Hotel Thermal Ranomafana — Hotel in Ranomafana

This is supposed to be one of the best hotels in Ranomafana but our experience was pretty poor. All staff members were very disengaged, and came across like the customers were just a hassle. Our room was on the first floor and it was extremely hot. The welcome book says how you can reduce the impact and asks you to use a fan instead of AC, which we attempted, but sleeping in that heat just wasn't possible. We stayed a couple of nights, and there wasn't any housekeeping even to tidy the bed or wipe the bathroom. One small roll of toilet paper and no hairdryer. There was no mosquito net, so we used our own. There were holes between the floor and the wall in the bathroom, through which geckos, massive cockroaches and smaller insects were coming in.|The breakfast is served from 6:30 and dinner between 19 and 22, these times don't match what is in the welcome booklet in the room. Despite the hotel being advised in advance we were vegan, no effort has been made to accommodate our dietary requirements. We ended up with plain rice or pasta with two spoonfull of tomato sauce. Ones we ordered risotto which was basically plain rice with tiny amount of mushroom through it, and looked nothing like risotto. Veg soup was the best of all. Meat options on the other hand looked better. |Breakfast is a set menu. They just bring stuff to your table without showing you the menu, so we had to send stuff back and explain every day to staff member what we don't eat. For vegans: only bread and jam available. |On the positive: room was spacious and you can take walks directly...

Hotel Thermal Ranomofana was a lovely place to spend 2 nights. The staff were very friendly, welcoming, and did a really great job speaking English with us where there were language gaps. The room was clean, spacious, large shower with good water pressure, and free of any bugs. On site laundry was excellent. The property itself is beautiful with a large garden to explore and even included a small gym which we appreciated. Our massages were lovely and the hot spring/hot tub was really nice as well.

Be aware that this is a very remote area so although they do offer WiFi and payment by credit card we were concerned to find that upon check out they could not offer credit card payment as all WiFi in the area was out. We carried as much cash as our bank would allow from the previous ATM but still did not have enough of their currency to handle this issue. Fortunately our guide was able to assist until we were in the next town with ATM but had I known this was going to be the case and the lack of access to ATMs across the county I would have taken more money out prior to arriving in Madagascar to begin with. We also learned that American cash is not generally accepted which has not been the case for us anywhere else we’ve had the privilege to travel.

Overall we loved our stay and our lesson has been learned about carrying a lot more cash than we ever anticipated but that was the one bad note we had leaving the hotel as we felt awkward/bad for the situation.

Definitely our favorite place we have stayed so far on this...

Our room was comfortable, and the bathroom provided a wide vanity with a large sink. The AC worked well. Unfortunately, service was consistently poor. For example, when we arrived there was one hand towel in the bathroom. The next day, when we returned from our morning hike, there was no hand towel, just two bath towels. The following day the same result, but we could see that the adjacent room had two bath towels and two hand towels, so ... On our second evening when my wife tried to shower there was no water pressure. I had to go to the front desk and alert them to this problem. It was remedied in 5-8 minutes but ... On our last evening my wife showered first and when it wa my turn there was no hot water, possibly because many other guests were showering at the same time. The dinner menus were printed with French on one side and English on the facing page, but for lunch on Saturday and Sunday, both aide of the menu were in French, an obvious error. On our last day my wife discovered a trail of ants crawling along an 8 foot path on the wall behind our bed. The separate menu that lists beverages showed Coke, Fanta, and Sprite, but none of these were available; instead there were generic substitutes. Apparently this has been an issue for hotels in Madagascar for a while, but the staff didn't feel it worthwhile to reprint the list to reflect the changes. Overall, It's har to recommend this (purportedly) 3-star hotel given the many miscues...