St. Regis BB: Beautiful property, uneven but overall great service and great food

My husband and I just returned from a 6 night stay at the St. Regis Bora Bora Resort to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. We also were met there by a couple of Aussie friends, who overlapped with us to celebrate. 

Knowing we wanted to stay here, I had won an Andrew Harper auction for this property in late summer 2015, giving us 6 nights in a deluxe overwater villa with breakfast and all taxes, for a mere $6000. I booked our stay at that time for April 2016. I hoped being SPG Platinum 100+ nights (Ambassador level) would get us upgraded...but knew the property would be sold out (and it was). My Ambassador confirmed for me that the property was sold out a week prior to our departure...and wanted to surprise us with the upgrade. We didn't realize we'd been upgraded to the Royal Overwater Villa (2 bedrooms with private pool) until our arrival on property. We were very surprised, indeed...and amazed that we got such a tremendous upgrade at this level of property.

For the record, we originally had a 7 night stay booked. But  Air Tahiti Nui canceled our departing flight LAX-PPT on the day of our departure...but was able to rebook us onto the same flight the next day. My SPG Ambassador was able to shift our 6 night auction package to the actual 6 nights of our stay...and get our orginal 7th night (booked via spg.com) refunded as a credit towards incidentals for our 6 night stay--despite the fact that such a 7th night was non-refundable at that point. Saved us over $1500. Anyone who doesn't appreciate what an SPG Ambassador can do for you is crazy, in my opinion! 

Check in was pretty quick. Of course, we were so thrilled to learn that we'd been "double upgraded" to the Royal Overwater Villa that we likely didn't pay much attention to anything else!

Once check in was finished and a copy of my credit card was taken, we were offered the chance to tour the property or to go straight to our villa. We chose to take the tour, something I regretted the moment we began. It is quite the big property, surprisingly, so it took a good 30-45 min with stops at the main restaurant/pool area, spa, lagoons, the Lagoon fine dining restaurant, etc. It is possible the upgrade had made me anxious to just get there and see it, too!

The Royal Overwater Villa is the largest overwater villa in Bora Bora...or the entirety of French Polynesia. There are 5 such villas, but ours (#202) was considered to be the best (including a sunset view and side/exterior view of Mt. Otemanu). Ours and another were at the end of the boardwalk into the lagoon; the other looked towards sunrise, whereas ours looked directly at sunset. There were 3 other Royal Overwater villas that were just off the main island...so not as far out into the lagoon but with similar orientations to ours. 

The villa was extraordinary.

The entry:

The main living area (viewed from the exterior deck to allow for better lighting):

There is a table with 4 chairs behind the couch that is a little difficult to see. That's where we often had breakfast or dinner or had treats left for us:

There were 2 identical bedroom suites, one on either side of the main living area. The "left" side of the villa bedroom, where we slept:

And the identical "right" side of the villa bedroom, which we used for its extra bathroom and to let our friends relax before their villa was ready:

We found the "left" bedroom, oriented more to the center of the boardwalk and towards the other Royal Overwater Villa, to be a bit more private--with more space on that side between the Royal Overwater Villas than on the other side between our Royal and the next Deluxe Overwater Villa. But the view from the "right" bedroom may have been slightly better. A personal judgment call, to be sure...and one of those choices that you are delighted to have to make.

The 2 bathrooms were identical, though reversed in orientation:

There was plenty of closet space for each of us on the same side, actually. We did borrow some hangers from the other side:

I forgot to take a photo of the separate and fully enclosed toilet area with door. Suffice to say it was sufficient. 

The view from the main living area:

Note that the villa did not look directly out onto Mt.Otemanu, though once outside you couldn't miss it!

Call me crazy, but that setting, with those vibrant colors, is what everyone comes to Bora Bora to enjoy...is it not?

The exterior deck had a covered bungalow exactly like the one shown but opposite the side of the pool (behind me as I took that photo). Each bungalow had a table with 2 chairs. The cloth shield is translucent so you can see through it but affords some privacy...but is equally about wind protection (as we learned the very next night!). The 2 loungers shown above were matched with another 2 by the other bungalow not pictured. 

The pool was a bit cooler than the lagoon (which was quite warm), which was delightfully refreshing for me and our friends but not so much for my husband. There were also 2 lower platforms on either side of the pool from which you could crawl down a ladder directly into the lagoon, and also on which there were 2 freshwater showers so you could rinse after getting out of the lagoon.

There was a fairly strong current while we were there, so you wouldn't want to stray too far from the deck or you'd be pulled down the lagoon towards the Four Seasons (the very next resort property, to the right of the photos above). Apparently, there were a few guests who had to be "rescued" by the staff jetskis during our stay who had drifted too far and couldn't swim back to their villas! We had no trouble, but we're in reasonable shape and accustomed to often being in the water. But even we could see how someone could get stuck and not be able to swim back if you weren't careful.

