JW Marriott Jeju Resort & Spa — Hotel in Seogwipo-si

BACKGROUND||My wife and I live in Incheon and wanted to stay at this hotel for a 3-night staycation. (Note for Bonvoy members: We booked the first night via a FNA+points, and then the next two nights with just points.) Cash rates during our stay were 1.2m KRW per night. |||CHECKING IN||We rented a car at the airport and drove in. Plan on allocating around 75 minutes for that drive. The resort is quite far from any shops or sightseeing sights, and you should plan to have access to a car while you are staying here. Taxis are often hard to come by, and it's a real hassle to order one, even via apps. There is no shuttle bus offered. ||When we got to the resort, we parked our car in the covered parking and went up to the 8th floor lobby.||The semi-open-air lobby is really a nice place. We arrived under cloudy skies but can imagine it could be spectacular under sunny skies.||There are 6 large couches around the inner perimeter of that lobby, for people to check-in. When we entered the lobby, the staff intercepted us and told us to sit at the couch and they'd take care of us. A first staff member dropped by with some small ice cream cups. (My wife asked whether a coffee was available and they said no.) Then another staff member came over with the check-in form. No complications, but my "Payment type" was typed in as "KEB Hana Bank Card", which I don't have. The card I added during booking was a totally different credit card. When I asked the staff about the error, they told me to ignore it. That was a bit strange. ||There are three quirks that you might notice as you make your way from check-in to your room. First, after you go up to check-in on the 8th floor, you go back down to the 3rd floor, in order to walk outside under cover to another building where most of the rooms are. And then, unless your room is on that 3rd floor, you'll take another elevator to get to your room. So, three elevator rides just to get to your room, upon your first arrival. Second, the hallways don't seem to be temperature regulated; at least in the summer, the hallways are not air conditioned. Possibly they are not heated fully during the winter either. I presume it's part of their pledge towards sustainability. Second, the buttons for "up/down" when you call for an elevator also include a touchless sensor, presumably for anti-bacterial health reasons. But then when you enter the elevator, there are no such sensors, and you have to touch buttons to go to a floor. So, it does defeat the purpose of touchless buttons in the first place.||The resort is really weirdly designed. I mean, the materials are all very solid. Lots of marble, stone, and wood. But the layout is quite ridiculous. The architect apparently wanted to design a place that fostered exploration and instead created a place for confusion. (For one, I'd wish to see some benches or seating next to the courtyard garden as you walk out of Dancing Durimi to The Lounge.) By Day #3, my wife and I did feel like it could be a relaxing resort to walk through, but there was still minor confusion here and there. ||(After 9pm, you can't get into your room's building without a keycard. So, don't make the mistake of expecting to simply knock on your room door to get your hotel roommate to open the door for you, after leaving the building to get something!)|||DINING||I have described two separate buildings so far (i.e. where check-in is, and where the rooms are). But the 3 main restaurants of the resort are scattered across two *more building areas on the premises.||For early dinner on our check-in day, we ate at Island Kitchen (the Choga rib dish and then one hot/spicy chicken sandwich). At 3pm in Island Kitchen on that Friday, we were basically the only guests in the restaurant. The food was filling and very good but nothing that special. Somewhat unique is that all menus at this resort simultaneously include prices in KRW and also Bonvoy points. (!) The Bonvoy points are valued on the menus at 0.5 cpp (USD).||Breakfast is free for plats, but it isn't a buffet breakfast. Instead it is a breakfast set, at Island Kitchen. You get bread, coffee/tea, and juice. In our case, we had the choice between orange and grapefruit juice, both freshly made. From there, you get to choose between one Western entree (steak, eggs, and lobster), and 5-6 Korean entrees (mainly soups/stews). The steak/eggs/lobster was tasty and the steak was very well-prepared (medium/rare, which was great but surprising for Korea). The lobster was just OK, but overall the entree is very good. My wife had the pork rice soup the first morning and we found it to be very bland, far more valuable for those who had a long drunken night than for anybody else. (If you want a Korean soup for breakfast, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Abalone-Chicken soup… it was far better than the pork rice soup.) The platinum breakfast typically ends with some kind of pudding with pineapple puree, or fresh fruit – I don’t believe you get much choice what they bring out for you for dessert.||For my 2nd morning, my wife and I skipped breakfast and instead went for an 11am brunch. The regular price is 170k krw but platinum members (and above) can get 50k krw off of that price, per person. The brunch is very good, especially in terms of the unlimited seafood. There's unlimited a la carte Seared Salmon and warm Abalone Soup (and around 5-6 more small plates) served hot direct to your table. And then the buffet includes a variety of sashimi and sushi and then a whole refrigerator section of lobster and snow crab legs. ||When my wife and I sat down for brunch, we were asked whether we wanted the brunch including the unlimited champagne and caviar, or without that champagne and caviar. (Apparently if you go without, it’s cheaper, but I’m not sure how much cheaper.) We chose it with. They brought out a small 15g tin of Caviar Francaise Par Prunier. I thought it was unlimited but I ended up very mistaken. When I pointed out that my wife didn't have any, they apologized and said that there is only one 15g caviar tin per party of 2 or 3. For a party of 4, you'd get a larger 30g tin. ||Pro-tip #1a: If you want the most caviar for your money, and if you're shameless (haha), consider going to brunch individually. And then asking to sit at the table next to your roommate. Then I believe you may be able to get one 15g caviar tin per person. ||Pro-tip #1b: They serve the caviar with some small blini. If you're not a big fan of that blini, consider pairing the caviar with the housemade fried pita chips in the buffet. I enjoyed the caviar much more with that instead.||Pro-tip #2: If you have the brunch buffet, try to save room for dessert. The dessert section of cakes for brunch would rival many bakeries. ||All the food establishments at this resort are closed daily (7x a week) by 10pm. After that, the only food you can get at this resort is room service. Plan accordingly. It's not a resort for easy late-night partying. |||FACILITIES||The resort has one indoor pool and one outdoor pool. The *indoor pool has 5 double semi-circle sunbeds and about 20 single person sunbeds. Around 5pm on our check-in day, we saw maybe 6-7 guests around the indoor pool and then another 10-13 guests around the outdoor pool. You won't be fighting people to get into the pools here. The hotel has around 190 rooms total, but the number of guests that are “out and about” usually made it feel like far less. ||This resort offers all guests (not just Bonvoy members) a kind of happy hour at the outdoor pool at 4:30pm everyday (and under rainy weather, at the indoor pool instead), consisting of some finger food and either makgeolli or a juice. ||Pro-tip #3: Under rainy weather, get to the indoor pool by 3pm if you want to better guarantee a sunbed of some kind, to enjoy the 4:30pm happy hour. By 4pm, all the sunbeds are basically taken, and people walk around desperate to find a sunbed for the 4:30pm happy hour.