Ritz Carlton Langkawi - outstanding property, great elite treatment

I stayed here during the last week of October, on Tuesday and Wednesday nights as a Bonvoy Titanium member. Purposely chose those weeknights as I was hoping for an upgrade to a villa. Booked two nights as a low season category 6 - 40k points/night for the base room. About two weeks beforehand, I was pre-upgraded to a beach villa, and the was further upgraded to an oceanfront villa about a week before check in.

I arrived via Grab from LGK, for a grand total of 9RM. There is a manned gatehouse that Grab will pass through. Just a name check, no security check.

The open-air "lobby" of the is uphill from the main part of the resort and is basically just an adminstrative facility. I was guided to a seating area overlooking the main resort and offered a cold towel, and welcome drink. Actually, check in seemed pretty slow and as far as I could tell, I was the only one arriving. It was probably 5-10 mins before I was given keys, a map, and a buggy ride to my villa.

If you want to get a Grab, you can either come to the lobby and let the staff know what vehicle to expect, or go straight to the front gate.

Map:

View from the lobby sitting area - picture is from C looking to blocks 5-7. Very green:

The room I had was AMAZING.

I was given Villa 12, an Oceanfront Villa. This is 4 categories up from the base room that I booked (deluxe room (base) -> junior suite -> rainforest villa -> beachfront villa -> oceanfront villa).

This is probably as private a villa as you can get in this category - it is located at the end of the pathway and only villa 11 has any direct line of site into the villa, through the floor to ceiling window in the "dining" area. You basically cannot see V15 and V16 through the heavy vegetation, and they are situated maybe 15 meters above and 75m back from V12.

This is a beautiful property and I like this far more than the RC Bali that I stayed in last year. RC Bali feels like a mega resort compared to this place. I love that they built that property into the rainforest instead of clearing it all out.

I don't have a complete set of pictures of the inside to share. For a more thorough tour, I recommend this video of this exact villa from a random Youtube user (not me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cvjNcQZi5A

The entrance:

One cool feature that is fairly unique to Villa 12, I think, is that it is entirely overwater at high tide.

From the front gate:

Looking to the east, and villa 11:

From the bedroom. Those are two sliding doors that can fully open:

These doors open too:

View from the shower area:

View from the deck outside the shower, looking towards the resort spa:

A hornbill in the tree right outside the bathroom. Actually there were lots of birds and monkeys in this tree:

Sunrise and low tide:

Welcome amenity:

There are flip flops, sarongs, hats, and beach bag available for use in the room. Extremely nice laundry bags as well. Also, many bottles of water. Based on helvetic's previous review, I thought that the beach bag was free to take, but was informed on my check-out buggy ride that it would be a 100RM charge if I took it with me. That was quite odd to me.

In general, the hard product is very nice, but I did have some quibbles.

• The rainfall showerhead on the inside shower had pretty weak water pressure.
• The AC cannot be set below 19 or 20c (I don't think it ever hit that, even during the night), and was very loud as well. During the day, the interior experiences strong sunlight and the AC can struggle to keep up if you don't close the curtains. Interestingly, the curtains in the bedroom were manual, whereas everywhere else in the villa were electronic.
• Couldn't find a room service menu in the room. Had to call the front desk who then directed me to the TV. Lol.

Service was quite good, but a couple things prevented it from being perfect:

• Don't get locked out. There are no house phones anywhere near the villa. I had to walk back up towards the main area to flag someone down because my key wasn't working for my late check out. Once I did that, it still took like 10 mins before I could get back into my room.
• Buggies could sometimes take quite a while. Like 10+ mins waiting to go to checkout.
• Checkout also took forever (like 20 mins) because of multiple parties leaving at the same time and initially only one agent. Also I had to forcefully asked to be checked out becuase I was almost skipped over in queue.
• All this happened within 2 hours of other so I didn't leave with the best memories.

Firstly breakfast. If your rate doesn't include it, I don't recommend the buffet for RM135, when you can have room service and this view for half  the price.

That said, the buffet does have some quality al la carte dishes, including this lobster omelette:

While I was there, the restaurant where the breakfast buffet was held was undergoing renovation and no outside seating was available, or ocean views.

I had dinner both nights at Horizon. Can't beat the view, and the food was decent. Not cheap for Malaysia though, and more in line with US city prices at non-hotel restaurants. 20% off for elite members was applicable here (no discount on room service or the breakfast buffet).

The location of the resort is very good. Close to the airport and the 7 wells waterfall (RM10 taxi ride, or about the same for a Grab).

Great ocean sunset views from the beach side, and also sunrise views from the oceanfront villa side. I love that the resort is built into the forest and existing topography. Once you enter the resort, you don't hear anything from the nearby road/highway and only the sounds of the ocean and wildlife.

I loved the beach side, but the unfortunately the oceanfront villa side is significantly less picturesque, with views of the airport and jetty straight across the water in the distance.

I loved my stay here and my oceanfront (overwater) villa stay was a steal at 40k/night. If I were to return, I might hope for a beach villa upgrade, as the beach side is significantly more scenic.

My stay in the low season was great. Super quiet - there were only two other parties on the beach when I was there, and Horizon was not busy at all. There were a few families at the Beach Grill/Pool, but I didn't spend much time there as Horizon was so much nicer. Also had very good weather - had a high amount of sun and only saw some quick moving light rain a couple times.

Compared to RC Bali, RC Langkawi is at a much higher level. I followed this stay with a night at the Andaman, and for the hard product of the resort itself, there is no contest in favor of the RC. The Andaman does win on location and scenery though.