← Back to the Index
Photo via Google
Resorts / South Ari / Vilamendhoo Island Resort

Vilamendhoo Island Resort

Its house reef, measured from satellite and scored Good on the Maldives Index — beside the guests’ own verdict.

Reef Conditions 5.0 Resort
Check availability & prices Live prices via Stay22 · opens the booking site
Atoll
South Ari
Villas
184
Transfer
Seaplane
Transfer cost
~£356 pp RT
Reef Conditions
5.0 / 10
5.0
Its house reef · measured from satellite
Good — 143 m to the drop-off, 12% coral or algae cover
The full reef profile, and how we measured it →
Book your stay

Book Vilamendhoo Island Resort

Check availability for Vilamendhoo Island Resort. One tap opens the hotel on a booking site, where you’ll see the live price and choose your dates, rooms and guests.

Prices & availability by Stay22, updated live. We may earn a referral — never a placement, and it never affects a score.

Guest reviews
Read what guests say on the major platforms:
Maldives Index · our reef score
5.0Good
Measured from satellite · Fish & big encounters pending · No in-water survey
Guest reviews rate the whole stay — read them at the source. The Maldives Index is the one thing we score ourselves: an independent rating of the reef, the part no booking site measures.
Book with confidence

Ready to stay at Vilamendhoo Island Resort?

We only ever earn a referral — never a placement. The rating above is not for sale.

Independent rating
The reef score above is never for sale.
Check availability →
Snorkelling & marine life

House reef & underwater

Vilamendhoo Island Resort · South Ari · a house reef

5.0

Good house reef

Reef Conditions · top 84% of the 297 reefs we have measured


Shore entry Measured

~143 m across the lagoon to the drop-off — a genuine swim, not a wade.

Living cover Measured

About 12% of the mapped reef reads as living coral or algae from satellite.

Heat history Measured

Peak heat stress 5.43 DHW since the imagery, 2 bleaching-alert years on record (2016, 2024).

From satellite this reef reads Good — roughly 12% living cover. We have not surveyed it in the water, so fish counts and big-encounter ratings stay pending. We don't estimate them.

Reef data modelled from Allen Coral Atlas benthic & geomorphic maps (CC BY 4.0) and NOAA Coral Reef Watch. No in-water survey — every figure above is a measurement. Marine icons: game-icons.net (CC BY 3.0).

Documented in South Aricited

Whale shark

Present year-round — the single most widely mis-stated fact about Maldivian wildlife. The South Ari protected area works as a resting and development ground for juvenile sharks rather than a stop on a migration, so the population persists instead of arriving and leaving. The record runs to over 6,000 sightings of nearly 400 identified individuals across two decades.

Reef manta ray

A northeast-monsoon animal on this side of the atoll — the mirror image of Baa. Rangali Madivaru, on the western flank, sees mantas from about December to April, with courtship and pregnant females concentrated between January and April.

Not established here honest

Turtles — no atoll-level seasonal study exists; treat them as year-round residents rather than a season

Reef sharks — no atoll-level seasonal data

Photos

Vilamendhoo Island Resort — photo 2
Photo via Google
Vilamendhoo Island Resort — photo 3
Photo via Google
Vilamendhoo Island Resort — photo 4
Photo via Google
Vilamendhoo Island Resort — photo 5
Photo via Google
Vilamendhoo Island Resort — photo 6
Photo via Google

Where it is

3.63381, 72.95859

The pin is the island centroid from our geocoding, not the building — properties on the same island share it. Satellite imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.