||In spite of being the only group being checked-in, when we checked in, the staff really doesn’t tell you much about the services and facilities aside from the restaurants and pools. One thing that they missed to mention was the electric bikes available for rental (via app) next to the parking lot. If you are facing the entry doors to get to the elevators after parking your car, if you turn your head to the left, as of July 2024, you’ll see a sign with a bicycle logo. Right next to the sign is a large enclosure where a handful of electric bikes are available. Not entirely clear to my wife and I exactly where you’d go with those bikes, but they are there if you want them.||By far the most awkward situation/quirk at this resort is the Hot Springs/Spa company ("O'Reve") that is basically overlapping/adjacent to this JW. The exterior design of O'Reve looks exactly like the JW, but they are totally different companies under presumably totally different management teams. The weird part is that O'Reve's outdoor pool looks like it belongs to the JW. (I mean, if you have an Ocean view room, the O’Reve outdoor pool is basically right there in your face, the same distance away as JW’s own pool). The JW basically pretends that the O’Reve company isn’t even there, haha. The staff don’t mention anything about it. It’s only when you get curious and explore the O’Reve front desk, that they tell you that JW Jeju guests get admission for half off (i.e. 40k KRW instead of 80k KRW).||There are also a couple large garden-like areas which are quite relaxing with very serene Bali/Ubud-like views (see my picture of my view from the Ocean-view room). Unfortunately there's very little seating there in the gardens though, so you may not be able to enjoy chilling out there for long. You're also not at all within convenient walking distance to any kind of walkable beach.||On our check-out day, the rain had finally let up and the grounds had soaked up the water. If you meander down the trail leading out of "JW Garden", you'll get some nice views of the sea. But we didn't meander past the coffee shop. As I understand it, the trail is pretty long. |||THE ROOM|OK, now let's talk about the room. I booked the basic King room and was upgraded to the Ocean View as a result of being a Platinum member. This room is truly awkward. Immediately upon entering the room, on one side is the WC (smart toilet with bidet and self-raising seat) and a small sink. Then you walk into the bed area, and facing the bed is a long parallel area that includes two sinks facing away from each other. And then on the extreme other side of the room is the shower/bathtub area. There are no chairs with seatbacks, only sofa sectionals that one can move around the room. What a strange layout. Very difficult to describe in words, and not apparent from the hotel website pictures. Most guests experiencing this layout will shake their heads at the peculiarity. The room is efficiently structured the way that rooms on a cruise ship might be structured (about 20% bigger than a shipping container, in terms of width and length); and that's not a compliment here. By Day #3, we could both feel how small the room is. It is basically exactly a 12'x30' rectangle, including walls, plumbing, and everything, which is tiny for a $1000/nt room. Aircon cools down the room too slowly. Furthermore, our room smelled a tiny bit musty whenever we came back. (We weren't exactly sure why.) Our room was on the highest floor (7th) and we didn't see any bugs at all, during our stay.||The balcony is a reasonable place for two people to sit and chat though. And we had three small Jeju oranges waiting for us on the room's coffee table. These three oranges were replenished daily. ||The materials in this room are all very high quality but the color palette seems to focus on gold-colored surfaces and beige woods. (For Seoul-area travelers, it's safe to say that the quality of materials in this room far surpass the quality found at Josun Palace.) Probably the only two things that irritated me about the room's tech are (1) the weak charging from the bedside USB ports, and (2) the lack of any backlight on the bedside controls. Just memorize the order of the bedside control buttons and you'll be all set for late night button-pushing, haha. One bit of tech we weren't expecting in our room was the electric ice maker (see my picture). The full-size umbrella in the closet was very handy for us though.||The room’s WC (i.e. toilet area) is very small. I’m 5’8” and 180 lbs, and I found it to be a cumbersome space to navigate (see my picture, the shoes there for scale). If you’re 250 lbs, you’re either tall or big, and at that size, you’re going to find the bathroom area to be quite a nuisance. On the last day of my stay, that WC felt almost like a business class toilet on a plane.|||SERVICE QUALITY||There are a handful of managed activities at this resort, for extra fees. My wife and I booked a drawing class (50k KRW per person) and a cocktail making class (10k KRW per person). The drawing class was cancelled due to lack of attendance, but we were still able to attend the cocktail-making class. This 30-minute class (where you are shown how to make your own cocktail) was at Flying Hog, and held entirely in Korean. My wife is Korean, but I'm not and I don't speak Korean, so I was quite lost during the presentation. But since we got a chance to check out the view from the restaurant, it was enough for me. I can say, though, that if you decide not to do the cocktail course, you're not missing anything much.||On my first morning, I needed something printed, and inquired whether there was a business center on-site. As I suspected (given my exploration of the resort on my check-in day), there was no business center. But the staff asked me if I only needed some printing, and I said yes. They are willing to print stuff free of charge for you (as long as within reason, I suppose!). I needed 20 pages printed, and the staff delivered it to me within 20 minutes of the request.||Pro-tip #4: If you need a document printed (e.g. 20 pages or so), call the "At Your Service" phoneline and they'll help you print it out, free of charge. |||CONCLUSION||This is a great pick if you miss relaxing Bali (Ubud) views and are somehow stuck in Korea. The food is generally very good, and the brunch is actually a nice deal if you enjoy seafood. As of July 2024, the resort activities are minimal and ‘a la carte’, and maybe the resort needs 1-2 more years before it figures out better activities. The main reason I give my stay 4 Tripadvisor ‘bubbles’ is that the basic room (e.g. King bed, balcony, ocean view) and especially its WC are just too small to justify a $700-$1000/nt stay.||Given that I stayed here for 3 nights, if I could go back and book all over again, I'd strongly consider booking a stay for the first two nights, and then booking a *separate stay for the 3rd night, which I could freely cancel after Night #1 in case I felt like this resort was a bit too boring and not...

