Crystals Beach Resort Belle Mare, a Member of Radisson Individuals — Hotel in Isle Mauritius

We stayed for 2 weeks at the start of August with 2 Adults and 2 kids aged 14 and 11.|We have stayed in Mauritius multiple times, and this was the first time staying in the East of the island, lots of bits online about the weather, but ignore the weather apps, each day they said cloud and rain and 90% of the time it sunny and warm…||On to the hotel, which in our opinion was a mixed experience with some good and some bad points.||Firstly the good points. ||We stayed in a family room, and despite some reviews saying the rooms were a little tired, we thought it was a fantastic room, really spacious and a great balcony with views of the pool and sea, cleaned every day, and on AI, the Mini bar is restocked with beer and soft drinks daily. |The pool area and beach are both great, Sun beds were easily available and the beach is beautiful.|Water park is a great addition and the kids of whatever age loved it, also really nice to sit and have a cold soft drink whilst supervising them…it’s also really well run with attentive life guards.|The pool restaurant was really good for lunch, the burgers in particular are worth a mention.||Negative points.||Having read reviews, it pointed to a heated pool (which in August in Mauritius is a really plus point) Before booking i emailed the hotel directly to check this and they told me there were 2 pools, of which one was heated. On arrival, we were told that there were 2 pools, but the heated one was only fro adults, so the kids could not use it. This is fine, but when you take the time to check with the hotel, and they don’t mention this and was a major part of choosing the hotel, i found it a little misleading.||We found that the service was really not up to scratch, mainly down to a lack of staff, or lack of motivation at the hands of some of the team. This was mostly in the buffet restaurant. Some of the people serving in the restaurants were borderline rude and showed no desire to help. Routinely you would arrive at a restaurant and none of the tables were cleared, you ask for a table for 4 and they say “go get your food and we will set the table” only to be back 10 mins later, food in hand with the table looking the same as it did. This also stretched to the bars, where routinely there was only 1 person serving and therefore was painfully slow. One notable exception to this was Jerome in the Asian restaurant who we found consistently polite, energetic and accommodating even with fussed kids. He was fantastic at every interaction. I think the main problem is that people don’t seem like they are being actively managed, there didn’t seem to be any management presence like you see in other hotels.||Finally, the food we felt was not up to expectations, the ala carte restaurants were all great and offered a bit of variety, however the Buffett was not up to scratch compared to others i have experienced. Breakfast was good, lunch was poor ain choice and when we went seemed to have an abundance of flies surrounding the food which put us off. Dinner was good having different theme nights, but we felt there wasnt really the choice you usually expect. One particular night we had a bad experience with a chicken kebab that y son got that was raw. He spotted it and we made the person serving us aware, she looked at it and said “it’s good??” We said no and explained the problem and we wanted them to be aware so they could inform the chefs so they cooked them longer. She said she would speak to the manager. She then came back after 10 mins and said “the manager isn’t coming, but he will have a meeting about it later” and proceeded to laugh as she took the raw chicken away from my son. For something that can be so serious, I don’t think it was taken seriously. |||All in all, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s a beautiful location and with a little updating and focus on service and management would be an excellent hotel. The price we paid was significantly less than some other hotels that were advertised, so i would say from a value for money point of view, I don’t feel like i was ripped off, I just think there is so much potential that they are currently missing out on that would make this a...

I don't want to distract away from what should be a fantastic hotel.. on first appearance it all seemend very fine and well presented. but there are cracks.. BIG ones ! But all smoothed over very carefully

This resort is tired and is operating on a very very low budget. Cleanliness is not the strong point.. Anywhere ! Dining is a challenge to make sure you can eat your food before a flock of birds pitch on your table.. if you are lucky you get a cat to see off the birds, and if you are even luckier you get a stray dog to see off the cat... eating in the restaurant is like feeding time at the local Zoo. !

There appeared to be no catering consideration for anyone with dietary restrictions, nothing was labelled to say contains nuts or gluten etc. Fish night is fish night.. so you need to like fish ! If you don't, sadly there is NOTHING for you , unless you make a specific request and the chef may rustle something up especially for you. There are no Pork products.. no sausages, no ham. All the meat is either chicken, lamb or beef.. in various guises... there was an offering of venison one evening but didn't look like any kind of venison I've seen before. Nothing appears clean.. the cutlery, the cups, the glasses.. and you never know how many birds have pitched on your fork before you sit down. The pool bar operates a No glass policy.. perfect safety arrangement nearby a pool environment.. but drinks are served in tall soft plastic beakers. Scratched both internal and exterior and smelling with remaint of the previous customers beverage...

