Wrong destination for diving, go to Le Meridien in nearby Vanuatu instead.

Here is what I wrote in another thread......

I recently decided to return on vacation to Fiji after a gap of many years.

I'm a big fan of the Starwood properties in French Polynesia (well, Bora Bora) and in New Caledonia (Le Meridien Isle of Pines and, to a lesser extent, Noumea), and so while I knew that Fiji is much less beautiful I also knew that it is much cheaper, especially armed with a Starwood Privilege card to slash your dining expenses......

I also knew that since the loss of the Vomo Island Sheraton all 3 remaining properties share the same dark sandy beach on Denarau "island".

I wanted a more luxurious stay, so I skipped the Sheraton and instead booked a 2 Bedroom unit at the Sheraton Villas for several days, as well as a night at the Westin after the end of a trip elsewhere.

1. Sheraton Villas
The units at the Sheraton Villas are nice - bigger and better than the Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resort Villas timeshare on Maui - but there are problems. There are two pools (but no beach, just a lawn adjoining the ocean) but for most things such as meals you have to go to the ugly, overcrowded and mediocre Sheraton. Even check-in takes place there. Also, the neighbouring Sheraton and Westin have huge waterfrontage, but the villas are built on a narrow parcel of land and almost all front the pool, not the ocean.

VERDICT - The Sheraton Fiji is markedly inferior to the nearby Le Meridien Noumea, both in quality but especially in terms of the beauty of the location. The villas are far better rooms, but you will still be overrun by armies of Australian schoolkids, and you have no choice but to go to the tacky Sheraton for breakfast etc, even though you are paying upwards of US$750 per night for your 2 bedroom villa. And the service in the restaurants there makes French Polynesia look like a hive of activity and industry! At three breakfasts out of seven at the Sheraton Fiji our drinks didn't arrive until after we had finished eating.

2. Westin Fiji
Here was the big let-down. I stayed at this property as a youngster a quarter of a century ago when it was the Regent of Fiji - a stablemate of the Beverly Wilshire. It's next to the villas, but with far more oceanfrontage. The buildings have recently been facelifted with new interiors using the luxury Sydney / Melbourne Westin interiors, but the renovations have clearly been bungled in amazing fashion.

The afore-mentioned Australian Westins have bathrooms in which the entire width of the bathroom is separated into two glass-walled, glass-doored cublicles: a toilet and a shower. This has been transplanted into the Fiji property, but whereas the shower floor in Sydney / Melbourne / Auckland is designed to be slightly lower than the bathroom floor and has a steep drop into a drain, in Fiji they use the existing tiled floor with no plug-hole, just an ineffective grate at the back. The outcome for us and everyone we spoke to was that as soon as you start the shower you flood your bathroom.

The thoughtlessness pervades everywhere. The pool area is quite nice but is not tiled or concrete but rather is grassy. The result is that by 10 am it becomes a mudbath, with everyone soiling the pool with their muddy feet. You actually have to walk across the grass to get to and from the pool shower, so if you want to use the pool after being at the beach you go to the shower to wash the sand off your feet, only to collect mud on your way from the shower to the pool. It's just nuts!

When our bathroom flooded (and the cold bath tap didn't work, so there was no alternative to the shower) I tried to get a new room, even a downgrade. There was an Englishman complaining loudly to equally little effect, and I was told that there were no alternative rooms available with a working bathroom and that I'd just have to wait until they fixed the bathtap the next morning (which they did).

VERDICT: The Westin has had an ambitious refurbishment which has been utterly bungled. It still has a superb lobby and good restauarants, but the rooms have been refurbished with good materials in a poorly designed way, and for the same money you could go to the massively superior Le Meridien Isle of Pines.

Starwood's three Fiji properties thrive on a diet of short-haul Australian tourists. If I were American I have no doubt that I would instead head for the Starwood properties on Bora Bora or New Caledonia's Isle of Pines. You wouldn't want to spend too much time or money visiting the Fiji properties.
Last edited by DCF : Oct 7, 07 at 9:39 pm