Six Senses Ninh Van Bay — Hotel in Xã Ninh Vân

I don’t like to write negative reviews but I sincerely hope this will help someone, especially those considering a stay at the Six Senses, Zannier Bai San Ho, or both (as we did). TL;DR: do not stay at the Six Senses, stay at the Zannier which delivers a fantastic experience all around. Our experience was ruined by food safety issues, but would have been highly disappointing regardless.

The Six Senses Ninh Van Bay is not worthy of a 5 star, luxury resort. It is more akin to a cruise ship, serving and feeding masses. It doesn’t deliver an experience commensurate with the price tag on any single aspect, and has HUGE failures.

The MAJOR issue is FOOD SAFETY: we were repeatedly made sick by the food, including a severe bout of FOOD POISONING. This may be expected eating at street markets in Vietnam, but is not acceptable at a 5 star resort. Stuff like this happens, but the fact that we were sick multiple times due to the food highlights that this is clearly not a one off issue. It was nice of the resort to send their nurse to check up on me and provide medicine to help, but it wasn’t enough to avoid spending a full day lying in bed trying to not vomit.

Now, onto the different elements of a resort stay: -Site: the hotel is located on a hard to reach peninsula, with a thin strip of beach surrounded by jungle. There are much nicer sites, as the city of Nha Trang and it’s tall buildings are visible on the horizon and the beach isn’t particularly nice or pleasant as it is full of dead corral. The dead corral is unfortunate and not the hotel’s fault, but there are plenty of pristine beaches for international guests to enjoy in Vietnam (Zannier) -Design Style and Rooms: the Six Senses goes all in on the jungle theme. The resort was built ~20 years ago, so perhaps it is age, but the style isn’t particularly appealing nor comfortable. Old school AC unit, issues with the hot water, manual and tough to handle blinds. This isn’t 5 star material. The private beach villa didn’t feel too private, as neighboring villas are just a few feet away, separated by a thin layer of flora. By contrast, the style at the Zannier incorporates traditional Vietnamese with modern features, each villa feels very private, and is significantly more comfortable and stylish. The pictures of the Six Senses don’t do it justice - the resort design appears to have been more inspired by the Flintstones than with guest comfort and details in mind. The main pool is shallow, covered by foliage, and not an interesting place to relax. -Food: putting aside food safety, simply put, the food is not good. We had GREAT food at the other resorts we stayed in Vietnam (Azerai Can Tho, Zannier Bai San Ho). The menus here are uninspiring, limited, and the resort is pushy to get guests to sign up for outrageously experience tasting multi course menus. -Service: resorts of this purported caliber aim for “invisible service”, eg never walking into your room during servicing, things just happening in the background to make your experience fantastic (you are paying for it!). The Six Senses didn’t get the memo, as we overlapped with the service team in our villa every day. This didn’t happen at any other similar resort in Vietnam. The only positive aspect of the service was our guest experience manager, who was there to help plan our days and make sure we were comfortable and satisfied. This role is unique to the Six Senses, but may result in low service quality elsewhere as the resort relies too much on one person to deliver on the expected experience. The resort here doesn’t even deliver on basics, like handing out a glass of cold water after getting out of the ocean. Activities: there is a lot to do, including water sports, tennis, badminton, plenty of other games.

Overall, we do not believe this resort is worthy of the 5 star rating or price tag it commands. There are fantastic luxury resorts in Vietnam. We loved our time at those.

Edit: I want to make clear that we were sick due to the food multiple times. I bet other guests had diarrhea as well. See other...

In summary, this is a picturesque resort in an exquisite location. At face value, it has all the hallmarks of a Six Senses resort. However, it fails miserably on many key facets. Frankly, it is unacceptable to brand a resort as ‘Six Senses’ based on location and aesthetics only. After having firsthand experience holidaying at half a dozen Six Senses resorts, this is by far the worst one. While it is in a great location, it by no means even remotely lives up to what the brand should encompass. Notably, I write this review while currently at Vietnam’s other Six Senses resort in Con Dao, which is far superior on every possible level. If you are thinking of which to choose, it’s a no-brainer.

Issues:

Upon arriving, we advised our host of our dietary requirements, which were really basic, e.g., dairy-free. Yet, for some unknown reason, they continuously managed to get it wrong on almost every meal. To such an extent, we simply stopped trusting them and had to get the head chef to verify the ingredients prior to eating anything. My wife is lactose intolerant and was clearly ingesting dairy due to a simple lack of education by the staff - she felt unwell throughout. She even partook in a cooking class, and they placed food on her plate that she had previously mentioned she could not eat! If you have any dietary requirements, this resort is incapable of catering to your needs.

The language barrier was beyond frustrating. Explaining everything 3-5 times and still having issues is unacceptable. How is it that the staff at Vietnam’s other Six Senses resort in Con Dao are able to engage in proficient English, yet the staff at this resort could barely communicate on any level?