A video demonstration of our Royal Overwater Villa:

[url]https://youtu.be/UZ-MIyIM5q4[/url]

Overall, we LOVED this villa. That being said, we spent our last hour at the resort in our friends' "regular" Deluxe Overwater Villa (#118), about 4 villas away from ours. We found it very comfortable, and suprisingly large, as well. The bedroom and bathroom were identifcal to ours. The only thing it lacked was our pool and a bigger deck. So we'd feel pretty comfortable being in the "regular" deluxe villa, as well.

FYI, the air con generally worked VERY well. Our villa had 3 air con units, one for each bedroom and the 3rd for the main living area. We set our sleeping bedroom to 19 C...and it said it reached 20 C usually--but it felt much cooler. We set the main living area to 20 C and it said it reahed 20-21 C--but felt cooler. We set the 2nd bedroom to 21 C to give my husband a respite. The only time we had air con issues was when we had cyclone level winds one night/day which blew hot air into the villa that insulation didn't stop--and which the air con units couldn't quite compete with. Ultimately, the hotel provided 2 fans just in case in our bedroom, but our bedroom remained the coolest spot in the entire villa, probably at aroun 20 C or so. Not bad for such conditions. The hotel handled the matter VERY well.

Some photos of our friends' villa for comparison:

Sorry...it was storming in our last hour before we departed (at 5 pm). Mother Nature clearly didnt want us to go.

Service was very good overall...but with some misses. This is the area where I hear that the Four Seasons Bora Bora might slightly better the St. Regis Bora Bora...though we've still never met anyone who had actually stayed at both and could truly offer a real comparison. We met guests from the Four Seasons at the St. Regis Lagoon Restaurant several times...and they all agreed the service at the FS was great but that the St Regis had far better dining. So it's always tough to compare.

Still, based on the many St. Regis properties I've visited, the St. Regis Bora Bora had the most uneven service. Of course, staff always were extremely friendly and trying to please. But things got missed. In the end, though, the St. Regis really did come through with some phenomenal service.

Butler service always unpacks for me, but the butler service here did a mediocre job of it--not even hanging my clothes as would be normal anywhere else. The butlers even mentioned needing to get extra hangers from the second bedroom...but  then didn't hang any of my shirts! Butler service did a great job of packing for me, however.

Housekeepoing made the mistake of coming to our room for turndown at 5 pm on our first night--despite the fact we had an 8 pm reservation at the resort restaurant! Dumb. Then they came back at 7:45 pm! Even dumber. 

Our first major mistake was ordering our butler coffee and biscuits on our first morning. It was raining, but the butler said it would be 15 min. We had to call back at 30 min...and it didn't arrive until 50 min. Not acceptable. After that, and the butler unpacking and housekeeping issues, I finally decided to speak to a manager. Ultimately, the manager comp'd us breakfast room service for our trouble, which we found extremely generous. 

The next morning room service breakfast, unfortunately, was a disaster. At that point, I had to speak with the Assistant Executive GM. From then on, we were assigned our own butler...and had very few issues from that point forward. Our butler, Nozomi, was tremendous. She literally made our experience as flawless and seamless as one could possibly imagine.

Normally, the air con was superb--and I require it to be VERY cold to be comfortable. We had our settings at 19-21 C depending on the room. We eventually did have some air con issues on the night of cyclone level winds--which pushed hot air past the villa insulation, and the air con units couldn't quite compete. Ultimately, the bedroom still remained cool at about 20 C, though the main living area and other bedoom probably reached 22 C, which would've been tough for me. But our butler and the hotel brought fans just in case, and worked very hard to make sure we had proper cooling in tough circumstances. All in all, they handled it VERY well.

Room service had its issues once...but afterward was flawless. We had an overcooked steak the final night, which was replaced within 15 min cooked perfectly. 

Our butler Nozomi was a highlight--she really was amazing. 

Overall, we had a slightly rough start with some simple misses that a St. Regis shouldn't have. But after sharing my concerns, the hotel really kicked it into overgear and got it right. I would return with no hesitation.

The food and beverage at the St. Regis was far better than even I had expected based on its reputation in this area. With 3 main restaurants (sushi/Asian fusion, Italian, and Lagoon fine dining) plus the main bar retaurant and swim bar area, there were more options than one would normally expect. 

