Part 3 – Domestic Transfers
In part 2 of the trip report, we flied over 17 hours on two flights with an 8 hour layover in Doha, Qatar. You would think we were almost done traveling – unfortunately not. While some resorts in the Maldives are a simple boat ride away from the capital city, Male, the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa requires a ~1 hour domestic flight and a ~40 minute high speed boat transfer to get to the atoll.
Park Hyatt arranges all of these transfers directly for you by email approximately 30-45 days before arrival. The cost in January 2017 was $520/person for the round trip journey. A day before our arrival – we received an email from Park Hyatt with the time of our domestic flight on Maldivian Airways and instructions when we arrived in at Male.
Please note that once you arrive at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, clear immigration and exit the international terminal – just outside is where you shall be met by our airport representative with the Hyatt signage. He will then escort you to the domestic airport lounge and assist with the onward domestic flight.
This was easy enough – a Hyatt rep met us just like the email stated and walked us down a short sidewalk to the ‘domestic’ terminal at the airport. Here he took our bags, checked us in, obtained our boarding passes, then showed us to a small lounge to wait for our flight. We only waited about 45 minutes.
Maldivian Airlines has 5 flights per day from Male to Kooddoo – 3 of the flights are non-stop. The 2 other flights have a quick stop at another island before continuing on. Luckily our Qatar flight arrived into Male at 8:50am, so we had a non-stop flight on the Q2270 flight.
The 1 hour flight from Male (MLE) to Kooddoo (GKK) covered 239 miles.
Maldivian Airlines flies the Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop airplane.
Maldivian Dash 8
Maldivian Dash 8 Interior
There were some great views on the short flight.
Once you arrive into Kooddoo airport, there are literally 3 doors – 1 for incoming passengers and 2 outgoing gates. It’s very small.
Kooddoo Airport
Once they unload your luggage, there is another Hyatt representative there who takes your luggage and loads it onto a golf cart for a short drive to the dock where the speed boat is awaiting.
The speedboat ride is approximately ~40 minutes between Kooddoo and Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
There was a crew of 4 who loaded the luggage onto the boat and got us settled in with lightweight life preservers. We were served chilled clothes and water/tea for the ride. There were 2 other couples on the boat along with a family of 3.
Soon enough we arrived at Hadahaa doc where the general manager along with multiple hosts were awaiting our arrival.
Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
Finally we arrived in paradise!
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