This a long review - for good reason. If you’re considering it’s worth persevering to the end.
You go on holiday to relax and forget about day-to-day pressures. You book a 5* resort to be pampered like a celebrity. Which means you shouldn’t book Vijitt. It may have been a 5.* resort once (2008) but not now - 3* or 3.5* at best.
Where to start? The shower might be a good example of what’s wrong.
The shower room is external. Yes, outside.
The shower room isn’t a room because it’s not enclosed, it has walls that stop before the ceiling/roof and a an overhang leaning-to acting as a ‘covering roof’.
So yes it’s open to the elements.
Should be idyllic until you step outside onto the decking floor, which is not decking as we know it, but planks laid very close together, i.e. gaps between the planks for things like toes to get caught on or stubbed where planks aren’t butted up/flat.
Leaves and debris fall & blow in easily and the shower floor is not cleaned daily so it just accumulates more debris.
The shower soap attracts all the insect life so reaching in to the recess to take out the bottle risks getting bitten at worst or releases a cloud of insects at best.
The shower room is an idea that the architect thought sounded idyllic but has been delivered as a poor substitute, left and forgotten by the cleaning and maintenance crews.
And finally, would you want to take a warm shower outside in the evening when you need to turn on the light which of course attracts the mosquitos that love light, warmth and dampness?
I don’t need to go on (any more) you get the picture. A long overview of what is seemingly a small part of the hotel and room, but illustrates the whole resort - a good idea failing to deliver.
Basically it’s worn and grubby, with rooms featuring cracked floor tiles, dirty & stained cushions, dirty furniture, shoddy repairs, lights askew, blown bulbs that need replacing, patios that are never swept, dead insects on mosquito curtains/nets around the bed, rooms that are given cursory cleans….. It’s not dirty or unhealthy just run down and in need of several years maintenance, repairs and cleaning. A massive dollop of TLC.
Staff are really nice and when you ask them to do something that should have been done e.g. clean the room, they are beside themselves to get it sorted. Problem is you shouldn’t need to ask every day for something. Room clean, new towels, pool patio sweeping etc. Tea and coffee in a 2 person room - 2 x teabags one English breakfast and one earl grey - you end up trekking to the restaurant to get more. I can do this but not when I’m expecting (and paying for) a 5* experience.
Staff speak passable English phrases but but don’t understand English. E.g. the difference between white wine & red, on more than 1 occasion. And examples like “We’ll have the miniature dessert sampler mixture for 2” had the response “do you both want this?”. The answer is in the name of the dessert. Food is average at best, resort is jaded & worn & staff while friendly don’t appear to have been trained. Asking to see the dessert menu a) shouldn’t have to be a requirement and b) implies you want to order, not just look at it and then have to grab their attention again to order.
To top it all the resort requires golf buggies to get around ands on the first (and sub sequent) day/s we asked for a biggie to get to dinner only to be told it will be a long wait because they only had one driver. Once is an annoyance every time is unacceptable. Yes you can walk but in 35+C and humidity off the scale nobody wants to walk up and down resort hills just to get to dinner ending up looking like a damp rag.
Things that annoyed:
- sliding doors that didn’t’t seal and let Mozies in
- bathroom window that didn’t close and let mozies…
- Shower door that didn’t close…
- External shower
- 5* rating when it’s not
- Buggies
- English
It’s a real shame because a)I don’t like leaving negative reviews and b) I’m sure it could be great it’s just too old, too tired, in need of major investment/maintenance and sets 5* expectations that are just not met.
