The story behind 2025
Gold Recognition for Best in Maldives
In 2025, Aurora Travel received Gold at the Travel Weekly Magellan Awards for its “Best in Maldives” entry in the Individual Travel Advisor – Overall-Service category.
For Aurora Travel, few award titles could reflect our identity more naturally. The Maldives has become the destination around which we have built an exceptional depth of first-hand knowledge, long-standing resort relationships and a highly personalised approach to travel planning.
The Gold Magellan therefore represents more than another addition to our Hall of Fame. It recognises the service behind what we have spent years developing: helping travellers navigate one of the world's most extraordinary — and surprisingly complex — resort destinations.
About the Travel Weekly Magellan Awards
The Travel Weekly Magellan Awards recognise outstanding work across a broad range of sectors within the travel industry, including airlines and airports, cruise lines, destinations, hospitality, tour operators, travel services, and travel advisors and agencies.
The programme is organised by Travel Weekly, a professional travel-industry publication, and the 2025 edition marked the 18th annual Magellan Awards.
Importantly, the Magellan Awards do not operate as a conventional competition in which entries are simply ranked against one another. According to Travel Weekly's official methodology, entries are evaluated individually against a standard of excellence, taking into account the category in which they are entered. This means a category may contain multiple Gold or Silver recipients — or no recipients at all.
For the 2025 awards, entries were assessed by a panel of 19 experienced travel-industry authorities. Judges did not evaluate categories in sectors in which they currently worked or had previously worked. Travel Weekly states that judges considered factors including the relevance of an entry to its sector, the quality of its supporting elements and whether the submission was appealing or intriguing.
The scoring system provides useful context for the distinction between Gold and Silver. Entries receiving scores between 90 and 100 were awarded Gold, while entries scoring from 80 to 90 received Silver recognition. Travel Weekly described Gold-level entries as clearly excellent and among the strongest work evaluated against its standard.
Aurora Travel — Best in Maldives
Within the 2025 Travel Advisors/Agencies results, Aurora Travel's “Best in Maldives” entry received Gold in Individual Travel Advisor – Overall-Service. The same entry also received Silver in Individual Travel Advisor – Overall-Travel Agent Innovation.
The Gold recognition is particularly meaningful because service is at the heart of Aurora's approach to the Maldives.
Choosing a Maldives resort can appear simple at first. Hundreds of islands offer white beaches, turquoise lagoons and overwater villas. But behind those similarities are enormous differences.
One island may have an exceptional house reef while another is defined by its lagoon. Some resorts are ideal for families, others for honeymoons or privacy. One traveller may prioritise gastronomy and a broad choice of restaurants; another may care most about marine life, diving, manta encounters, a spectacular beach or the atmosphere of a small barefoot island.
Even two resorts in a similar price category can deliver completely different experiences.
That is why our philosophy has never been based on simply identifying the most expensive or most famous resort.
There is no single “best resort” in the Maldives. There is only the resort that is right for you.
Finding that resort requires more than hotel descriptions and photographs. It requires understanding both the traveller and the destination.
First-Hand Knowledge Behind the Service
Aurora's Maldives expertise has been built through extensive first-hand experience of the destination.
Our team has personally visited more than 150 Maldives resorts and islands, and we continue to inspect more than 30 every year. These visits allow us to experience the differences that are often difficult to understand from a brochure or booking platform alone — from beaches, lagoons and house reefs to villa locations, restaurants, transfer experiences, atmosphere and the way a resort actually feels once you arrive.
This knowledge becomes particularly valuable during the planning process.
Rather than beginning with a predetermined hotel, we can start with the traveller: honeymoon or family holiday, active or peaceful, intimate or lively, extraordinary house reef or expansive lagoon, gastronomy or marine life, beach villa or overwater villa, exceptional value or uncompromising luxury.
The objective is not simply to book a Maldives resort.
It is to find the right island for the person travelling.
Receiving a Gold Magellan for “Best in Maldives” in the Overall-Service category gives this philosophy an important external point of recognition. It connects Aurora's Maldives specialisation with the part of our work that matters most to our guests: the service and expertise behind their journey.
What it means to our guests
What it means to our guests A Gold Magellan does not mean that one travel agency or one Maldives resort is automatically right for every traveller. What it provides is an independent point of recognition for the service behind Aurora Travel's Maldives expertise. Our “Best in Maldives” entry received Gold in the Overall-Service category, following evaluation against Travel Weekly's established standard of excellence. For our guests, this is especially relevant because service is where specialist destination knowledge becomes personally useful. Planning a Maldives holiday often involves choices that are difficult to make from photographs alone. Which island has the better house reef? Is a large lagoon more important than immediate reef access? Which villa category has the best location? Is the resort genuinely suitable for teenagers? How extensive is the restaurant choice? Does the atmosphere match a honeymoon, a family holiday or a quiet escape? These are precisely the questions where first-hand experience matters. Having personally experienced more than 150 Maldives resorts and islands allows our team to look beyond star ratings and marketing descriptions and focus on the differences that can determine whether a particular resort is right for a particular guest. Our role is therefore not simply to present a collection of Maldives hotels. It is to understand what matters to each traveller and use our experience to narrow hundreds of possibilities into a carefully considered recommendation. For our guests, the 2025 Gold Magellan represents recognition of the service philosophy behind that process: personal attention, first-hand Maldives knowledge and a recommendation built around the traveller rather than the hotel.
- Gold recognition in the 2025 Travel Weekly Magellan Awards
- Awarded for “Best in Maldives” in the Overall-Service category
- Dedicated Maldives specialist with extensive destination expertise
- 150+ Maldives resorts and islands personally visited
- 30+ resort visits and inspections every year
- Personalised resort matching based on individual travel preferences
- First-hand guidance on islands, villas, house reefs, lagoons, gastronomy and resort atmosphere
- Personal support throughout the Maldives travel experience
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