Club Med Cherating - Malaysia — Hotel in Pahang

I'm very disappointed with this high reputation Resort Hotel. As we were coming into the place, It is beautiful. Driving up to the lobby, we were greeted by at least 10 interns and they helped with our bags and props are we are here for business purposes. So far the experience is nice and warming. After receiving our room key/bracelet we were briefed by an intern. It was like a safety briefing with all the rules here. There were many 'you cannot' type of rules. Anyway, I would recommend a proper staff to do the briefing as there were many questions we asked and he could not answer. I don't blame him as he was an intern. By this time, they have already, efficiently send our bags into our rooms. We viewed our meeting room as the sales person was there too. I believe he was known as JJ. No greetings and no smiles. We tried to call him from the day before and he did not answer nor did he return our call. When we mentioned this to him, he just said coldly, "I was busy with meetings" Still no smile on his face.

When we entered our rooms, apart from other dissatisfactions, five things we need mention about the room: The air-conditioning was not working so well, this applied to both of our rooms. The bed were sandy. So we have to brush the sand off ourselves. The bathroom lock were not working (fine, no big deal) The flush was not working by the 3rd day in one of our rooms This is the worst. The toilet seat is covered with dried up urine stain. OMG, this is disgusting. Refer to photo.

We wanted to go for a train ride, we asked the driver what time is the next train. He rudely answered, 'Pukul 6'. Of course, he answered without even looking at us. We did not take the train eventually.

So day 2, we started our training program, the training room was all ready for us and everything was working fine except for the air-conditioning. The training room was warm. It remained warm throughout the day even with multiple complaints. Participants had to borrow two fans they found outside to cool the room. Even with this, they wanted to charge penalty of RM250 for a spilled coffee on the table (one of their policy, no tea break beverages allowed into the training hall).

In my 25 years of training my journey in hotels and resorts. I've never experience the hotel employee eat with the guests? This was the first. Making guests feel uncomfortable especially for families. This was a weird experience.

Day 3. We just had breakfast and wanted to visit the souvenir shop. As we entered, there was a Caucasian man with his daughter who entered before us. One of the staff raised his voice from outside saying, 'The shop is not open yet, the sign is on the door' he said, while pointing repeatedly at the side of the door. He was extremely rude. First of all, the shop door was open, secondly I'm sure he was trained to speak to guests politely. Thirdly, I sense some double standard as he did not raise his voice to the Caucasian man, but he did to us, the locals. He was soo rude, so we did not purchase anything lah. I should have taken his name. We were so surprised by this behaviour, we walked away.

This negative experience kinda overshadowed the fact that its a beautiful place with healthy green vegetation. The food is excellent with many variations. I think they have been portrayed as a high end preferred holiday venue, that the staff become complacent with very high noses. This ruined our experience here. Even your Bangladesh security guards understand what 5 star service, then your ground local staff. The local employees are horrible. I will NOT recommend this hotel resort to my clients. Please train...

