Pleasure to meet you last night and hope you managed to get your beer!
I spent 30 minutes with Sven yesterday evening talking through my feedback and how I felt it was without a doubt my worst Amanzoe experience and possibly the worst service I've received all year, as even though it was minor, it was so frequent and consistent to the point of sheer frustration. Whilst all the staff are very friendly and very keen, there are some massive communication issues and lack of proactivity that I just cannot comprehend. I mentioned that as someone who works in software, if we ever release something that has bugs in it, our clients go bug hunting and start looking for things that aren't even bugs, as they have that mindset; similarly, as they had done so much wrong, I was there looking at everything and wondering if it was a fault. Never once at the beach or main pool did anyone ever approach us for a drink, yet weirdly after being by the main pool for 2 hours, someone came and offered us hand towels. So I start thinking that they've just forgotten to do it earlier, instead of thinking it's good service to offer it.
He wrote down all my thoughts and I could see how disappointed he was at my feedback. In terms of what happened, well, we went to dinner an hour later and the same old story of incorrect orders, no preferences remembered and chasing waiters for menus and drinks. We were told so many times by a staff member that they forgot, that we end up chasing on almost everything. Service is never prompt at an Aman, but it's fine as you know it's coming, but not here. I said that my points go in 2 directions: actual let down by the lack of Aman service, e.g. even after 5 days they still failed to remember preferences, and then complaints, such as every time we ordered something it was almost farcical as to what ended up happening; we ended up joking about what was going to turn up vs what we ordered.
After my Switzerland trip last week, where I complained at two different hotels and they immediately rectified it and offered above-and-beyond compensation without so much as blinking, I left feeling a very welcome customer. I even had follow-ups on the matter afterwards. Here, I'm not so sure. I very much like Sven, but I didn't feel it was taken as seriously as it should have been. It clearly was not just me, as
jctrav mentioned above, and it clearly was not just us, as when we left the restaurant last night another repeat customer was there complaining about the baffling decision of the staff to bring his starter and not his wives at the same time - something we too had to experience.
I still had a great time and still would likely return, but only as I love that hard product so much. Yet with food prices having significantly increased and portion and quality down, it's not quite the value-for-money that it once was.
Some pics from my stay:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/132880...57682276014211