Vinpearl Resort & Spa Phú Quốc — Hotel in Phú Quốc

Let's get why 4-star and not 5-star out of the way first. There's only a puny Saeco espresso machine for hundreds of guests in the morning, and it's frustrating to line up for coffee - especially while some guests (won't mention the nationality) make coffee for their entire family, 2 - 3 min per cup. I saw a big professional espresso machine next door - not used. So the hotel could just bring your choice coffee to the table - as they do in other hotels.

Edit: After the review was published magically 2 more coffee machines appeared and alleviated waiting times.

In general, Vinpearl is a great (and grand) hotel, with large beautifully furnished rooms with hardwood furniture, great beach, great pool, and very good service. The morning buffet is a sprawling affair with islands around cooks doing noodles, Bahn Mi, eggs and waffles, and so on - with fresh fruit and some 20 trimmings for salads, or for noodles, or for congee, and lots of other dishes to choose from on the side (or pastries, or cold cuts, or ...). The hotel is set on large grounds, isolated from the hustle and bustle of rural Vietnam (Duong Dong) and it looks like it's committed to take care of all its guests' needs, the only connection with the outside being a bus, every 30 minutes, that takes you to the equivalent of Disneyland (Vindworld, Vinwonders), a Safari and a fairly newly built ghost-town village (Grandworld) with a very low occupancy rate. That phenomenon of 'build and they will come' seems prevalent here - maybe some kind of central planning, or how the developers work. There are hundreds of empty shops and condos surrounding Vinpearl, in Grandworld and elsewhere.

I found the employees of the hotel trying to be helpful and make it right, though they assume that if the hotel doesn't provide it, it doesn't exist (you CAN get diving trips with hotel pickup if you order online). A tip: if you want to have a leisurely dinner, order your appetizers and drinks first, and don't mention the main dishes - unless you're OK with everything showing up at the same time and getting cold (in the Orient, they do serve the whole meal together). The quality of the à la carte food in the beach bistro is excellent in general.

Edit: However I came down with severe stomach flu symptoms after sampling their clam chowder, which only went away after 1 gram of Azythromycin in Bangkok 3 days later. The hotel has a local clinic and provided electrolytes and Smecta but some antibiotics on hand would be good. On departure day, a reception employee was quite aggressive about collecting the second ( plastic) room key that had been left in the room and not noticed by maintenance staff. He wanted to charge 50,000 VDN. I explained to his manager that no other hotel in the world would treat guests like that. I noticed this ‘by the book’, robotic behaviour in Phu Quoc with bus drivers would would not stop to pick up passengers running to the bus once it left the station, or Vinpearl Safari employees shouting Passport though they don’t issue a ticket without that ( yes, you need a passport to see the zoo :- )

The hotel should definitely act on the Vyboard (a hose tied to a sea scooter pumping high pressure water propelling the rider a few meters in the air) operating close to the beach. It generates a lot of fumes. The buoys are too close to the beach and I almost collided with a sea scooters when swimming a bit farther.

Service at the Bistro was excellent, a lady by name of Sun Ya ( sorry if I misspelled her name) served us several evenings and seems extremely professional and hardworking. Some dishes like the fish soup or snails are great. Pastries - could taste better/fresher the pizza ingredients should be closer to the Italian original (and no, pizza is not served with a honey dipping sauce).

A very relaxing place to get away from it...

I am posting on an update to the review slightly before this (named “Rowena Lee” as Google restricts me from writing too long in my update in my review before this: After all this that happened, and right after writing a review about a very unfortunate incident that happened to me that Monday night in our initial room, the very next morning (Tuesday morning), their beautiful hotel manager, Bella, instantly texted us asking how she could help us and to address our concerns to her, and she apologised to what had happened as she read the previous review of ours. Wow their response to Google Review is amazingly fast! 😃

So, after replying her explaining what happened and that we deserve a better room, she replied us saying that she would arrange for us a beautiful suite in compensation of the very unfortunate incident that happened to me and that it would be after our breakfast. And to my surprise, they arranged it incredibly fast and we moved instantly right after our breakfast without any hassle. We needn’t need to wait at all. They even took me to their clinic and attended to my wounds and injuries.

So, we moved into a beautiful suite with a beautiful view of the ocean and pool. Oh we were so happy and it made me feel so much better! They even gave us a bottle of wine and a variety of mini cakes, with a letter of sincere apology. The suite was SO BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN and WELL MAINTAINED! 😃😃😃

Bella was so helpful throughout until the day of our checkout. I would love to compliment Bella as she is amazing, caring, lovely and cheerful! She constantly checked on how I was and texted me asking if I needed any help. She was just a call and a text away and she would reply instantly within seconds if I needed help or anything at all! She even gave us a complimentary check out extension, a discount on our room service and refill of mineral water as we requested for it, and she was there whenever we needed her, even sending over our wine to our 2nd hotel. She even got the nurse to go to our room for a follow-up treatment to my wounds.

