Pricing Seasonality

 

A trip to the Maldives is often one planned months in advance and as one starts to investigate you quickly note that the prices vary dramatically according to the time of year. This pricing seasonality is fairly typical in the travel business with high seasons and off seasons and airline prices varying by all sorts of considerations. While there is officially a ‘rainy’ season between May and October, as you can see from our post on climate, the average hours of daily sunshine varies little and the Maldives have lots of if not predominantly glorious weather even at this time of year.

Maldives Complete has gathered up all of the published rates for the UK tour operators serving the Maldives (Kuoni, Hayes and Jarvis, Thomas Cook, Thompson, Seasons in Style and Cosmos) and averaged up their prices for each month which is shown in the above graph. Note that these are published ‘rack rates’ and often deals and promotions can be found which will be discounted off these. The basic analysis shows February, June and November to be the least expensive times to visit and January, March and July the priciest.

Satellite Views

Virtual Earth and Google Earth provide useful and sometimes stunning images from above of the Maldives to provide a sense of where you are heading to.  But often the images are months if not years old.  If you want the uber-birds-eye view, especially to see what the weather is looking like, check out Eumetsat hourly satellite photography online for a peek at the (usually) blue skies awaiting you.  The ‘Southern Asia’ (which covers the Maldives) colour photos are found here.  If you select the ‘Play’ option, then the site goes through the pictures in sequence to provide an animation of the weather movements.

Air and Water Temperature

People often ask when the best time of year to go to the Maldives is for the best weather.  As you can see from the chart above, provided courtesy of Hayes & Jarvis Maldives catalogue, there really is no bad time of year.  January through April is the sunniest and driest, but we have visited all year round and have always found the weather consistently brilliant.  As you can see from the temperature chart (orange bars), the air temperature average varies a total of 4 degrees between 84 and 88 degree Fahrenheit (29 to 31 degree Celsuis).

One of the luxuries of the distinctive Maldive turquoise lagoons and colourful reefs is the very comfortable water temperature.  It makes snorkelling and swimming especially comfortable and reduces the equipment fuss for diving as often one can dive in just a swimsuit and no wetsuit.  However, the water temperature does vary a bit more from a low of 75 to a high of 81 Fahrenheit (24 to 27 degrees Celsuis).