Originally Posted by Lkaroo

I promised to wait until the GM replied before sharing my views on the property. He has now done so but only after initially claiming not to receive my email, and only after I phoned to follow up given no response was received 48 hours after sending it again...

The Good - the rooms were clean and spacious. Housekeeping was very efficient. The staff are friendly and well-meaning. The resort is beautiful. Snorkelling was better than expected given previous reports here.

The Bad - well, unfortunately, there is lots of it...

Pre-arrival - completely incompetent communication, to the extent that my email requesting confirmation of our transfer arrangements was forwarded back to me in error rather than to the correct department. I had to follow up numerous times to get any reply. Our one and only stay request, namely that my partner does not drink champagne or sparkling wine (yes she's a keeper), was ignored and a bottle of champagne was duly left in our room. Yes, I accept that this is the most first-world of first-world problems. But when you only make one request, you would hope it could be met.

Butler service - our butler's friendly demeanour was only matched by his incompetence. This was generally the case with most of the staff we interacted with at the resort. Upon arrival, we were told that he had booked us a set of restaurants and that is where 'we' were going to eat. I previously e-mailed to enquire about dining options which were open during our stay but we received a reply on the day prior to departure.

The reservations were mostly booked at 21:30, and we had expressed absolutely no interest in visiting any of them. Had any pre-arrival contact been made, it would have been abundantly clear that we were not interested in having a Middle Eastern tasting menu given that we live in the Middle East. He would also have known that we do not enjoy eating at late. We felt like were having our choices dictated to us wherever there was availability (the resort was at capacity) as opposed to having our stay tailored to our preferences.

Our butler contacted us during the afternoon or our second day to tell us about a bonfire dinner at Alba. This had never been mentioned to us in the pre-arrival email, nor on arrival. It seemed like there had been a cancellation when he called as he informed us that there was just “one table left” and we felt under pressure to make a decision as to whether we wanted to go. Nevertheless, when we arrived there were many empty tables (and this remained the same throughout the evening). The “bonfire” itself was fairly pathetic; there are gas hobs in many kitchens with larger fires. We also had other issues with the meal, again detailed further below.

I also felt that the butler service phone line always wanted to pass the buck and not take any responsibility. On our penultimate day, I had to actively follow up to get our departure flight time, and to rearrange some massage times as a result. When I called, the individual kept saying he would speak to our butler who would then make the changes. Why not just do it? In the interests of time, I took it upon myself to do so, which led me to speak to an actively hostile woman at the spa.

A further example of failure by the staff to take ownership or responsibility is when I twisted my ankle playing tennis. I asked two staff in the nearby Vommuli House for an ice pack. Despite being in quite obvious pain, both staff felt the appropriate response was to say “we will try and contact your butler to arrange this” rather than actively provide assistance. Let's hope no-one ever needs more serious medical assistance.

Dining - we felt that the food ranged from mediocre at best, to poor at worse. It says a lot that my partner felt that the best meal she had during the stay was the congee at breakfast. The food was, without doubt, the most disappointing aspect to our stay.

Bonfire

The attempt at upselling by the staff member by the fish counter was utterly disgraceful. Upon selecting some oysters, we asked if he would confirm that they would simply be served raw. The response - “would you like some caviar with your oysters?”. Right...

In addition, we felt that our waiter was trying to push us to order as many side dishes as possible even though we mentioned we were not that hungry; while I appreciate the costs involved to import food in the Maldives, being pushed to order a baked potato at US$18++ several times is simply obscene.

Further, upon receiving our pre-departure bill and querying a charge, our butler mentioned that there was an additional Bonfire bill because we ordered food after the initial bill was signed. This is simply not true. We actually had to request the bill four times after our meal had finished before being presented with it.

Crust

Due to a delay in our flight on our final day, we decided to have a pizza from Crust in Alba before departure. When the pizza arrived, it was cold. When telling the Crust staff of this the reply was “this is how it is meant to be served”. Is there any pizzaiolo in the world who will tell me that pizza should be served cold? (Other than when eating leftovers hungover)

Fortunately a staff member from Alba intervened and arranged for another pizza to be made; however, it was tasteless and not much warmer. No-one questioned why we left half the pizza. I'd really like to know what OMAAT was smoking when he says of Crust "The pizzas were excellent, among the best I’ve had outside Italy."

Alba

At breakfast: (1) every day, we had to re-request parts of our order as items would be missing; (2) on our first two mornings, we were presented with our sweet plates before our savoury ones (if I had not requested that we get served our savoury choices first on our final day morning, it would likely have been the same). Perhaps this is a new fashion like cold pizza?; and (3) despite an extensive tea selection, we were told most options were unavailable. The excuse we were given was bizarre (“we get our delivery on Friday”) when it was a Sunday...

Spa - my brief phone interaction with the receptionist to arrange timing of massages on our departure day was almost actively hostile; she made it sound like it was a privilege for us to be accommodated by the spa. It could perhaps best be charcterised as the reaction to pressing the call bell when flying Y.

Upon arriving, we felt very rushed (and it seemed like we were being passed through a ‘conveyor belt’ line of service. So much for being relaxing. While the massages themselves were excellent; they were less than 50 minutes in length as opposed to the 60 minutes that we paid for.

Departure - we found someone else's sandals (fancy YSL ones at that) in a St Regis paper bag, in one of our checked baggages when we got back home. We have highlighted this to resort, only to receive a nonsensical reply from our butler - "they were outside your room and you told us to pack them". Well we are not going senile quite yet and they definitely were not...

Overall...

We still enjoyed our holiday, but mainly because it was the first time in a while we were both able to fully disconnect from our jobs. We did not highlight service issues at the time as we simply wanted to relax rather than get stressed and complain. Perhaps our complaints might seem minor or trivial but it eventually felt like death by a thousand cuts.

The GM's (quite obviously largely copy and paste) response to my feedback is as follows. It fails to even address the fact that we still have someone else's belongings after we have followed up. In my view, it is totally inadequate and I have told him as much. Quality service usually comes from quality leadership and his response reflects the attitude found at the resort.

"Thank you very much for your email and for your detailed and constructive feedback regarding your stay with us here at The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort.

Please accept my apologies for the shortfalls in service that you experienced.I have personally shared this with our Resort Manager and L&D Manager who are addressing in our ongoing training sessions and quality audits. Unfortunately, as you mentioned that you did not highlight during your stay the opportunity to resolve was missed.

We look forward to welcoming you back where a warm welcome and improved experience awaits you."