The room service was REMARKABLY AMAZING! We love their spaghetti bolognese, spaghetti carbonara and their brownies with vanilla ice-cream. IT WAS SO VERY YUMMY!!! 5 stars for their room service!!! We have even ordered their brownies with ice cream twice! Oh they have left us inlove with almost everything in their resort.

Thank you so much again, Bella for your warmest and loveliest hospitality, your impeccable service and for making us feel so very welcomed. We miss you (Bella) so much now, as well as Vin Pearl Resort & Spa as all their staff are always very cheerful and helpful from the reception to the bellboys, the waiters and waitresses and their hostesses. Super friendly too! The 2nd hotel we’re staying in now cannot even be compared to Bella’s and Vin Pearl’s now in terms of reception, room (because they’ve left us mind blown with their suite) and most of important of all, their excellent and remarkable service.

I would also like to compliment Kim Trin and Alice for being so helpful at the breakfast whenever we were there. They were so cheerful, helpful and friendly asking me if I needed anything else, and gave us warm drinks too.

Vin Pearl Resort’s service is remarkably amazing overall, especially Bella’s. They have left us wanting to go back there again. We will definitely come back to Vin Pearl Resort when we go back to Phu Quoc. Even my son said Vin Pearl Resort is such a good resort and that he misses Vin Pearl so much too now. My husband said the same as well.

Thank you so much again, Bella. You’re amazing, lovely and incredible! I will definitely look for you and visit you when we go back to Phu Quoc and we look forward to seeing you again in Vin Pearl Resort. We wished we could have stayed longer and we will the next time we visit Phu...

We’ve been to the place 4 days already and it is time to share our thoughts. With all do respect, it is not today a 4,9 star hotel. In a nutshell mngmt needs to refocus on quality of service especially and not level to the most clients standards, who are not very high. One guest nationality extremely dominates the place unfortunately, which puts everyone to sleep in my opinion. We don’t have to try hard, as no-one (guests) will notice or appreciate it. Wrong! Please keep the place cleaner, verify tidiness, control staff responsible for order and cleanliness.

Breakfast (review mostly on the one closer to villas part): 2 big restaurants with similar or the same offer. Both have decent to very good variety of selection. The food is very good and tasty. Maybe sometimes we’d prefer better fruit selection, few times we’ve seen mango, papaya and watermelon is a fight for too, every day. Staff tries to be very nice, worth mentioning. The challenge is preparation of tables and dirty dish collection. If this improves, the breakfast experience would be very good, not just decent.

Drinks: (based on beach bar) This place is dirty, unpleasant and mostly with bad service. Sorry. This is NOT the way you should have it done. After our bad review to the bar directly on google two days ago, looks like someone noticed the issue and they tidy up things better it seems. There should be at least one more person at service here. Consider this strongly. The cashier can’t make it alone and mostly is supported by someone preparing the drinks. Not enough staff to clean, and make service to guests. Clearly they are loosing money here as people are irritated and can only order at cashier, waiting in line.

Lunch/ dinner (based only on a’la carte restaurant next to the beach). This is definitely the brightest point of the hotel. Everything is right and food is very good to excellent. Service is good, which is the only place at the hotel where it is good or as it should be. English is an issue as everywhere at this hotel, but with kindness and really staff trying very hard and being extremely nice, you feel ok and suddenly it is not an issue. We had many different dish and we liked all of them. Last night steaks were excellent and very well prepared. Really was worried about it, but looks like the chef here knows exactly what’s he/she is doing. Great job. The selection of food is very wide, so you can find something for yourself for sure. This place keeps us liking the whole place better.

Rooms: we have a very nice villa with a pool, which is very nice. Can’t say a bad word. I think they service it once a day. I don’t think there is a turn down service at night. We don’t care this time as this place is so huge you can always find a clean, tidy corner. One reflection: for a family of 4 it is too big. We have to shout to each other, but we can live with it.

Gym: great place, nothing to complain about at all. Clean tidy and very well equipped.

Beach: the beach is absolutely the top highlight of this place. You kind of forget all the cons about the place.

Surrounding: I don’t do it often in my reviews, but I want to mention gardeners, who in my opinion do a great job. The place is very neatly kept. You can see them here and they’re always doing something. Last night after midnight I saw them spraying for bugs next to our villa, today, exchanging the grass and cutting down palm tree’s dry leaves… so hats off. The place...