Bahamas vs Maldives

Cost

Bahamas, checked 7 September 2026: an inexpensive restaurant meal $48.75; a three-course dinner for two at a mid-range restaurant $165; a pint of domestic draught $5. The Bahamian dollar is pegged to and interchangeable with the US dollar.

For the Maldives we have no usable figure. Resort-island pricing is a closed market and diverges sharply from national averages, so a Malé restaurant price does not describe a resort meal and this page will not pretend otherwise.

The Bahamas is one of the most expensive places to eat in this directory, and it is the one of these two we can actually price.

Getting there

Nassau is the principal gateway; several Out Islands have their own airports and some take direct US service in season. The Bahamas needs a passport valid six months, a return or onward ticket, hotel confirmation or an address, and proof of funds. Visa requirements track the period of leave to land, so anyone staying beyond 90 days should check their nationality. US citizens entering as bona fide visitors may stay up to eight months without a visa; Canadian landed immigrants holding Form 1000 may enter visa-free for up to 30 days.

Everything international routes through Velana at Malé. Speedboat is the norm for resorts near the airport; anything further out is a seaplane or one of the several daily domestic flights to twelve regional airports, then a speedboat. The Maldives gives a free 30-day visa on arrival to every nationality except Israeli passport holders, but the conditions are enforced: a machine-readable passport valid at least a month, a confirmed onward ticket, a prepaid booking at a registered resort or hotel, and either proof of funds — US$100 plus $50 per day — or that reservation. A Traveller Declaration must be submitted online within 96 hours before arrival.

The beaches

Both trade on water colour and they produce it differently.

The Bahamas sits on very large shallow banks — that is why so much of it reads turquoise from the air, across distances no single reef could cover. The Maldives is atoll geometry: a ring of reef around a lagoon, at a much smaller scale but with the reef right at the sand.

We have no sourced beach-level data for either yet, so this page describes the geology rather than ranking beaches.

In this directory: Bahamas has 1 beach listed, 0 rated calm for swimming. Maldives has 10, 10 calm.

In the water

The Maldives sits around 28.3°C to 30°C across the year, warmest in April, and never drops below a comfortable swimming temperature.

The Bahamas is warm for most of the year but cooler in winter than the equatorial destinations in this directory — it sits well north of them. No sourced monthly figures, so no numbers claimed, but the seasonal swing is real there and absent in the Maldives.

When to go

The Bahamas is best December through May, outside a hurricane season that runs June through November. Many Bahamian hotels carry hurricane cancellation policies giving a full refund if a storm disrupts the trip.

The Maldives runs on the north-east monsoon, November to April, which is the generally sunny dry season; the meteorological service dates the true dry season more narrowly, January to March. The south-west monsoon, mid-May to November, is wetter and windier — but most days in it are still sunny, prices fall, and it is when Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll draws manta rays.

December to April suits both, which makes this one of the easier pairs to schedule.

Beyond the beach

Neither is a cultural destination at scale, but the Bahamas has more to move between — Nassau as a developed centre and Out Islands with their own character.

A Maldives resort island has what the resort has, which is the point for some people and the objection for others.