Two resorts can sell a plan with the same name and give you completely different holidays. One covers every restaurant on the island. The other covers a buffet and gives you a discount everywhere else. We read the meal plan document behind every all-inclusive we sell and score it out of five on what actually catches you: where you can eat, what is in the glass, when the bar is open, and whether anything at all is included in your villa.
Each plan carries the date we last read it. Inclusions change with every contract year and sometimes by season, so tell us your dates and we will confirm before you pay anything.
This is our score, not the resort's. A resort can be excellent and score a 2, and we sell several of those happily to people who came for the island rather than the buffet. The number tells you one thing only: how much of your holiday is genuinely paid for before you arrive. A cheap plan honestly described is a better deal than a generous one full of asterisks.
Every score comes from the resort's own meal plan document, the one they hand a guest, read line by line against the same five bands. Not the website, not the factsheet. Those two routinely contradict the document, and where a resort's own paperwork disagrees with itself we say so on the card rather than picking the flattering version.
Where a document is silent, we do not fill the gap in the resort's favour or ours. If it does not say whether room service is included, the card says it does not say. Where the wording could be read two ways and the reading changes the score, we take the more conservative one and note what the score would be under the other. Where we have not read a plan at all, it stays blank. Blank is safe. A guess is not.
Nothing here has yet been signed off by the properties themselves. As each resort confirms its plan in writing, its card will carry a confirmed mark. If you have stayed on one of these plans recently and we have it wrong, tell us and we will check it and change it.
We do the same for House Reefs: see the House Reef Ratings.
These are the patterns that come up again and again. None of them appear in a brochure, and every one of them has cost somebody money on a bill at the end of a holiday.
It comes as a credit, a discount, a cap on how often you can go, or a food-only inclusion where the drinks are still yours. We have found five different shapes of the same idea: sixty per cent off at one resort, thirty at another, one dinner every three days at a third, a fixed sum off the bill at a fourth, and food included but wine charged at a fifth.
Across forty-seven plans, three resorts include their signature restaurants outright. Three.
Twenty-five of the forty-seven plans we have read exclude in-villa dining or charge it, and it is the single thing that separates a four from a five. One resort includes breakfast in your villa on the plan and then charges a fifty dollar tray fee every time you ask for it, which means the included breakfast is not free. Twenty more say nothing about it either way, which tells you something in itself.
Two plans out of forty-seven include room service properly. Both score 5.
Ten of the plans we have read pour nothing before eleven in the morning, and one pours nothing before midday. That means no drink with breakfast, and it is never presented as an exclusion because it is written as an opening time. More important still is what happens on your travel days: some plans run from the moment you land to the moment you leave, and some stop at eleven on your last morning.
On a three-night trip, the travel-day rule is worth more than the drinks list.
Three resorts split their two tiers on the minibar almost exactly: nothing on the lower one, everything on the upper. One lets you choose two spirits of your own for the stay, which is the most generous thing we have found anywhere. Another itemises down to the two chocolates.
If you are weighing an upgrade, read the minibar list before the drinks list.
One resort's headline benefit needs fourteen nights. Others need seven, or five, or four. Most Indian travellers book three or four nights in the Maldives, which means a good part of what the plan advertises is unreachable on the trip you are actually taking.
Ask us which benefits your night count actually reaches.
You read what is included, you sit down, and a quarter of the dishes carry a supplement. Several resorts reserve the right to charge on selected items and never say which ones. One excludes the ice cream at a specific bar. One includes everything except caviar, which at least is clear.
Where a resort will not name the surcharge dishes, we say so on its card.
One resort we sell discontinued its all-inclusive entirely and brings it back in January 2027. At another, the all-inclusive is simply full board with a drinks package bolted on, sold separately. A third sells two drinks packages and no all-inclusive at all, whatever the search results say.
The name on the plan tells you very little. The list underneath tells you everything.
It depends on the resort more than on you. At a resort where the plan covers every restaurant and a decent bar, two people who drink will usually be ahead. At a resort where dinner is a buffet and everything else is discounted, you are buying convenience rather than value. Ask us for the numbers on your shortlist.
Room service and the minibar, on nearly every plan we have read. Then the signature restaurants, which normally carry a credit or a discount rather than being included. Then excursions, spa, motorised water sports, and any dish on the menu the resort has quietly marked with a supplement.
Usually the drinks and the minibar, not the food. At several resorts the food is identical across both tiers and the entire step up buys you better spirits, wine by the glass and a restocked minibar. At others the upper tier adds restaurants and removes surcharges. Both patterns are common.
Rarely. Most plans state a window, commonly eleven in the morning until eleven at night, and each bar keeps its own hours inside that. A few run genuinely all day. What matters more on a short trip is whether the plan covers your arrival afternoon and your departure morning.
Almost never. Most resorts require every adult sharing the villa to take the same plan, for the whole stay rather than part of it. If only one of you drinks, that is worth knowing before you compare an all-inclusive rate against a half board one.
Every plan carries the date we last read it, shown on its card. Inclusions change with each contract year and sometimes by season, so a plan read eight months ago may have moved. Tell us your dates and we will confirm the current inclusions with the resort before you pay anything.
Send us your dates, your budget and how much you actually drink, and we will come back with three islands costed both ways, so you can see what the all-inclusive is buying you rather than guessing at it.
Cost it both ways for me