The rooms are dated, many of the fittings were broken, tye sinks were blocked taking quite a while to drain. the skirting board was placed against the wall in the hope it stays there and nobody kicks it . The beds were not clean , the mattresses have seen much better days wrre very dirylty and atained. The pillows were stained and no pillow protectors used The sheets and bedding had labels dating to 2018...and were a grayish colour.. or Off white as we became accustomed to say... we tried to do a quick calculation of how many different people would have slept in that bedding between 2018 and 2023 and how many washes it may have had... we gave up when the number became quite large.

The daily cleaners try their best but don't have any detergents or cleaning materials.. the shower gels in the bathroom have been watered down multiple times.. , the.mirrors are smeared where they are wiped with a damp cloth and allowed to dry

mostly the staff were fantastic. We befriended several of the staff in the bars and restaurant etc and they were always pleased to see us to share our daily routines of what we got up to.

The description of this hotel resort on the website is very very misleading.. the photographs are very doctored to show beautiful gastronomic experiences. Beautiful views, beautiful rooms, Towels made into swans on the bed with rose petals.. All very romantic... but not realistic or forthcoming ! All rooms are Beach facing it says.... which I suppose is true as long as you can see through walls or trees!

A kids club operates in the resort. At 20.30pm each evening as you are eating dinner. the very popular Kids disco commences adjacent to the main reataurant with a fine rendition of "Baby Shark" at the highest volume !

The clientel appeared very diverse.. with many guests appearingly from Asian countries, From Europen countries. French and German were most prevelent but very few British.

The beach is a positive... its well kept and very clean with ample sun loungers.. albeit a bit dirty Almost idealic. We could say .. but downfall is the continual noise of the speedboats operating trips up and down the beach all day.

On an upside.. The customer relations manager worked tirelessly to help resolve the multiple.issues presented to him and we thank him for his efforts... we believe he is probably a very busy guy. !

But theses issues should not have been experienced at a resort of such high caliber as marketed. 4 star it says... doubtful! a 1-2...

I'm going to divide this review in two parts. The first part will rate the hotel objectively. The second part will show my personal experience and might help you to find out, if you would enjoy a stay there. Maybe you like the things, i didn't like. We are a young couple, no kids, looking for relaxing holiday. All Inclusive. Objective Review: Pro: Staff is very nice and tries everything to make you happy Food is good and there's a huge variety of different dishes. I liked the idea of "motto" nights for the buffet. Rooms are huge and offer everything you need A lot of free activities Contra: One of my dresses disappeared. I don't want to accuse anyone stole it, maybe someone accidentaly took it with the used towels. Unfortunetaly they didn't make any efforts to find it. Rooms smell a little bit moldy Some of the staff members, who don't communicate with guests on a regular basis, seemed unfriendly. (Like gardeners, housekeepers) Summary: 4/5 Stars Personal Review: Unfortunately I don't have many positive things to say on my personal review. Most of the inconveniences were caused by other guests. I was looking for a relaxing, quiet holiday in a decent athmosphere. I'm not snobistic, but the behaviour of most of the guests was just unbearable: Some guests only spoke their mother tongue (they couldnt even count to ten in english). If the staff didn't understand them, they raised their voices. What annoyed me the most, was the sunbed situation. There were hundreds of sunbeds, on mabe 20% of them, there were acctually people. The other 80% were occupied by towels. People got up by 6 in the morning to put their towels on the sunbeds and didn't show up the whole day. Others had to lie on the ground. The hotel management wasn't interested in that. Guests complained about everything, everytime, everywhere. It was a bummer for me to constantly listen to nagging, spoiled guests, who were angry about ridiculous things. Some guests were drunk by 10 in the morning. Almost every night a "cultural" event took place. These events always ended up in loud european mainstream music almost until midnight. Our room was close to the bar, so it was impossible to sleep before midnight. In our last night, we really needed to get some sleep, because we had to get up very early (4am) to catch our flight. It was "casino" night, so we hoped it would be more quiet than the "party" nights. Unfortunately people kept screaming and i couldn't get more than 2 hours of sleep.

I also didn't like how the hotel handled their responsibilities for some things: We saw some staff members who worked more than 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. We did the hotel's snorkeling trip and nobody took care of the coral reefs! Other participants destroyed 2 square meters of corals to get back into the boat and nobody cared. If they go on like this, the reef is gone in a few years!

Last but not least I personally felt offended by the way, the hotel tried to rip guests off with the extern activities. Theres a "personal travel agent", called Angelika, who tries to sell you trips for ridiculous prices! It's ok to charge a little bit more, maybe even double for some conveniences. But seriously, five times more than the regular price?? We never booked any trip at the hotel and rather walked 5 minutes to the mainstreet to...