Welcome back! In my last post, I talked about why my husband and I chose Maldives for our honeymoon and about our transit hotel. And now… the part that I’m really excited about, talking about Raaya by Atmosphere!

Why Raaya by Atmosphere?

We chose Raaya because it fit our needs with regards to inclusions and price. There was one other resort we were considering where the rooms looked slightly bigger, but we realised we could stay an extra day at Raaya for the same price and so we opted for a slightly longer honeymoon.

Basically, we chose Raaya for the range of activities that were included in the Raaya plan. The ones that caught my eye pre-trip were:

• 45 min spa session
• Mini golf on the resort
• Mangrove walk (sadly this was not open when we visited!)
• Sunset Cruise
• Sunset Fishing Cruise (so essentially two free cruises)
• House Reef visit (It’s a daily visit and I heard that depending on visitors, you might be able to book once a week/visit. But we booked the house reef when we arrived and got two slots!)
• Dhoni Making (craft activity)
• 3 Speciality Dinners

Basically, it looked like we could fit at least one activity or speciality dinner a day and to us, that felt like a good mix of something to look forward to and lots of free time to relax.

Pre-Trip and First Impressions

Before the trip, Wu let me know that he had asked the resort to pre-book the meals and activities for me. Since we had no plans in mind, we were happy to go along with the flow!

Everything is managed on the Raaya app, and it was quite fun to open it and slowly see our bookings for the week appear. Advance check-in is also done through the app and it was pretty quick to do that too.

The app was useful – there is a live buggy tracker, a list of activities for the week (you can sign up for the free activities, like pilates class, via the app. For the paid activities, you can contact your Island Manager), and our daily itinerary as well as menus and other information were also there. It was a pretty useful hub of information and I referred to it quite a bit during the trip.

When our seaplane landed at Raaya (we enjoyed telling people “our plane landed in the water), we were warmly greeted by the Raaya staff and given a glass of champagne while we did the check-in procedures. What we appreciated was that we were assigned an Island Manager to help us during the stay. Our island manager was Achala and he was great – he gave me a daily update of what was happening via whatsapp as well as a daily reminder of the itinerary that day. He was also really responsive to any questions.

We were also given Seb’s Journal during the check in. The legend of Seb is a nice touch that Raaya has to give the whole resort a story. Basically, Seb is an artist who landed on Raaya during a storm and his activities here inspired the various spots around the resort (including lookout towers – sadly under maintenance while we were there – and Seb’s farm). There is a mini “treasure” hunt you could do by looking for coins to rub onto the journal and space for you to note down the trip – this was really cute and I can see it being a hit with families because we enjoyed it too!

We were also given a tour of the island by Achala. He pointed out the various spots and let us know that the Dhoni making activity is accompanied by a boat race, which immediately got my engineering-trained husband interested in how fast he could make the boat go! As we finished the tour by 9am or so, well before check-in time, we were encouraged to have breakfast and hang around the pool area until the rooms were ready.

Room Tour

For our room, we booked the Ocean Villa with Pool. What we didn’t realise at that time was that the Ocean Villas are both relatively nearer to Raaya Life, the main dining area, as well as the pool area. Given that we had breakfast at Raaya Life almost every day, we felt that to be really convenient, especially given that some of the beach villas could be on the other side of the island (for transport, there are shuttle buggy rides and bicycles, though we mostly walked everywhere).

From the pictures, we were slightly worried that the room would feel small but we were pleasantly surprised at how roomy it was. Our luggages were in the hall at the back, where the closets and bathroom were, so the main room had a bed, bedside table, and a small sofa and coffee table, as well as drawers under the TV. The outside area had the pool, a lounge sofa, as well as a table with chairs. I really enjoyed sitting outside every morning looking at the ocean while sipping on a cup of tea and reading/crocheting!!

Oh yes, and I think it’s worth mentioning: Raaya does provide a big canvas tote and two pairs of slippers that you can use to bring around and to bring home. The slippers are a bit stiff but I saw plenty of people wearing them, so if you don’t have beach shoes around, you can use these. There is also SPF30 sunscreen and insect repellent lotion in the toiletries, though I definitely recommend bringing your own sunscreen just in case. We generally didn’t see any insects around the villa or main area, but we were bitten a few times while waiting in the dive center.

Honeymoon Perks

For Raaya, they will give you honeymoon privileges if you show them your marriage certificate, which should be done within a year of your stay. This is what we experienced during our trip in September 2025 (no idea if it will change after):

• Candle-lit beach dinner – we were able to preselect the menu for this but honestly, it was the view of the stars that really impressed us!
• Floating Breakfast – eggs the way you want it and choice of juice + the regular breakfast items
• Special bed arrangement when we arrived
• A small cake waiting for us in our room

As you can see, the perks are mainly food-based, which meant that we really got to try a wide variety of meals during our five nights here – we really did not get tired of the food!

So this post has already grown to almost 1000 words, which means to my surprise, I will be stopping here and continuing to talk about Raaya in a third post.