The overall cuisine is mediocre. Excluding the issues we had with dietary requirements, it was bland and definitely not fitting of what one would expect of Six Senses. The first meal my wife had, a chicken salad, was not even edible. The only tasty meal we had was in the cave on the final night - this was outstanding - everything else was disappointing. This includes the buffet breakfast, a key aspect Six Senses prides itself on internationally. Mostly, it was catered for Chinese/local tastes. There’s no issue with that, but if the resort is to ostensibly brand itself as Six Senses, this is false and misleading.

Despite the resort only being a few hundred meters in length, on occasions, we had to wait in excess of 10 minutes for a buggy. We ended up walking to avoid yet another incessant unpleasant experience.

We celebrated my birthday at the resort. My wife requested a cake, and they charged us US$35. Reasonable, but at Six Senses Con Dao, they made me a belated birthday cake complimentary, meeting our dietary requirements without us requesting, and at no cost - that is proper service! They also threw in a decent bottle of champagne.

They charge for drinking water outside the resort and continually push it onto patrons (asking multiple times if you want water). This is not branded water or anything special, simply locally purified - exactly the same as the complimentary water provided in the villas.

Some of the prices are ridiculous. You are secluded at this resort, in an area where you cannot arbitrage prices as it’s remote. Consequently, the resort has the audacity to charge extraordinarily high prices on some basic highly commoditized products, e.g., a coconut is 5x the standard market price.

The turndown service was inconsistent and irregular.

The commute from the airport to the resort is 1.5 hours. They provided only bottled juice and water. This compares to Six Senses Con Dao, where the commute is 10 minutes, and they had a plethora of drinks and food waiting in the car.

As someone who has run major international businesses, this resort is only eroding the Six Senses brand goodwill. The entire service aspect of this resort needs to be revamped. Otherwise, simply drop the Six Senses branding and become a regular 4-star resort, because that’s an exact reflection of...

We chose this place to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday and we were going to stay 3 days and 2 nights. When we got there we were upgraded from a hilltop villa to a rock pool villa. It was great and the villa was insanely pretty, it was also super quiet and private so we loved it there. We then extended our stay day by day and ended up staying there for 8 days and 7 nights.

At first we had a horrible food experience as the food on the menu wasn’t to our liking and we wanted to cut the trip early. However after we filed a complaint with the manager they fixed it right away and all the food after was cooked to our personal preference. We do think that if you ever have a bad experience of sorts here you should most definitely talk to the managerial staff as they will try their best to fix it.

After filing our complaint the manager solved it and also upgraded it to an even better villa. We got upgraded to the water pool villa, which gave us direct access to the beach and it was a lot prettier. However we had to change to a different GEM butler since our first one had to leave as her weekly shift was over.

We think the GEM butler was fantastic as they were very polite and very attentive to all our needs. Our first butler was Uyen which was pretty chill as we could crack a bunch of jokes and she was all fine with it. She also escalated a lot of our concerns to the managers and chef which made our experience better. We kind of felt like we under-tipped her a little bit.

After our first GEM butler left, we got assigned another Butler called Trang. At first we didn’t like the new butler because we were so use to the old one but as time flew by we appreciated her way more. She was very attentive and talked a lot which we liked. Whenever we chose activities she always made sure to tell us the pros and cons of everything so we don’t feel disappointed at the end. When I wanted to go fishing and squid fishing, she told me I could go but with strong winds I might not catch any and I might end up being upset, so I ended up not going. She made sure to be polite even in text which was great and she solved most of the problems we got immediately. She ended up being our favorite GEM butler because she agreed to our absurd request. Her shift ended before our stay and she couldn’t be our butler till we left so she found a replacement for us. However we told her we preferred to keep her as our GEM butler and she made adjustments to her schedule and agreed to continue to stay. Which felt great because we felt like she was willing to take on extra work just to make us happy.

Overall the experience was great and all the staff were extremely pleasant to interact with. We Appreciate the GEM butlers, the Chef who catered to all our needs as well as the manager who dealt with all the problems we had. The manager also made sure to ask us everyday to see if we were enjoying our stay and if we had any issues that needed to be solved.

List of pros and cons

Pros Friendly staff Fantastic View Service is 10/10 Gem butlers that cater to you Managerial staff that solves all your concerns. Super remote and private Chefs that are willing to adapt and make food that suits your palate.

Cons Food is kind of expensive . Quite remote so can’t leave the island Massages are kind of expensive ( Like crazy expensive after discounts due to high taxes ) Food prices are almost as expensive as the room itself (be prepared)

Recommendations Bring snacks or instant ramen just in case. Tell the staff your concerns so that they will understand to make your stay better. (communication is key) Bring extra clothes ( cuz you might extend your stay) Bring change so you can tip a lot of the staffs (like food carriers because they have to climb up a hill to bring your food to you) Bring extra cash so you can tip the staff well because withdrawing money here does...