[TL;DR - We found out that JW Jeju's wedding partner, “MariK*m Destination Weddings” is an imposter. Her instagram pages are filled with photos she stole from other planners and florists around the world. She even captioned the photos in a way that made it sound like she was capable and responsible for all these weddings. We have written proof of this.]

If you are considering a wedding or event at JW Jeju, I urge you to read our story.

When we first got in touch with JW Jeju, we were told that weddings at JW Jeju are to be handled by an external wedding planner, “MariKm Destination Weddings”. Even the actual wedding contract must be signed with this MariKm individual, instead of with JW Jeju directly. We did not like the idea of this because it was the JW brand that we trusted, but went along with it again due to this trust. This was the first red flag that we hoped we put more thought into. Little did we know this was the start of a series of absurd, irresponsible and unprofessional behavior from both MariK*m and JW Jeju.

Since the hotel does not have a Wedding department, MariKm became the face of JW Jeju for that matter. This is also what makes it difficult to comment on one without mentioning the other. Many times when we had questions about something, we were bounced around like tennis balls, back and forth between MariKm and the hotel.

We mistakenly thought paying a premium by choosing a high caliber property like JW Jeju would buy us some peace of mind, but I ended being the one who drafted the whole rundown of the day, held meetings with JW Jeju to brief and finalize arrangements, contacted all vendors and briefed them on who was responsible for what at what time…etc. — everything that should have been done by the planner that we paid for, the planner that JW Jeju appointed as their wedding partner.