Our stay at club med was wonderful! We stayed 8 nights and 9 days with my mother-in-law, my husband and my 2 children (4 year-old Emily and 1 year-old Max). We liked it so much that we extended our stay by 1 night. ||||The resort itself is located on a beautiful beach and in luxuriant nature. It also has a private beach with a restaurant accessible thanks to a little train. ||||The food diversity and quality is great. The menu changes daily at the main restaurant, the snacks in the lobby and the other restaurants are great, and the restaurant on the beach offers quality “à la carte” meals. The restaurant team, managed by Shin, is wonderful, and a big thank you to Tonky who was always so kind with our children. The whole bar team, led by Poppy, was great, with a large selection of drinks served with a smile and good mood!||The entertainment was fun, either in the day with many sports & family activities proposed, as well as shows at night. I was impressed by the skills displayed by the GOs, their polyvalance is truly remarkable (singing, dancing, acrobatics, comedy, etc.). A big shout out to Carol and Jade, the event managers. They put the dance floor on fire with their amazing energy! My daughter completely fell in love with Carol, who went out of her way to make my daughter comfortable and play with her on every occasion she had. My daughter was very impressed by her performance (dancing, singing and animation), but mostly attached to her caring, generous and loving personality! She ran into her arms every time she saw Carol, and only talked about her!||||We enjoyed the spa: Malay massage and foot massage, almost daily with Fa and Kila, honestly the best massages I have ever had! ||We also enjoyed 2 excursions: the turtle release and the quad.||||We put our 1 year-old at the baby club, and got hourly updates on how he was doing. He absolutely loved it, and you could feel the professionalism and involvement of the team (a big thank you to Rose, Liz and Fida). ||||We put our 4 year-old at the mini club, but she was very shy, and the team let us accompany her in the different activities to make her comfortable, which I really appreciated. The GOs all have nicknames for the children to easily remember them, and you can feel the passion of the whole team led by Eva (Miss lolipop): Rose, Yini, Liz, Rebekah, Seamus, Audrey, Sharon, Kgomotso, Wyann, Dellian, Fida and Carmen. ||||Even the boutique staff was nice and always welcomed our children with open arms. We booked the photographer to capture some family memories, and it did not disappoint, in spite of the chaos with 2 small children. ||And finally, we were blessed with “Dr Zu” as my daughter called her: she had a skin infection, and Mrs Zu gave us the right treatment, contacting a Doctor to confirm the medication to take, doing daily checkups and overall, giving us great advice. ||||To sum up, what truly made our stay exceptional and memorable are all the GOs: they all greeted us with warmth, energy and positivity! They knew our children’s names and would interact and play with them as soon as they saw them! It was truly heartwarming to see! We had the chance to eat with some of the GOs (Pascaline, Kat, Carol, Jade), it was nice to have this time together and get to know them better. Clayton, the “chef de village” is very involved and takes part in every evening show, you can feel he is appreciated by all his team. ||||We cannot thank the club med team enough for the amazing experience we had, their warmth and kindness. We sure hope to meet the GOs again, either at Cherating or at...

Came here on a weekend trip to celebrate my wife’s birthday; and for a short family get away.

1. Rooms - got the connecting room, comfortable and decent space, though the quality of the room seems abit old. There was some pipe leakages along the corridor, due to wear and tear since the property seems quite old. This cause the corridor outside our rooms to be wet and slippery. However, this wasn’t fixed throughout our stay duration across all 3 days, which seems like the service staff did not notice at all. Quite dangerous especially at night, when it’s dark and we have elderly folks that has to walked past that area to head to their room. Lighting within the room is quite dim as well. Other than that, decent.

2. facilities - facilities are great, good for family bonding and all ages.

3. food quality - though there’s a huge variety of options, quality isn’t the best and it was underwhelming. The food at enak restaurant is a much better option compared than the buffet. For the buffet, beef was tough, and our kid almost choked on the beef as it was too chewy. Been to the other club meds, recalled the food quality was much better. Dessert options were great. The food quality at rembulan restaurant was great. Perhaps to consider lesser variety but better quality for the buffet.

4. service - club med is a place that drives and thrives on building experiences. While kudos to the programming team, however half of the staff there doesn’t seem as welcoming or service oriented. For example, asking on advice on how to book rembulan or helping with tags, the staff at the reception seemed really impatient in their replies.

Another example, came back from the beach and requested for towels ( as our room was made up earlier, and our towels were collected), had to wait around 40mins for the towels to be delivered (I called twice and wasn’t given a time on when the towels will arrive, was just told it was ‘on the way’. When it finally arrived, I happened to be in the toilet taking a leak, and was finishing up however the staff actually entered my room without asking for permission! He did knocked twice to be fair, but he couldn’t wait for 30sec for me to open the door. shouldn’t the staff have come back again or at least call the room to see if anyone was in, instead of barging in? This is an invasion of privacy and am shocked at such a level of service standard.

Lastly, when we were departing in our vehicle, the staff loaded the wrong luggage even though it was tagged. Luckily we have checked, if not some poor soul might have been going home without their luggage.

Conclusion: great place for family or friends for a short holiday trip with plenty of activities quality of room though decent, however don’t expect a 5-star room stay. Facilities are quite old so do not have high expectations for such a prestige brand that focuses on creating memories and enhancing guest experience, am truly disappointed at guest service hospitality compared to...