Novotel Phu Quoc Resort — Hotel in Phú Quốc

Firstly, I do not regret what I chose for short vacation. I like the Park view Bungalow with private pool accommodation, it is spacious; good smelling like cinamon; cool private pool (quite small but it is fine). Secondly, everything seems like perfect in my definition about five-star hotel and especially for which is in a International quality Hotel Chain. But, but this hotel knocked my down in the first impression when we showed up at the airport. I booked through a Travel Agency, so we have confirmation for shuttle bus, I thought I do not need to do anything but for sure I called Hotel hotline to check as if they could arrange this for us as a pleasure cause there is a lot of bad comments for this service. My flight was at 7:40 am landed so I got my confirmation from Concierge that Hotel's shuttle will be at the airport at 8 am and all I need is just walk straight to Hotel's desk before 10 minutes for sure. Unfortunately our flight has been changed and it landed earlier than expected at 06:00 am, there is no staff at the desk as they confirmed. There is a staff of Premier Hotel next to Novotel told us that they may be late cause bad weather and we wait for 30 minutes after I heard and saw a sign of Novotel's shuttle information than van will pick guest up at 09:00 am not 08:00 am as firstly we got. Okay it is complimentary and during bad weather, we also do not have any plan could process at right time. So we have waited 02 hours for this. Finally, a staff showed up at the desk, we asked him why, he said: "because this season is low season so Hotel changed the shuttle schedule". Without any notification for both Travel Agent and guest??? NOT MENTIONED to the staff I rang to double check, she confirmed there is no 08:00 schedule :))) That sound funny!!! Okay!! Fine, we got into bus with no help for umbrella and luggage arrangement during rain. Finally, we have got to NOVOTEL, yay or nay you guess! No smile no welcome cozy feels except the staff who checked in for us. She is very nice, enthusiastic with clients. She made a quick check in process but we are too early so we wait for room. She offered us an early check in at 11-12:00 am. It is brilliant and so nice of her, we are very appreciate for her action although we did not tell her a word of complaining. Hundred of thumb up to you. Finally, What We Booked Is What We Got. It is very nice, Hotel's staff help us to put some rose pallets on bed and there is a lovely cake for our anniversary. This is a good site after all, it is almost reach our expectation for accommodation. But perhaps we got our room to early so the floor is quite sticky and this accommodation is not what I mentioned "WWBIWWG", room is equipped with two single beds combined together blinding our eyes until I lied on it and my back got separate feeling. I folded duvet and sheet up, I got disappointed several times a day so I ignored everything to have a good rest during rain. That is our first bad day, second day it worse than that. When we back after full day tour, we turned on DND sign so there was no service but there is one awkward thing that made us happy, a Happy Birthday cake send to our room silently. We need water so we rang Front Office ask Housekeeping to pick us some and then when he came I ask him to change new towels for us, I told him to wait outside and closed the door but he forced against with hand and did not let me close and asked me to give dirty one to him so that he would change for me when my partner is nude. What is problem with him?? Is that how NOVOTEL trained staff to do that??? The last thing I got stuck up with this Hotel's service is I booked a late check out until 04:30 pm. I asked those Concierge or Bell boy to let me know when the Shuttle is ready, cause I would like to have a quick meal before go to the airport. With no smile and any hospitality spirit he confirmed that I need to be here before 10ms (again). I finished my meal and there was a server told me Shuttle has been ready. I have just wrapped up my thing and drinks, Shuttle has already gone, at...

