What each plan actually covers
HB (Half-Board): Breakfast and dinner included. Lunch, all drinks, snacks, and the minibar sit on your tab. This is the most common plan at mid-range and upper-mid resorts, which is why most first-time travellers end up comparing HB quotes.
The omission that catches people isn’t lunch — you can skip it or snack on what you brought. It’s the drinks at dinner. You sit down, order a bottle of water, a Diet Coke, and one glass of wine.
That’s $20–$40 added to your bill before you’ve looked at the menu. Two people, seven nights: your “budget” meal plan just added roughly $300 to your checkout total.
HB makes sense if you genuinely don’t drink much, treat the minibar as furniture, and the resort offers a la carte dinner pricing where you control what hits your bill. It also works if the resort has reasonable beverage pricing — which you should ask about before committing to HB.
FB (Full-Board): Breakfast, lunch, and dinner included. Drinks are still your tab unless the plan specifies otherwise.
FB fixes the lunch gap. It does not fix the drinks gap. If your daily routine includes a couple of beers by the pool, bottled water with every meal, and a glass of wine at dinner, your beverage bill may still outweigh the price difference between FB and all-inclusive.
Run the math against your own behaviour, not your aspirations.
Some resorts bundle non-alcoholic beverages under FB and label it “Full-Board Plus” or “FB Premium.” If you see a modifier on the FB label, ask what it modifies. The variation between resorts is significant enough that assuming any two FB plans are equivalent is a mistake.
AI (All-Inclusive): Three meals, snacks throughout the day, and a defined set of drinks included. Usually house-brand spirits, local beer, soft drinks, and sometimes a minibar restock. The plan most people assume means everything.
It doesn’t.
Premium spirits, imported wines, specialty coffees, fresh juices, champagne, and room service are nearly always excluded — regardless of the resort tier. The minibar restock may cover soft drinks only. Some resorts classify lobster, steak, or sushi as “premium dining items” that carry a surcharge even under AI.
The gap between what a resort calls all-inclusive and what a guest assumes it means is exactly where checkout tension lives. Every resort has an AI exclusions list. If an agency cannot produce it, they haven’t asked the right questions.
SAI (Soft All-Inclusive): The most misleading acronym in the Maldives. SAI typically means all meals plus non-alcoholic beverages only. No spirits, no beer, no wine.
Some resorts include one or two alcoholic drinks per day as a gesture. Some don’t include any.
SAI exists because resorts know two things: first, some guests want the inclusive experience without paying for alcohol they won’t consume. Second, certain source markets have cultural or religious preferences for alcohol-free holidays.
But here is the problem — SAI has no industry standard. Five resorts will give you five different SAI definitions.
Treat SAI as full-board with soft drinks included. Then check what a drink actually costs at that resort.
If a mocktail runs $14, the soft-drink inclusion may save you $30–$40 per day. It adds up.
The comparison most travellers miss
Here is where the HB surprise lives. Compare two scenarios for the same seven-night stay:
HB at $300/night plus a daily drinks spend of $40/person = $380/night actual. FB at $340/night plus the same $40/person drink spend = $420/night actual. AI at $400/night with drinks included = $400/night actual.
The plan with the highest quoted nightly rate is also the cheapest actual option. You can only see this once you run your own consumption math against the quote — not the brochure.
If you genuinely don’t drink and don’t snack between meals, HB or FB may be the cheaper choice. But if your holiday includes a few cocktails and afternoon beers, AI often closes the price gap faster than the headline numbers suggest.
Before you book
Ask the agency for a written breakdown of what each plan excludes. A vague answer — “most drinks are included” — is not good enough. A professional Maldivian agency can produce a detailed inclusion and exclusion sheet for any resort in their network.
Also ask what a drink actually costs at the resorts you are considering. A local beer at one resort is $6. At another, it’s $12.
That single data point changes the entire HB-versus-AI calculation.
The meal plan that costs less upfront is not always the plan that costs less at checkout. Know which one you actually bought.
HB looks cheaper on the quote. AI often wins on the final invoice. Run your own drinks math — and book the plan that matches your actual holiday, not the one in bold.