Grand Pacific Hotel — Hotel in Viti Levu

We recently completed a 4 night stay at GPH. We are in Suva because my wife had a meeting at the Fiji Museum. We could have stayed anywhere but chose GPH for a treat because it was also our wedding anniversary. We regret that choice.

First a couple of positives. The staff are lovely and trying to be helpful. The buffet dinner on the first night (Saturday) was very good and on that occasion the chef accommodated my wife's dietary needs.

Now the rest of the experience:

There were issues with our rooms - one resulting in 2 nights of broken sleep. The problems were fixed, but the effort required to get them fixed was exhausting. When I explained it was our anniversary Nancy offered us dinner and a special cocktail which we accepted.

The cocktail was lovely. The best thing I can say about the dinner is that it was free. Now for the main reason for this review, the alleged "fine dining" experience.

We were only expecting dinner on the terrace. We were pleasantly surprised to be shown into the Prince Albert room which is supposed to be their fine dining option. Sadly, over the next 2 excruciating hours we were served the most appalling dross.

Again, the server was lovely and carefully noted my wife's dietary needs: no chilli, garlic or onion. Chilli in particular makes her violently ill.

The issues started with the bread. It was toasted but cold. I suspect it was left over from breakfast.

Entrees: I had spinach & ricotta cannelloni in napoli sauce. It was cold. My wife had watermelon in balsamic with ricotta - about 7 or 8 rough cubes of watermelon still with seeds in. The balsamic was hard little balls that I thought were small seeds. The ricotta had been marinated in something which often means garlic but we could not get a straight answer on that.

Mains: I had tuna encrusted in sesame seeds with sweet potato mash. The tuna was dry, overcooked and everything was cold. Canned tuna would have been better. The tuna on the salad nicoise at the Holiday Inn next door the night before was far superior. My wife had snapper. The 1st serve presented to her had half a chilli in the garnish and had to be sent back. The 2nd dish came out suspiciously quickly after that. To call it overcooked would be an understatement. It was dry, chewy and inedible. The 'crispy' skin was soft and had a 'hot' (spicy) taste that may have been chilli. Again, the grilled fish at the Holiday Inn the following night was far superior. It is no exaggeration to say that the snapper should have been put in the bin and not on a plate.

Dessert: My wife ordered banana creme brulee. I chose plantain in coconut but after 10 minutes or so was told it wasn't available. This is a supposed fine dining venue with only 2 people present and 1 of the dessert options is not available? I went with the creme brulee as well. We both had 2 small tastes and pushed it away as the custard tasted odd. The toffee on top should have been warm but was stone cold.

I ate my meal because I was hungry. My wife could not eat hers at all. I do not believe anything we were served was freshly made. It was clearly made hours - if not days - in advance. I did not complain at the time as it was our anniversary and I was trying to save the evening.

This was not fine dining. It was not even regular dining. They charge FJD125 (AUD80) a head for this dross. I have nothing to gain by posting this review as the meal was free. If I had been paying I would not have paid.

I did not express my disappointment the next day, but it must have been obvious as my wife did not eat anything and neither of us ate the dessert. However the next day the front desk called to ask if there was anything at all they could do to make our stay better so I believe they knew. We just...

I’ve always considered the Grand Pacific Hotel an incredible place and have loved visiting every single time. The food at the bar, the drinks by the poolside, and the serene ocean view paired with the scenic sunsets are absolutely breathtaking. These experiences are why I keep coming back and will continue to visit this iconic hotel.

However, my review is solely based on my first experience with their dinner buffet, and unfortunately, it was nothing short of disappointing. My excitement turned into utter dissatisfaction, especially since this evening held sentimental value—I reunited with a dear friend after years and hoped for a lovely dinner to match the occasion. Instead, the buffet’s poor quality left us thoroughly disappointed, dampening the entire evening.

The food options at the buffet were extremely limited, and the quality of what was offered fell far below the standards expected from such a renowned establishment. To highlight specifics, the tomato basil soup and the cheesecake from the dessert section were the only redeeming items. Everything else was simply subpar and felt like a waste of money. It’s frustrating to pay for a buffet meal that doesn’t even come close to meeting the expectations set by the Grand Pacific Hotel’s otherwise stellar reputation.

