Here now as gold. Not much in the way of benefit.

500 Marriott points.
High speed internet
late checkout if available.

We paid to upgrade to overwater and there was a free bottle of champagne, fruit and chocolate in the room on arrival. Don’t know if that’s standard though I suspect it is based on other posts and isn’t related to gold status.

The whale bar is open for sunset drinks. There is only a small bites tapas menu consisting of 7 - 8 items. I was definately not pleased about that when i was looking forward to the grill menu i saw before arrival.

Yes - she’s still here, along with a saxophone player (also Russian perhaps?). We’ve really liked her mixes, and the live saxophone accompaniment is quite cool. More hip than I expected from STR; more of a W vibe. However I think she needs a bit more material; we’ve been hearing quite a bit of repetition after spending many sunsets down there...

Hello all, my first post but I’ve read so many posts here and am thankful for the information I’ve read.

I’ve been avidly following this thread in anticipation of my stay at the St Regis Maldives with my husband and young daughter, having travelled extensively all over the world and stayed at 4 other St Regis properties including Bora Bora I must say I’m sadly underwhelmed by this resort.

I’m a platinum member - and maybe one of the problems is that this forum set my expectations too high maybe - for example the main post in this thread says you get a welcome basket of fruit, candy / snack display etc. We have had none of those things after being here for 2 nights. We’ve barely heard from our butler and only based on our experience at other St a Regis properties, we’ve had to ask for things that normally get offered. For example coffee delivered to the room. So we asked if that was a complimentary service provided at this hotel. At first we were told yes, then we were given a bill. Then later we were told we shouldn’t have been charged. All very messy.

Also we are staying on points, garden villa, no upgrade offered (fine) but we did offer to pay to upgrade to a beach villa. We have been told we’ll see, we’ll see how it goes etc - as the hotel is busy ... and today we were told the Beach Villas are over booked so “they’ll see this evening”. Fine - but if I immediately go online right now (5 minutes after being told they are overbooked) I can make a paid reservation for a beach villa using cash. I don’t understand this. They are overbooked by their own acknowledgement and yet are still taking bookings.

It seems like we have to figure out how to get information. Constantly. For example I knew that there were paid excursions - but there is no information on this when you check in. I asked the butler for a list (in addition to a printed map of the resort that we could refer to when we were out and about) (re the map we finally got it after asking a second time when the first response was “it’s on the iPad”). We had to go to the water sport centre and flick through the iPad of excursions. The issue here is that if I didn’t know to ask (and further pushed for it by seeking it out) I would have never found out this extra information. Honestly I’m so much less bothered seeing as though this is a points booking but if I was spending $2500 per night on a garden villa I would have extreme rage.

Don’t get me wrong, even the garden villas are massive in size, food is high quality (high cost), but the service is lacking. And it all seems quite disorganised. Housekeeping is pretty good - gave us extra water after asking a few small issues not worth mentioning.

So what is your advice fellow travellers - it seems wrong / arrogant to me to for example say “I was led to believe as a platinum member there were extra room amenities such as a fruit basket etc but we don’t have these” - or should I ask for this?

PS we tipped our butler when we arrived - he’s only dropped us to the room and showed us how to use the iPad - so that doesn’t help.

This is why I am underwhelmed - I had my hopes up for excellent service but it’s very average at best.

I’d be interested to see the difference in experience of people who pay cash v points. Whether that has something to do with it.

Great theory @LovetoTravel83 but writing this whilst stuck at reception on the phone to Marriott resolving an issue with my booking (relating a back to back points booking) - (that I haven’t posted about as it’s in progress and may be resolved) would love to be enjoying the resort or relaxing.

PS If you’d read the post you’d see that we wouldn’t know how to utilise the resort / activities if I wasn’t checking this forum at times!

We’re now at the resort and we was upgraded from GV to SOWV. I redeemed points. On the day of arrival we received fruit basket and bottle of champagne. I’m titanium member. Maybe I received upgrade because in a few days before arrival wrote to resort and asked to upgrade but I’m not sure)
i like everything here because that is our first time on Maldives. I was upset just by one situation. On the first day we woke up early and went to breakfast at 7 and then decided to visit alba again to have a coffee with snacks. When we were done we received a bill on 138 dollars because we can’t have breakfast two times a day) that the first place where I see this policy but I don’t worry about that now))

I would ask them to remove the charge. Whilst the policy makes sense to avoid freeloaders, the whole POINT of a small resort is the waiters are supposed to remember you and have personalised service - and in a case like this, quietly pull you aside and ask whether you’ve been advised of the policy on double breakfasts.

Frame it that way and I’m sure they’ll remove the charges.

A ton of GV award availability has opened up! We’re talking every day through December 19th from today.

I have a 5 night award booking at StR. When I called Plat line a week ago about them honoring 60k points rate but my points advance showing 85k per night, they simply added 100k points to my account to make up for it. They didn’t attach any stipulations on this like this, so now I’m tempted to modify the dates to push the trip back a couple days. Anyone think this is safe or do y’all think IT could actually some sort of linkage to pull points away if I modify/cancel the original reservation? The 100k pts they gave me is simply labeled as a “Points Adjustment”.