Review:
When reading some of the reviews here
like „ best hotel ever“ or „ best hotel in Hilton portfolio“ I am wondering, if I stayed at a different resort or should feel sorry for the people, who wrote this.
On the trip before we stayed at The Soori, Alila Uluwatu, Amankila and the St. Regis. They were all amazing.
The only way to justify a booking in this resort, is that you are only paying 80k points for a 1000$/night villa.
The villa itself is huge, newly renovated with plunge pool and jacuzzi.
The quality of the construction is rather on the poor side, but very common in Asia. Huge gaps between the sliding doors, not soundproof.
On arrival, the first thing we saw was the massive construction site next to the hotel, with lot of construction noise, that is noticeable nearly all over the resort or 2/3 of the resort .
Construction site next to Umana
Probably not hearable in the villas at the edge of the cliff, which you won’t get on points.
Our assigned villa for the first 2 nights ( garden villa 133) was next to the busy beach road, which is the main access to Melasti beach, with traffic and therefore noise from 6 am till midnight.
When the hotel was built 15 years ago it was only a small path, as the beach wasn’t developed, as it is today.
Now it is a bustling beach for bus tours with several beach clubs.
Our Jacuzzi wasn’t usable, as it was directly facing this road.
View from Jacuzzi
View from beach road to the Umana Villas
We were told that we could change the villa after the first 2 nights (but not earlier) to a partial seaview villa as a Diamond upgrade and that there would be less noise. We were informed about the strict one-level only upgrade policy for Diamonds.
Although we made clear, we wouldn’t care about the view, if we only could get a more quiet vila, nothing was available for the first 2 nights. ( I guess they knew that you will either face the construction or street noise :-). )
At checkin I found it very strange, that they first thanked us for our loyalty and explained, that we would get 15% discount on laundry… I thought ...??
No word about the 25% discount on F+B, which my wife found out randomly via Umanas Instagram story…
No welcome letter was provided at all.
As the outdoor space wasn’t usable, we decided to go to the beach with the hotel shuttle.
At the beach, the next disappointment was waiting:
There was a huge construction site with 8 shabby sunbeds and 4 umbrellas, which had seen better times, all partly broken, stained, …
Beach amenities..
Construction site of future Umana Beach Club
Management should be ashamed about the disgusting quality of the beach amenities.
The construction will be the hotel’s beachclub in the future.
At the moment, there is no service at the beach apart from the towels.
The towel guy is very nice and friendly.
No food or drinks, but luckily there are many small restaurants behind the beach, where you can buy everything .
According to their website, they have direct access to Melasti beach, which isn’t correct, as everyone has to take the shuttle van.
After 2 days we were able to move to a partial sea view villa on top of the resort, with a nice view, less noise but still hearable and everything in walking distance, so no more buggies needed.
Also already a lot of stains on the sofa and the outdoor cushions, even the hotel was newly renovated after taking over from Banyan Tree.
Positive:
Food was very good, high quality, but very very limited choices . One Mediterranean restaurant and one all day dining.
Breakfast small buffet and a la carte, good but not comparable with the hotels mentioned before.
Coffee at breakfast was excellent.
Even at the Alila Seminyak, which comes for a fraction of the price, the breakfast is much bigger, daily changing dishes, ..
All of the staff lovely, typical Balinese kindness.
Management not visible at all during our 5 night stay, I guess the GM works remote from Homeoffice.