The return of luxury, once-in-a-lifetime holidays

Destinations such as the Maldives set to be popular as 2022 promises a return to long-haul travel

Article by Rachel Collins - The Irish Times 

“Would madam care for a glass of Champagne?” the charming flight attendant asks. Would I what? After nearly two years of working at home in a cramped spare room, trying to entertain a toddler through multiple lockdowns and not having escaped our island in what feels like an eternity, this could only be a rhetorical question. Yes, madam would most definitely care for a glass of Champagne, thank you very much.

This first taste of freedom is as delicious as the glass of bubbles, served onboard a Qatar Airways flight to the Maldives on a dark, miserable November morning. A small group of us have been invited to visit the impossibly beautiful archipelago of some 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean. We are heading for Kuramathi island, one of the roughly 350 inhabited or resort islands in this slice of paradise, which runs like a string of pearls for nearly 1,000km to the south west of India and Sri Lanka.

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