Crystal Lake Resort & Tours, Oguta. — Hotel in Imo State

You know how you feel when you walk in through the front door of an establishment and the first sight that meet your eyes is that of the front desk officer busily fanning herself with an improvised handfan only for you to look around and see that the side doors and windows too are wide open so that "breeze can enter". That was exactly how I felt walking into the hotel . Asked why it was like that and I was told they are currently "on Solar" and would be putting on the generator shortly. That was how my 3-day visit to Oguta and my stay at the best lodging available in the area started .

The resort is blessed with the kind of ambience a true naturalist will kill to have. Tall trees reminiscent of the Baden-Baden forests in Ettligen with seating facilities provide shade and cover for most of the approach to the hotel itself. The building too has this new age cut to it with pleasing to the eyes aesthetics down to the way the glass and concrete distribution for the front facia of the main reception was done. Beautiful succinctly describes it. Unfortunately, for the most part, this is where it ends. To start with, the sizes of the 40something K deluxe room was not commensurate to the price paid for it. Facilities within the room like the switches, heater and taps work quite fine but the air-conditioning was palpable. Facility had to provide a floor standing fan to help ameliorate our living condition in the room. To make matters worse, electricity supply within the resort is super horrible. Infact, it is a major reason for the 2-star ranking the resort truly deserves. The third star is for the friendliness and always ready to help attitude of the staff. I can categorically assure you that out of a 24hr stay, you might not have light in your room for more than 4hrs. The resort generators also appear not to be fully functional as light even goes off in the middle of the night! For hours! For Pete's sake, we paid premium for this!

Food is okay albeit pricy. You are not allowed to come into the resort with your own food and drinks. Same goes for Water. A 150cl bottle of Eva Water will set yoh back a grand. Also endeavor to come with cash. POS onsite not reliable and transfers are accepted.

Swimming pool looks like something that could use some tender loving care and maintenance. Water not sparkling or looking interesting. Some of the other outdoor play facilities are in a state of decrepit especially the ones overlooking the lake .

I want to believe the fuel scarcity played a major role in the not so pleasant experience we had especially with power supply to the rooms during our stay. Alternate sources of power apart from the comatose solar power system the hotel has should be considered. A resort of such calibre with a premium pricing structure in place for billing customers should not be having this...

Crystal Lake Resort came highly recommended but it let us down in more ways than one. Yes, the environment is scenic with lush greens, trees, a view of the lake, the pool is magnificent and the one quad bike is functional as well as a few other bikes, but a lot of other promises were left unfulfilled.

The water slide for instance which was a major attraction was out of service as was the planned boat cruise which was hastily dismissed because of high tides.

The rooms upstairs had the added advantage of a balcony but not much else. The television was scrambled, the bathroom was missing some tiles, and there wasn't as much as a complimentary bottle of water or tea cup.

The service had it's own share of rough patches with the hotel Manager getting into a word fight with members of my party and even reporting us to the security team. The restrictions were absurd- and we were asked to pay to use a digital camera on the premises or even take a morning walk through the golf course.

The food also left a lot to be desired and was generally not the most palatable I have come across. As a matter of fact, members of my party suffered a system malfunction after consuming the grilled fish prepared by the poolside and which I missed by a hairsbreadth.

Did I mention that there were issues with giving us towels to use on our second day at the poolside because we had been given towels the day before?

There is so much potential here and it would be a shame to see it go to waste.

And that folks,...

The experience was horrible. Rooms were dirty. There's limited/rationed power, so you'll have to stay the whole day without AC or a fan. AC comes on at 6 pm till 8am, but once you sleep off, they switch off the AC because they're more intelligent than the guests. You will be woken up at 2:30am by the heat once they switch of the AC power. The food from the restaurant was horrible and only suitable for dogs. The bar was empty and dark and quite unpleasant to sit at. The swimming pool was very dirty and only got cleaned on the last day. The water slide was not functional, just like most things at the hotel. The golf course was dead and bushy and out of use. The staff were rude, unexperienced, and untrained. The manager actually told me that it was IMPOSSIBLE for a hotel to offer a 24hr power supply. Their price is high for a village hotel with very poor services. Horrible place, greedy management. It's better to buy N7k petrol for your car AC, sleep in your car, and look for where to shower in...