Would give 3.5 if I could, beautiful but plenty of peeves
Sep 3, 2025 jwjg Auckland
A beautiful resort in a beautiful place, but a few peeves that could be so easily fixed.
1. Check in
They contact you a week in advance of arrival and ask you when you’re checking in. We were getting there at 2pm. We get the obligatory “we only guarantee your room at 4” response but why ask if you’re not going to try to accommodate? When we…
Read more
A beautiful resort in a beautiful place, but a few peeves that could be so easily fixed.
1. Check in
They contact you a week in advance of arrival and ask you when you’re checking in. We were getting there at 2pm. We get the obligatory “we only guarantee your room at 4” response but why ask if you’re not going to try to accommodate? When we arrive, we’re told the room isn’t ready but they will text us when it is. 4pm rolls around and no text. We go to the desk, the room is still unavailable. I say that’s not good enough and so they find us a different room. We get to our room about 4:30, late from the “guaranteed check in” time, not the same as the room we booked and no accommodation for what was not an unreasonable check in time, advised a week in advance. No real effort to apologise or make this up to us.
2. Car park
The self parking was a nightmare because the swipe card for the car park never worked ever. It wouldn’t work going in to the car park, it wouldn’t work going out of the carpark. You’d go and get it reprogrammed and it would work once and then fail again. Every time you pressed the buzzer to contact them they were bemused that this could ever happen. They charge USD49 per night for the privilege of self-parking. At that price you deserve an access card that works.
3. Room keys
They give you wrist bands for your room key. That’s great because you can use the pool and swim and not worry. But like the carpark access card, it’s one of those room keys that works on your actual room door about once in every 10 tries. It gets tiresome when you’re paying around USD1000 a night all up, to have to spend about a minute hoping that if you hold your wrist band a certain way your very expensive room might be available to you. Must do better here.
4. Housekeeping
There’s no ability to signal with a sign or anything when you want your room made up so you are at the mercy of the attendant. Our attendant decided to come between 4pm and 6pm every day. That’s very late in the day and a long time to spend with old towels and bedding. You should be able to signal you want an early room refresh, or they should just come at a reasonable time.
5. Food
For a resort this expensive you’d expect the food to be amazing. It was bland and often not that well prepared. The lobby bar is a mobile cart and only has cans of beer available, nothing on tap. The pizza truck serves pretty average pizza and the pool service food was cold when it arrived, bland and disappointing. Again, not what you expect for the price.
These peeves aside, the pools are beautiful and the location is stunning. But these peeves shouldn’t exist in a place where you’re paying these kind of prices.
We would be back, but I’d really hope not to have these experiences again. I’m pretty surprised I have to say that people who pay this kind of money put up with them.
Read less
