Guest User
March 1, 2024
Lovely room and bathroom (we had room 38). The air-conditioning unit was the quietest we have ever had. View from the window is a football pitch one way, restaurant terrace the other: not bad but not as good as the hotel description and other reviews suggest – there are a few trees at the top of the hotel plot but it’s not right next to the rainforest by any stretch, and being at high altitude it was very windy all the time we were there, so the upright chairs on the exposed roof terrace were not relaxing or even that warm. Everything about the hotel is very stylish. My husband was not impressed with the check-in procedure, which is done by scanning a QR code to go to a webpage where you type in all your details (again) yourself. He is very tech-savvy but it seemed unfriendly and remote, and a bit odd when there were staff there who could have just done it for us anyway. On the first evening we needed a snack before going out for a guided night-walk, so we went down to the hotel bar and ordered one portion of potato wedges and one plate of crostini. We had allowed forty minutes for choosing, ordering and eating, but the waiting and cooking service was so slow that when the food arrived we had less than five minutes to eat it and rush outside to find our transport. Breakfast the first morning was a complete fiasco. We arrived at the advertised start time and there were already at least twelve people in there, starting to eat. We were given a menu with just four choices on it, three of which were very similar and involved mainly eggs done in various ways. I chose the only option that mentioned fruit, which was pancakes with maple syrup. We had to wait fifteen minutes before a waiter took our order, because they were busy making sure everyone had coffee or tea before they could do anything else. We noticed the other people had a plate of fruit each but we were not told that everyone gets that. After our order was taken, we waited another ten minutes or so and then (at last) we were given a plate of fruit (one small slice of water melon, two or three very small pieces of pineapple and papaya, a two-inch chunk of banana, one segment of orange and a slice of star fruit). We watched as more guests arrived but very little food appeared for anyone. There were clearly some staffing problems as things improved slightly when a third person arrived to help the waiters, but by then the backlog was so big that there was no way they could catch up. No apology or explanation was offered at any time about the poor service. Two guests had to leave (to catch their tour transport) after they’d been there waiting for at least forty minutes – they were given something in a takeaway container, but don’t know whether that was just fruit). Eventually our cooked food arrived and we were so hungry by then (45 minutes after we had arrived) that it really seemed a very stingy amount. I had such a tiny amount of maple syrup there was no way it would cover the three pancakes, s