AZURA Bermuda — Hotel in Main Island

Expectation management and attitude are everything in customer service. In the hospitality industry, the guest experience is everything.||Azura has potential, and but there are a lot of rough edges, and the staff are not fully empowered to improve the guest experience. It felt like the hotel had just opened, and they prioritize the owners over the hotel guests. Value for price is not there.||The front desk team during our stay was friendly, approachable, and as helpful as they were permitted to be. They arranged taxis, dinner reservations, and provided useful information on how to navigate the public bus/ferry system. ||Beautiful grounds and expansive views of the ocean. Austere building exteriors. Small and few gathering spaces outside your room. Not fully accessible for persons with limited mobility or assistive devices. ||Small guest rooms prioritize the view with limited privacy - glass bathroom and outer walls really open the space, but require shade usage for toilet privacy and for privacy from adjacent room balconies. It was tough to entertain in the room, given the size and furnishings - and lack of public gathering spaces. A couple robe hooks in the bathroom would be great. The small wine fridge only cooled to 49F, so we could not store perishable food. Room service replaced the ice in the room ice bucket daily on their schedule, but not on demand. Our bedding smelled strongly of mildew, suggesting it was stored damp or wet - we had to ask 3 times over the course of several hours for it to be fully changed, and finally had to press the turn-down team to change it. We even offered to do it ourselves. The residence above our room had an exterior light on a darkness sensor - it illuminated our balcony and room and stayed on all night. The staff told us that they are not allowed to access private residences, so they could not extinguish the light. We could not enjoy the room after dark with the shades open - no star gazing in what could be a beautiful dark sky location. At this price point we expected more.||The restaurant is small, and requires stairs (no elevator). Thankfully, we received a tip that the breakfast plan is limited to 3 selections and more expensive than ordering a la carte from the menu. Breakfast and Dinner selections were delicious. The gluten-free guest in our party was able to find options on both menus. We did not eat lunch on the property. At this room price point, breakfast really should be included.||There is a grocery store a few bus stops toward Hamilton, but with the 49F wine fridge we couldn't even store real cream for our coffee. The gas station 5 minutes walk to the south had a decent selection for breakfast, and snacks. Prices, however, were comparable to the hotel restaurant. Grateful for the nespresso in the room, but would prefer half n half or cream to the artificial coffee mate.||Four pools, two with intermittent service. Beach is beautiful and accessible from 2 points. The hotel provided printed hurricane updates with turn-down service, mentioning the Ocean Pool Bar would be closed, but not the beach. We walked down one side and up the other to find a locked door and no wifi service to phone our friend or the front desk, requiring a walk back down and up the open pathway - the one-way from the flagpole down and back up to the locked door is approx 0.5 mile, and the elevation is 250 feet up and down. Not terrible, but expectation management! Ocean Pool concept and online photos are inviting, but it is murky and filled with debris. ||The hotel kindly emailed a hurricane operations policy in advance, which stated that should flights be cancelled and scheduled departure not possible, available rooms would be heavily discounted. We inquired "just in case" on the day prior to departure, and the heavy discount was more expensive than our original booking by a couple hundred dollars. The front desk agent was apologetic and exasperated with having to provide this obviously disappointing information to us.||Property is under construction in some areas. We were not bothered by noise in the room, but some exterior areas are affected. The hotel felt solid during the storm, and we enjoyed dinner without any impact and then slept right through the worst of it. ||We would stay again at a lower price point if some...

Pros- The hotel is new(er)- used to be the Surfside, they remodled it and added a new section and full restaurant in 2023. Staff are friendly Ocean pool is cool Beautiful of the Ocean Clean for the most part Good location- easy access by taxi/ driving to both sides of the ocean. In walking distance to the gas station ( which has food, beer, wine and liquor and "Lost in the Triangle" Restaurant). Received a nice birthday gift- bottle of Swizzle Turn down service was nice, except they forgot about us our last night.

