What 959 DialAFlight clients thought of Indian Ocean

Great time away -Sam was a big help

Glen was amazing!

Jim Camahin was exceptionally polite, professional, friendly and helpful. He made the experience very seamless and stress free - couldn’t ask for more.

Danny Sharma was amazing in all respects. Thank you

Please tell other visitors to Maldives they need to fill out immigration info online before leaving UK as very stressful doing it in airport after queuing for an hour only to be sent away .. staff member Nicole is a diamond

Roy gets it right every time

Excellent service - many thanks

Again we've had another amazing holiday sorted out by Des Wing. Fantastic service, good value for money. Perfect.

Good overall service

Russell and Mason answered my queries promptly and efficiently and I would not hesitate to recommend the company on that alone. But they also have consistently offered the best deals compared to many other companies - I have used them before and I will again - VERY VERY HAPPY!

Thomas was excellent throughout the whole process from booking to departure. He was extremely knowledgeable and thorough. Communication was excellent and his expert advice helped us to have our dream honeymoon!

Excellent service as always from Stacey Rayner. Great holiday and some wonderful memories. A*

Roy Copeland did a great job as Air Seychelles kept altering flights which meant different hotels and transfers.

Thank you Bradley! Incredible holiday. It was flawless

Jim is an excellent and professional member of your team - second time we have booked with him and he's been amazing.

Lloyd was excellent. Really felt looked after. Thank you

Excellent communication

Excellent arrangements. Darren Is amazing as always. Definitely recommend to friends and colleagues.

I’ve already phoned asking for a price on another holiday!

E-ticket number required by Air Mauritius for online check-in and not automatically supplied. Caused consternation on a Sunday but 24 hour contact line excellent and solved the problem. Suggest always supplying e-ticket number.

Curtis very helpful and supportive as usual.

Excellent as always

Excellent customer service

Excellent service. We will definitely book with you again.

Very helpful and great service

Would not recommend a stop in Abu Dhabi if layover is 4 plus hours as facilities are poor.

Not only excellent service from staff but also very competitive price for holiday

Gary and Tammy were very helpful and ensured that best flights were booked despite the airline constantly changing them.

Excellent. Richard is been amazing. Nothing is too much trouble.

Leah and the team understood our requirements and couldn’t have done more - great service as always.

Luxury with a love for nature

Christa D'Souza already thought The Maldives were perfect - then she discovered an eco-resort setting a whole new standard

I was already convinced The Maldives were as good as it gets for a beach holiday. Hot sun, over-water villas, white, talc-like sand, psychedelic snorkelling and glittering turquoise ocean are all a given.

But Soneva Jani, a new luxury eco-resort and latest A-list bolt-hole on Medhufaru in Noonu Atoll, about 125 miles north of the capital Malé, is on quite another level. Set on a lagoon that could hold 7,000 Olympic pools, and so flourescently blue it could be illuminated by under-sea lightbulbs, it feels almost unreal.

A WARM WELCOME
Stepping off the seaplane we were greeted at the dock by our 'Man Friday', Roman. A young ex-soldier from Ukraine with flawless English, Roman welcomed us with fresh coconut water and icy towels infused with orange water.

Then he golf-carted us through forests of screwpine and banyan trees to our villa, the last on the bleached-wood boardwalk that runs higgledy-piggledy through the middle of the island.

A bleached-wood boardwalk runs higgledy-piggledy to the villas

ALL ROUND LUXURY
To the south are four more islands that belong to Medhufaru - an archipelago, really, more than an island - all of which are uninhabited.

Soneva Jani (the Sanskrit word for 'wisdom') is one of the world's lowest-density resorts, with only 25 villas on 150 acres. If you're seeking seclusion - obviously the aim of former guests Will Smith and Kate Winslet - then this is for you.

Many villas have a water slide running from the living room to the lagoon. We had a remote-controlled retractable ceiling over our bed so we could stargaze from our pillows.

We could have gone on a dolphin cruise but often we could see them from our villa. It's not unusual to see 100-strong pods of bottlenoses spinning and somersaulting along the reef. There are harmless baby sharks too, deposited by their mothers in the lagoon to avoid predators.

Journalist Christa D'Souza takes some time out in a hammock

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Sonu Shivdasani and his Swedish wife Eva are pioneers of the luxury eco-resort concept and founders of the Soneva 'chain' (Soneva Fushi, Jani's sister resort, is about 80 minutes away by speedboat, and there's also Soneva Kiri in Thailand).

They cater for guests who want a seven-star experience but an added, almost obsessive, regard for the environment.

From the purple cushion pads on our pedals so we could ride our bikes everywhere shoeless to the glass floor in the bathroom so you can watch the fish - no detail is overlooked.

Order cocktails and tapas at The Gathering bar while you chill out on a day bed or a catamaran net

In the 'gathering', the three-storeyed heart of the resort, there's a sushi room, a 24/7 home-made chocolate and ice-cream room with 50 flavours, and an overwater spa.

At So Starstruck, the resort's turreted open-air observatory, you can have dinner with resident astronomer Mike Dalley (low-light pollution means the Maldives is a magnet for astronomers from all over the world). A massive telescope emerges silently out of the glass floor.

A DIFFERENT ETHOS
The high-tech experience is the perfect foil to the resort's 'No Shoes, No News' ethos (you're given a beautiful linen bag to put your shoes in when you arrive and strongly urged not to put them on again until you leave).

As Bond-like as the telescope is the overwater 'silent' cinema, kitted out with divinely comfortable, yards-deep sofas and hammocks, where guests are provided with Bluetooth headphones.

An outdoor cinema experience you'll never forget

This helps not to disturb the giant mangrove crabs which are out in force as dusk falls.

Solar is a big part of the power source and fresh water is also produced on site, via the resort's own desalination system.

An extensive organic vegetable garden supplies most of the resort's produce. Maldivian cuisine is wonderful - especially a breakfast speciality called mashuni, a mixture of freshly-grated coconut, chilli and canned tuna. I didn't hold back on the basil and yogurt sorbet or focaccia bread and tapenade. But the mark of a truly amazing holiday is this - when I put on my 'real' clothes to go home, my jeans felt at least a size too large.

First published in the Daily Mail - October 2017

More articles below...

For more inspiration, read what travel writers have to say...