A simply beautiful location, but in some ways its amateur in its approach. We booked this one for the last few nights of our holiday, having heard it to be ‘The Maldives of Dubai’. The scenery and ambiance is stunning and certainly delivered on that image.
Transfer – you have to travel to the island by boat which wasn’t included in the original room rate/ Surprised then that our transfer wasn’t a luxury yacht but more a little fishing boat!
We were greeted by about 3 members of staff with a half hearted welcome clap and bongo’s (cute – but a bit mediocore)...
The good bits:
Check In - easy, having done most of it at the Welcome Centre on the mainland.
Room Upgrade – we were given a ‘free’ room upgrade to a villa with a pool and beach access in honour of it being my birthday, thank you thank you thank you.
The Beds – super comfy.
Room comfort and space
I enjoyed breakfast at Qamar – plenty of choice and again a beautiful location with views of the Palm.
What lets this place down:
Food Quality – We ate most meals at Helios which was amateur at best, the pizza bases were soggy, with having to return the first one as un-edible. But sad to experience it wasn’t a one off.
We were asked to sign a waiver if we chose to have our beef cooked medium (can’t say I’d ever experienced that before!)
Half Board doesn’t include soft drinks at meal times – that was okay, but to even charge guests for water is simply not acceptable.
Luna – we chose to use this restaurant on one night. We were the only guests there! Food was okay, but obviously zero ambiance, staff lacked experience. We were then surprised with the food cost at the end of the stay, later being told this restaurant isn’t included in the half board package. (I don’t understand why even have the restaurant there).
Watersports – the cost of these were incredibly high, and so we saw no one using them. I turned up at 930am one morning to paddle board and the staff hadn’t even arrived and had to be called in by the lifeguard.
The staff are all lovely, some certainly less experienced than others, and I would say sometimes they mis-judged the expectations of their clients. One our first day the door / phone didn’t stop ringing for people wanting to offer us cleaning (we’d only just arrived) or arrange what time we wanted dinner. Disappointed that some basic courtesy gestures were missing: We had no ‘thank you for choosing us’ ‘have you enjoyed your stay’ as we left.
The transfer boat times are limited and to return we had to take an early boat at 6am. We were provided with a very small offering of a ‘takeaway’ breakfast. This time, the boat was even more basic, the captain was late, there was no life jackets on board and due to the weather, I did at times wonder if we’d even reach mainline in one piece.
In summary, it’s an aesthetically pleasing place to visit that works hard to create visual paradise. But its approach is both over priced and amateurish that sadly left us feeling that next time, we’ll head to Bali or Maldives for the real thing.