Cons- Hotel is overpriced (as is everything in Bermuda, but this more so- $620 a night plus tax and gratuity- nothing included except 2 bottles of welcome water and turn down service if you request it) Our room was located right above the restaurant- their exhaust system was very poor, hence, it shot all the food smells and smoke right at our balcony- so we were unable to enjoy our outdoor space except for very early in the morning or very late at night. Staff were uninformed- we didn't get a detailed overview of the resort. We were given a map and told where the pools and restaurants were ( the same thing the map showed). We later learned through other reviews that their was a place to do laundry and cook. There was also a shower by one of the pools incase you checked out early or left late. We were also told during booking, as indicated on the website, that there was a concierge (this was an amenity, included in our rate), yet the only thing they did was call taxi's for us. We wanted to book a sailing tour and were given websites so we can book it ourselves. It would have been nice to discuss the options with a consierge, so we knew what we were signing up for- instead we got " cruise hell" on our tour- that's a different review. Restaurants were overpriced and had limited options... example $28 for eggs, toast, breakfast meat and potatoes. You can check the menus out on the website. They are not accessible. If you want to stay here and enjoy the amenities, you have to be able to walk and climb stairs; numerous stairs. One of the pools is by the cafe/bar, so you are swimming while ppl are sitting poolside eating- it's not a pool vibe, it's awkward. Their's a loud condenser by the pool/ bar. You can't even hear yourself think with it, so forget about relaxation. It's obnoxious and destroys and "Luxury" feeling you might have. The room and amenities were notjing soecial except for the beautiful ocean view. The bed was hard and pillows were synthetic. I've been to many Luxury hotels; there is always a pillow menu, and at the very least, a variety of pillows in the room already. Amenities in the room were basic; 2 robes, no slippers, a safe, a sewing kit, shower cap, Q-tip packet and toothbrush. There are not enough lounge chairs for guests at the pools. For example, after walking down 83 steps to get to the beach and Ocean pool, there were no empty chairs (16), so your choice was to walk back up and try a different pool, or sit on the ground. Luckily, the bartender allowed us to pit our stuff on one of the 4 pool bar chairs while we swam. The Palm pool is located outside of 2 what looked like private condos/buildings. It looked like it could have been a private pool for those 2 rooms. It seemed awkward to swim in someone's private area. This pool would probably be better served and marketed as a private pool suite. The Seascape pool has 8 chairs, a sauna and a shower room. The pool is very small, maybe 20'x8' and has steps leading up to an empty landing with a roof. It seems like this area may have been better suited as part of a Spa. Again, it's just awkwardly designed and doesn't make sense. Maybe that pool should be a cold plunge? I don't know... They market themselves at Luxury, but they have a long way to go. It seems like they are trying hard to make this a Luxury property, but are missing the mark in many areas. In order to be successful, there needs to be changes made all around, with a better...

I had an opportunity to stay at this hotel and here was my experience:

Pros: The property is stunning. It is intimate and charming which I tend to prefer than large, overcrowded and noisy hotels. And the ocean views from the hotel are spectacular. The hotel room was clean upon arrival and there were no major issues checking in. The food at the restaurant is super delicious and I enjoyed all the meals I had there.

Cons: Some of the rooms are not sound proof and unfortunately, the room next door to mine had a party with a lot of people so I was subjected to loud music, noise, chatting all night as they were having a party. I could not rest nor sleep and this party gathering went on late at night for days. Though I made many complaints about the noise from next door, I was only allowed to switch rooms at around 12 am which was quite inconvenient. The property does not really have a beach. You have to cross the sea water to get to the beach and you have to be very careful when doing this. You have to wait for the tide to be low to safely cross the water to get to a beach. If you want to go to the beach, you actually need to leave the property and walk to the beach so this not a true beach front hotel property. You have a view of the beach but a true beachfront is not easily accessible at this property unless you cross the sea during low tide. When the tide is high, it is very hard to get to the beach. Though the food at the hotel restaurant was very delicious, it was quite overpriced compared to food prices off the resort. Be prepared to spend $$$$ for food at the hotel. There are more affordable options off the resort. Even for luxury, the meal prices were unreasonable. Hotel front desk day staff could have been more helpful when I was having noise issues from next door. Some people go on vacation to relax and rest so being beside a room who wanted to party all night was not ideal. So if you want peace and quiet at this hotel, make sure to request a room that is not directly adjoined to another so you don’t hear the noise (avoid the 100 Rooms). I could even hear people cooking as their kitchen was next to the bed. That’s how thin the walls were. I would recommend getting a room on the 200 side which I got switched to and thankfully heard no noise (except for construction in the mornings and yes, there was construction happening at this hotel so during the day, you would hear it sometimes) . Also, the hotel is quite small so allowing people to have parties/large gatherings at this hotel is not super ideal as it will disturb others. And to the sweet elderly gentleman who worked the front desk at night and helped me to find a new room because of the noise and helped me move my luggage at 12 am...thank you so much for helping me when the other staff members ignored my complaints and would not. You are a gem!

Overall it was a decent stay but would have been better/excellent if the above issues were not present. For the price point, I...