On the day of the wedding, none of the wedding guests knew I had a planner because she was never by our side. Even the other wedding vendors I hired on the day were baffled by how MIA the MariK*m and the hotel contact person was. For the rare instances that we did see her, she was busy taking photos and videos on her phone to add to her portfolio.

The problems mentioned here are only the tip of the iceberg, but I must include the most serious issue of all:

MariK*m was also responsible for our ballroom floral decorations. When we walked into the ballroom on the wedding day, we were shocked to see that the stage set up and flowers were not done according to what we discussed. It was a completely different design, far less detailed and embellished, flowers used were cheap-looking and quantity was also way less than what was agreed on. It certainly did not match the exorbitant price tag we paid for.

We did some research and quickly found out that many posts on her instagram pages, are in fact, the works of other planners and florists around the world. We contacted some of these affected businesses, and have written proof from them confirming the copyright infringement. MariK*m also captioned these posts as if was her works. Unfortunately, we also fell victim to this fraud by false representation. She has since removed a number of posts, but we kept a record of her deleted posts.

Everything written in this review is 100% truthful and 100% our first hand experience. The immense stress we endured is irreversible, but we hope by sharing this experience, no other couple falls victim to dishonest business practices and misleading representation like we did.

JW Jeju is currently the most expensive luxury resort in Jeju, or perhaps the whole of South Korea. We wanted the best for our wedding, and we work hard to enjoy these luxuries. It's only fair to pay a premium for a better experience, but in this case, both MariKm and JW Jeju failed to deliver. Who would have thought, a luxury hotel carrying the JW Marriott name would appoint someone as questionable as MariKm as their wedding partner? Not even the GM, thought to do some due diligence? All very disappointing for someone who trusted the...

Price: Rooms here cost starting $600, and go over $1500 a night for the rooms with ocean view. We spent 47000 Marriott points a night to book this hotel for 2 nights.

Location: The hotel is built on a cliff side near (or in?) the city of Seogwipo. There is a Olle trail passing right outside the hotel, which we walked on one morning. We had clear skies on the days of out stay, and you could get an amazing ocean view from the rook of the hotel. We took a bus from CJU airport to get to Seogwipo, and then a taxi from the city to the hotel. Its not directly connected to the airport by bus. You probably need to rely on taxis to get anywhere, but a lot of attractions are less than 15 minutes drive.

Parking: We did not have a car on our trip, but they did have a parking lot.

Internet: Good connectivity in the room, and in most parts of the hotel.

Room: We booked the standard King room with garden view, and did not get any sort of upgrade. The room was huge with three separate areas for bathing, dressing and toilet. There are a lot of mirrors and Japanese style wooden surfaces throughout the room. It was really beautiful when you first enter it. I really likes the slippers they provided for the room. The bathtub was absolutely massive, and made of some kind of marble. They really used the nicest things to make this room. The view from our room was only kind of okay. We could not see the water at all, as it was facing away from the ocean.

Service: This was the best part of the stay. Every staff member was really helpful, and got us whatever we needed really quickly. We wanted a different pillow at night, and they got it in a few minutes. They helped us communicate with taxi drivers since we could not speak Korean. They heated some of the food we had in the morning. And we were greeted whenever we passed by the staff. We got unlimited water bottles for our room which was amazing!

Dining: This was one of the disappointing part of the stay. We are vegetarians, and there was nothing for us to eat in the hotel. I think they just had one salad that was vegetarian, and that's about it. We communicated multiple times about our dietary preferences: few days before coming to the hotel, and also when we arrived. Both times, the staff acknowledged us, but did not provide any answers for what we can eat at the hotel. In the end, we ended up not eating at any of the hotel restaurants. Instead, we just picked up rice and yogurt from the convenience stores, and ate that during breakfast. And we had dinner in the Seogwipo city.

Resort: The facilities they have are amazing. There is an infinity pool outside, looking into the ocean. And there is an indoor pool and saunas, a large gym, a fitness studio, and some kids play areas. Beyond that, I think you would get bored at the resort after a few days. They did not have any interesting activities to speak of. They had a nature walk and yoga class in the morning. But it was booked out for the next week when we arrived. I am not sure how someone is supposed to get reservation for those activities if you are just staying for a few days. They also had a cocktail making activity for which they are charging extra money. So basically you don't have any recreation available other than the pools and sauna. This is really an area the resort needs to improve, and we felt was most lacking.

Elite Status Recognition: We had Marriott gold status. Our status was not recognized at the property. We did not get a room upgrade. We asked for a late checkout at 1pm, but only got a 12pm checkout.

Would I stay again?: Maybe. The building is lovely, and the rooms look nice, but the combination of minimal activities and lack of dining options would make me look for other options in the city. I certainly would not pay cash to stay here, but it is a good value to use your...