Grand Lagoi Hotel Bintan — Hotel in Bintan Island

Me and my friends stayed here 3D2N. Overall would be a three star stay.|Location: 5/5 - near to beach, shopping centre and the Lost In Scale Park||Amenities: 4/5 - Gym which was supposed to be open at 7am was not ready, swimming pool also not yet ready, they have bicycles for rental. ||Food: 5/5 - wide variety of international cuisine for breakfast ranging from Indonesian traditional food to oriental cuisine to western cuisine available, even bihun soup and porridge for warming sensitive stomach.|At night their rooftop bar has great view plus hotpot and grill available. Can try their Tom yum base for hotpot||Room: 3/5 - will give a four for size of room and cleanliness not a full 5 as there are still some stains. Also, deduct another point due to the soundproofing really cannot make it as even the tv in the room beside ours can hear, plus the fact that there was a company group that came during that weekend, the whole two nights that group was rowdy till 2am resulting in loss of sleep. ||Service: 4/5 - started as a two star service as the person suppose to be picking us up from the ferry terminal mix us up with the company and ask us to wait with the company group for a WHOLE of 30 mins. Even worse when they ACTUALLY FORGET US behind and even made excuse that they didn’t forget us just that they arrange another transport to arrive later, no apologies. Even worse, we arrive after that company group and the front counter wanted us to wait for the WHOLE company group of 30 pax to check in FIRST which means another close to an hour wait. As my face grew blacker and blacker after waiting 15mins, that is when a service crew, Ms Gina, understood my dilemma came to the rescue. She helped us explain the situation to the front counter who proceed to help us to expedite our check in process, all the while not apologizing but explaining that they as a company group hence actually WAIT awhile more will very fast check us in. I had to remind him that it was due to the hotel oversight that we were left behind and had arrived later not earlier by almost an hour late and we had not eaten lunch but waited for another 15mins not to be berated for not waiting. Which then he proceed to quietly check us in. |The reason why later on I gave a four stars is because despite the front counter, the service provided by both breakfast buffet service crew and the housekeeping team are superb. The breakfast crew are super friendly and polite, plus will provide recommendations as to what to try. The housekeeping team would ensure the cleanliness of the rooms daily with supplies stocked up and greet guests in the corridor in the morning. Both the breakfast crew and housekeeping team made us feels welcome...

Me and my friends stayed here 3D2N. Overall would be a three star stay. Location: 5/5 - near to beach, shopping centre and the Lost In Scale Park

Amenities: 4/5 - Gym which was supposed to be open at 7am was not ready, swimming pool also not yet ready, they have bicycles for rental.

Food: 5/5 - wide variety of international cuisine for breakfast ranging from Indonesian traditional food to oriental cuisine to western cuisine available, even bihun soup and porridge for warming sensitive stomach. At night their rooftop bar has great view plus hotpot and grill available. Can try their Tom yum base for hotpot

Room: 3/5 - will give a four for size of room and cleanliness not a full 5 as there are still some stains. Also, deduct another point due to the soundproofing really cannot make it as even the tv in the room beside ours can hear, plus the fact that there was a company group that came during that weekend, the whole two nights that group was rowdy till 2am resulting in loss of sleep.

Service: 4/5 - started as a two star service as the person suppose to be picking us up from the ferry terminal mix us up with the company and ask us to wait with the company group for a WHOLE of 30 mins. Even worse when they ACTUALLY FORGET US behind and even made excuse that they didn’t forget us just that they arrange another transport to arrive later, no apologies. Even worse, we arrive after that company group and the front counter wanted us to wait for the WHOLE company group of 30 pax to check in FIRST which means another close to an hour wait. As my face grew blacker and blacker after waiting 15mins, that is when a service crew, Ms Gina, understood my dilemma came to the rescue. She helped us explain the situation to the front counter who proceed to help us to expedite our check in process, all the while not apologizing but explaining that they as a company group hence actually WAIT awhile more will very fast check us in. I had to remind him that it was due to the hotel oversight that we were left behind and had arrived later not earlier by almost an hour late and we had not eaten lunch but waited for another 15mins not to be berated for not waiting. Which then he proceed to quietly check us in. The reason why later on I gave a four stars is because despite the front counter, the service provided by both breakfast buffet service crew and the housekeeping team are superb. The breakfast crew are super friendly and polite, plus will provide recommendations as to what to try. The housekeeping team would ensure the cleanliness of the rooms daily with supplies stocked up and greet guests in the corridor in the morning. Both the breakfast crew and housekeeping team made us feels welcome...

Let me start with positives - staff of this hotel was super friendly, always smiling and helping you when needed. By far the best hotel staff I've seen. Congrats. Next, breakfast buffet and served food was really high quality, where you could always find variety of different dishes, including rice, pasta, sushi, meats, soups, etc. A lot to suit your needs. Rooms were tidy, rooftop pool has a great view towards the sea and there is quite nice indoor kids playground. If this is all you're looking for consider my review to give 4 out of 5 stars.

So why did I give only 2? Because, the hotel managers are not willing to let potential guests know that you might not be able to use close by beach at all due to black tar oil floating in the sea and laying on the sand. Believe me, you don't want to step on that or touch it with your bare skin - you will end up washing and rubbing your feet for an hour. It's super sticky and does not come off easily.

I talked to Resident Manager Andrea and I fully agree that the beach is not the hotel's property, but I will not accept withholding information about the beach being unusable. This hotel will never inform you via its website nor facebook page that black tar oil is currently there, which is happening mostly during monsun season. (The ships arriving to Singapore port are apparently cleaning their tanks by dumping old oil to the water, this was not a one time thing).

I chose this hotel not only for its amenities but also for the beach that I intended to use, but I couldn't, and at the time of booking my stay the beach was spoiled and they must have know that.

There were few others problems, that I could live with, but maybe it is something important to you so here you go: there were small ants coming from under the sink, but going to tropical country you need to accept increased amount of insects black tiles at the rooftop pool were super slippery, as a workaround they glued this black/yellow tape to improve grip, however it is covered with sandpaper on which my son tore some of his skin when he fell hotel surrounding are not developed at all, with some old half contracted buildings and rust visible out from your window. Even hotel's back yard looks like it was forgotten few years back hotel's room was leaking...