Some glaring issues stood out:

(1) Lack of Bread Accompaniments for Soup: The soup was decent but came with cold bread options instead of toasted bread, which was a letdown.

(2) Limited and Illogical Curry Options: There were only two curries—paneer tikka masala and chicken curry—but no rice. It’s baffling to serve curries without rice at a buffet. The only available carb was Dalo, which felt completely out of place and impractical for the dishes served.

(3) Poorly Prepared Fish: The fish was bland, with a fishy aftertaste, and tasted like it had merely been boiled and covered in barbecue sauce. It was unpleasant and seemed poorly thought out. In fact, this dish solely destroyed my entire appetite for the night.

(4) Overall Mediocre Food Quality: Beyond the soup and cheesecake, every item tasted failed to meet even basic standards of flavor and preparation.

The experience was even more disheartening because the buffet fell short of the Grand Pacific Hotel’s well-earned reputation for quality. It was a stark contrast to the excellence I’ve always experienced at their bar and poolside dining.

One silver lining in this otherwise terrible experience was the exceptional service provided by one staff member, Mereseini. She was attentive, understanding, and promptly relayed our feedback to the manager. Her professionalism and genuine care for our experience were commendable, and I truly appreciate her efforts to address our disappointment.

To summarize, while I remain a loyal customer of the Grand Pacific Hotel and will continue to enjoy their other amenities, I will never recommend the dinner buffet to anyone. In fact, this may be why there was barely anyone there at the buffet! It was a deeply disappointing experience that tarnished an otherwise special evening. For a brand of this stature, I expected much more, and I hope they take feedback like this seriously to ensure no other customer faces the same.

Thank you again to Mereseini for her outstanding service, but the buffet needs a major overhaul to align with the Grand Pacific Hotel’s...

The original hotel is a lovely, well preserved historical building in a great seafront location. Service is generally warm and polite, everyone smiling and willing to help but definitely some confusion about some things, maybe because it is relatively newly rebranded to the IHG chain. The room was spacious and nice, great views of the harbour but do note that there is a new section and a "heritage" part which is the original building, I was in the new part so I can't comment on the other rooms. The new section was nice enough and apparently recently renovated (some rooms still appeared under construction) , comfortable and modern if not a bit generic. If we return I would choose the heritage wing to see if the rooms have more personality. Our room was listed as a "separate bath and shower" when in fact there was no bathtub. Oddly, there was a large empty rectangular spot in the bathroom that seemed to serve no purpose so I guess that's where the bathtub was designed to be but they were running over budget on the renovations so decided to leave it out? They had nice plush robes and towels, and slippers (too small though) provided. The bed was not very comfortable, too springy and squishy. Seemed new but just not high quality.||The biggest weak point for the hotel is the breakfast. Just not five star worthy at all. Rather small selection of cooked food on the buffet, and especially as a vegetarian there was very little to offer as most cooked dishes were meat. It's a bit surprising in a country that is about 40% Indian and many of them vegetarian that they offered so little. It would have been great to have a veg curry or dal and roti on offer, even better to have the chef make fresh dosas- but he said they do not do anything like that, just eggs. One day they did have some Chinese-ish vegetable lo mein, but it was really quite terrible (not a complicated dish). It was dry, undercooked and tasteless. We travel a lot in Asia and even in a two star hotel in China you'd get better noodles than that. The "hot" food was also only lukewarm, even first thing in the morning. Also the rice noodle station ingredients were similarly poor and bland. And the chef would reach across into the toppings dishes on the side for guests with his bare hands- using gloves or utensils would be much more what I'd expect at a higher end establishment. To their credit, they did have a respectable salad bar with some tasty sesame dressing and various vegetables, nuts and local fruits- however each day there was some fruit or lettuce or other items that were turning brown or overripe and had to be avoided. No attention to details and food quality. Also they had the cheapest supermarket type of little packs of jam and peanut butter, nothing freshly made, and a sad looking little cheese selection with a few slices of low end cheese from a package. Sorry the breakfast overall just needs a lot of improvement to match the caliber of the rest of the hotel and the pricetag. It felt surprisingly out of synch with the rest of the hotel experience. We did not try other meals because breakfast was so disappointing.||Overall, I'd give the hotel four stars for the excellent location, historical charm and friendly service but if you don't have your breakfast included I suggest to...