume you can just pick up a tube of deodorant real fast and quick. I mean…you could, but it’ll cost you.

Save (literally) the First Time Experiences

The last of my budget tips for the Maldives (for now) is to stick to the basics when it comes to activities. If you want to do Maldives on the low low, then swimming, snorkeling, riding bikes, complimentary yoga, splashing about…that’s going to be your bread and butter.

The free activities.

And yeah, maybe you might want to rent a clear paddle board for $40 USD for 30 minutes or perhaps a cooking class for $120 USD just for a one-off adventure, but…even then it adds up. I can guarantee you – if you are on a budget, you do not NEED to get your scuba certification in the Maldives. I can PROMISE you that. Any of those incredible first time experiences, especially the water ones, are at least 3x more expensive than anywhere else in the world.

Save those experiences for a more affordable destination like Thailand, Mexico, Egypt…which also have incredible water and coral life. And you won’t have to start selling spare organs.

Conclusion: Budget Tips for the Maldives

Aaaaand that’s a wrap on my budget tips for the Maldives. Again, I’ve only been once, but I’m sure the next time I go I will be adding to this list. Hands down, the biggest budget tips for the Maldives is covering your flights and hotels with points and miles, so I would prioritize that if possible.

Or you can marry rich. Yanno, whatever happens first.

If you have visited this beautiful island nation, let me know your budget tips for the Maldives in the comments below! I’m sure I’m probably missing some and would love to know your advice too!

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