The hotel is okay, but we expected something more, 5* are unfortunately only the prices for drinks and food. In the middle of nowhere, in an artificially created ghost town, so it feels at least. Immediately in front of the hotel there is a "food street", but with an incredible amount of empty space. The food there was expensive, the products offered didn't look very good/fresh and they all offer the same thing. We were totally disappointed by this. In the end, we rented a scooter and went in the evening to the previous "hood" to eat delicious. Food in the hotel: BBQ buffet for VND 650,000, - p. Pers., so much we have not paid in really good (even the more expensive) restaurants for both of us and (many) drinks, cheeky. The drinks at the beach bar were also very expensive. Breakfast was good the first time, a huge selection of dishes, which also all looked neat and what we ate was tasty. Service tried hard, but no service for coffee, for example, you had to get yourself at the coffee machine, so here too no 5*. Breakfast ambience is okay, a bit canteen-like, but is also a large hotel, but it was not crowded. That should change the following day... A huge group, obviously from a company from Malaysia, all with appropriate shirts, arrived. Otherwise, there were a lot of Asians in the hotel anyway. For three days the breakfast was borderline, everything full of people, so loud that we were forced to sit outside and had to shout at each other while choosing food, a special experience, never experienced before. The complex itself is finely landscaped and is maintained daily. Everything nice and green and small pools with water lilies, which looks nice. The beach is endlessly long and less frequented, you can make super walks and watch the fishermen. The sea slopes very shallow and the water quality was not as good as thought. This was surprisingly closer to Duong Dong significantly better, I expected exactly the other way around. About the room: The highest and in comparison very expensive room category "Beachfront Poolvilla" is in principle nice and as the name suggests, equipped with a beautiful and large pool including sea view. Good space, large bathroom and really good water pressure. Unfortunately, it must be said that everything seems but a bit old, everywhere is some chipped or damaged, one of the taps also had better times (completely loose) and the actually beautiful sliding doors to the bathroom are hooky, stiff and squeaky, that's really stupid. On the terrace are two sunbeds, they (still) serve their purpose, but are unfortunately rusty and no longer look nice, even here you could bring some innovations purely. The air conditioning works, but attached to the side and directly on the bed (2x2m, comfortable) directed, you have to like, but could be mitigated by settings something. We also found the meanwhile created road between resort / villa and beach very unattractive, this looks on all (official) pictures even different / more beautiful. Clouds the beautiful view immensely, also regular scooter traffic and now to the worst: The villa is so poorly soundproofed, from outside you hear everything, really everything. You have the feeling that every scooter drives past the bed and even worse are the fishing boats, especially at night, which rattled us daily from sleep. I can honestly hardly imagine that this can only be due to missing seals or existing gaps, rather the glass front seems to be enormously permeable. Conclusion: We had chosen the hotel as part of our honeymoon and actually because of the said pool villa, so a slight disappointment prevails for us. In retrospect, we probably would not have booked the hotel and would have stayed somewhere else longer. The very high surcharge for the pool villa on the beach, compared to the other room categories, especially without a pool, you have to think about, we would not stay here again. As mentioned at the beginning, it was all kind of okay, but unfortunately not more and we lacked a little something special, we felt more comfortable in...

Well. 4 stars is a very serious strech for the reasons specified below.

This place could be 4-5 stars..easily. Sadly, morning fights for sunbeds make this place a big no-no for me.

I treat failure to supply sufficient number of sunbeds in such a place as a fundamental breach of duty (I admit that this is a wholly subjective test, but if you rent a car you expect 4 wheels provided and working, not just 3, right?). If I want to compete for something I'll do that at work - holiday is not the best time/place to wake up at 6am (seriously) to run and reserve a sunbed. Fail to do that and you will have no sunbed for the whole day...great.....:(. Even if you reserve a bed there may be some nasty arrogant (experienced that myself and saw a few times) that will throw your towels/stuff and claim the sunbed...

This, and policy of 'get lost no bottled water after 23' (happened on 02/01/2018 @ 23:22 in the main bar with a rude remark from one of the bartenders - 'you can pay me'). Kids were not extatic...

On the plus side: Hotel is new (approx 2years old) rooms are modern, clean but not too big to be euphemistic. We (2 adults 2 kids) have been accomodated in a room in the main building - I have no doubt that the space per person was well below one allocated to prisoners in the EU and would breach their human rights ;). In any event it was not our intention to spend too much time in the room so we have not perceived this as a massive problem. Storage however caused some difficulty - 4 people could not put their staff there - no way.

Ground is beautiful, very well taken care of. It is however surrounded by large building sites on both sides. We could not hear construction works but our room was internal-facing. Can not comment on outward-facing rooms.

Food is rather limited but of really good quality. New years eve party was AMAZING and food was to die for. Staff was working very hard to achive that. Having said that it appears that the singer performing on the scene did not plan too well - performing a song with a large number of expletives 'motherf*' (shortly before midnight) is not the best idea, especially that there was a lot of English speaking kids.

Majority of staff are extremelly nice, helpful and always smiling, just brilliant!

Kids club is amazing, both thanks to equipment and staff. Big thank you.

Service in the pool area seems slow, but it is not the staff fault - I saw a bartender (on numerous occassions) multitasking in a way I never thought was possible. AMAZING. One bartender served some 250+ people, and waiters ran as overcoffeinated kangaroos :). So if the service seems slow, it is not the staff fault-it is the managers failure to plan and/or allocate sufficient workforce, not the staff lazyness/lack of work ethics etc. Absolutely not-waiters are simply physically unable to provide a swift service. In any event you are on holiday so 10-15 minutes delay for your drink to arrive will not kill you...hopefully ;). If however you need better/faster service learn some Vietnamese - it helps a lot and staff really appreciate that - they will be very happy to teach you. Here is a starter - 'sin ciau' means hello :)

So to sum it up - it was OK. Could have been amazing, has been slightly above acceptable.

Will I visit this place in the future? Unlikely - not enough sunbeds is a real killer for me. Will I recommend to friends? Probably not. Has it been a reasonably nice stay? Yes.

If Novotel management reads comments my suggestion is - send a mystery shopper to the hotel and experience things yourself- sky is the limit for this place but sadly you seem to have failed to recognise and/or address trivial problems, which cause major headache. Surely you can do...