VI RESORTS at Sea Village — Hotel in Hawaii

Solid four stars.

Rooms are great, kitchen is great and well equipped. Clean and normal. The lack of built in air conditioning and the $15 a day portable unit is hokey BUT I gotta say, it does the job more or less. Just leave it blasting all day with the windows and blinds closed, then at night open some windows and set the fans up for some cross breeze. Did not find it too hot at all except for one day we left without turning the portable unit on but we got the temp back down pretty quick.

Service was non existent, didn’t really need any. These are self contained units. After hours key pickup was fine, but no more coffee to be had and no laundry detergent in the room. The last resort we stayed at had two so after reading the reviews I took the extra one with. This unit, 1306, has a really nice brand new washer and dryer.

Wifi sucks, if you rely on internet connections for anything you’ll be frustrated.

Location! Well, you’re on Hawaii so you are already ahead of the game in that regard. Access was easy with a rental car. Easy access to the town centre of Kona, or to the other way to Captain Cook for the best poke and tacos and coffee and more. There is a 24 hour Safeway close by, easy to stock up on essentials when you arrive. An on-site restaurant would be a huge bonus but you’d just end up spending more money. Fruit, veg, seafood is all excellent and easy to find, so relax a little and don’t stress over restaurant meals you don’t need anyways. Easy to grill some chicken for supper, easy to fry some eggs in the morning, and frees up some cash for the fabulous adventures you can find on this huge island. Eggs, toast, cereal, fruit, coffee in the morning, get lunch while you’re out and enjoy a later dinner back at home.

The drive to Hilo is far, so if there are things you want to see on that side of the island prepare for a 3 hour round trip, at least. Saddle road is great to drive, looks brand new and aside from the elevation changes was very enjoyable.

If the wifi and air con weren’t so silly this place would be better.

Lovely patio, ocean views (lots of surfers in the little bay), gorgeous Weber gas grills to use. Pool was fine, hot tub jets non operational so felt like human soup. Yuck.

Would definitely come back as a...

FINAL DAY UPDATE: Baby was sleeping at 10:15am. Checkout is set at 11. One of us turned the physical keys in and signed for checkout at 10:30 within minutes a cleaning person knocked and entered whilst saying hello. I shewed them away and it took only 10 minutes for the next to show up saying something to the effect of "OH, ok, just making sure you guys are gonna be out at 11." Seriously?!?!?!?!?!?! WE WILL NOT BE BACK.

The woman at the front always had a tone of being put out by us. Unpleasant undertone with a fake, cordial personality that was condescending at best.

They really have figured out how to bend the tourists over with a smile:

Tide pods for laundry are $1/each. No free replacement beach towels - want to wash them? Cough up that buck, baby. Late checkout is $25/30 min. past your checkout time. AC is $15/day (oh, and it still only cools about 1/4 of the unit)

There were, however, about 8 dishwasher pods for which we didn't have to incur a fee. Wow. What a gift. Thanks VI!

Didn't even ask about a replacement soap bar. At that point, I just started using the dish soap.

Therefore, overall customer service score is 1/5.

Final suggestion: Go to the Marriott or...

What a great little resort right on the ocean! I can go on and on about the friendly staff, nice rooms that were clean and comfortable, or the washer dryer that kept us from having to check a bag. But the star of this resort is the view! It’s right on the ocean. We saw the sun set and the moon rise and it was breathtaking. Also this resort is close to a small beach that was never crowded. It was close to lots of restaurants but far enough away from major traffic. There is air conditioning but you have to pay extra. If you are from the South like me you should be ok. Other than that this place was great and I would...