The Lagoon fine dining restaurant truly is remarkable. To have such fine dining in such a remote locale is impressive. While our service wasn't perfect, the food was delicious. We ordered the 5  and 7 course tasting menus, and we had only 2 courses overcooked...and quickly replaced with perfecty cooked versions. Wine pairings were fine...some great, some less impressive, but overall a nice job. We met so many Four Seasons guests at the Lagoon restaurant that we finally had to ask...and were told the FS simply couldn't match the dining options or level of food quality at the St Regis. Most considered the Lagoon restaurant to be the finest dining in Bora Bora, better even than the famous Villa Mahana on the main island. We agree that Lagoon was outstanding.

Photos of our 7 course dinner at Lagoon:

Forgot to take photo of our beef tenderloin...which was delicious. Sorry. 

And the special dessert they prepared in anticipation of our coming and celebrating our anniversary that evening:

The Italian and sushi/Asian restaurants are basically located adjacent to each other. A little odd, considering the Asian restaurant supposedly has a stricter dress code (which we ignored everywhere with no issue, since I was too hot to wear anything but shorts and nice sandals). But the food was generally quite tasty. The Asian restaurant generally had the more diverse menu and better food in my opinion, but we also had a great meal at the Italian restaurant. 

Even the bar food was very good. I did once have an overcooked burger...but on mentioning it as an aside, I had it quickly comp'd later. 

Room service was generally very good--which is impressive considering the distance the food must travel to reach our villa. Our first room service breakfast:

I eat a lot, as you can see. 

Cocktails were just OK...but then we're not big drinkers. We tried a Bloody Mary at the bar our firdst day and found it disappointing...which is a shocker at at St. Regis! But every other Bloody Mary afer that was outstanding,...so we seemed to just be unlucky that first time. We weren't so fond of the Dacquiris, but our friends loved them. 

Biggest beverage letdown? The coffee. It wasn't great. The coffee maker in the room made better coffee than the French Roast brought by out butler most mornings. We ended up asking for extra strong coffee, which did help...but it was never fantastic coffee. 

Everything is super expensive here...so prepare yourselves. But as our friends who went to Villa Mahana expressed, the St. Regis turned out to be the best food in Bora Bora for the money. (We canceled our reservation at Villa Mahana the moment we heard they had no air con...which would've been the death of me!)

Photo from the dock just before we departed (in a thunderstorm). The location obviously is tremendous. 

The concierge team was superb. I reached out 6 months in advance, and I didn't wait longer than a day for a response--with a single exception. That exception involved trying to book dinner at Villa Mahana 6 months in advance...which never did get any follow up after the peremptory indication. I emailed the concierge a week beforehand, and the concierge team apologized for the oversight--and then had me booked for dinner on a night that was previously fully booked. Very impressive.

Even after our flight LAX-PPT was canceled and we were going to arrive a day late, the concierge worked quickly with me to move all of our scuba dives and restaurant reservations. Seamless.

This is a top drawer conierge team.

Our only activities arranged by the concierge were scuba diving and jetskiing.

SCUBA DIVING:

The diving in Bora Bora, at least based on our experience, was fairly introductory and elementary. In an attempt to perhaps find better diving, we arranged a private dive excursion for us and our Aussie friends to the Tupitipiti atoll about an hour north of Bora Bora. But we decided to switch that to a more localized experience after our divemaster informed us on our refresher dives that there wasn't so much to see there at Tupitipiti. 

Instead, we did two dives outside the lagoon--one just north of the airport and one just south of the lagoon entry. The first dive had tremendous clarity, but all we really saw was a white tipped reef shark (which came right towards me to investigate but veered off maybe 10 feet from me) and some "aquarium fish" that might entertain beginners but not experienced divers like us. The second dive was to an artificial lemon feeding site on the south side, which bothered me for its lack of authenticity--but then I'd never seen a lemon shark. Ultimately, this dive was a bust until we came below a feeding from a boat excursion above, and we saw one 9 foot lemon shark amidst dozens of white tipped reef sharks and a few black tipped reef sharks. Ultimately, we decided it wasn't worth diving again. 

JET SKIING:

It is worth noting that we own 2 high powered 280 hp Sea Doos at home...and that I am fond of jetskiing 26 miles from Newport Beach to Catalina Island every summer at least once or twice. So we weren't interested in paying for a jetskiing excursion here in Bora Bora, though it seemed one of the few excursions we all could enjoy together. However, the GM had offered us a free jetski excursion to compensate us for some of the earlier service miscues and a few maintenance issues we experienced in our villa. So we took him up on the jetskiing.

We suprisingly had a blast with the jetskiing--even though the jetskis provided were lame compared to ours (only 140 hp!). Still, we really had fun. We each had our own jetski, and I basically rode mine maxed out the entire time. It was fun to circle the entire island, and our guide was great. Once he realized we were more experienced than most guests, he gave us more free reign to explore than the average guests, it appeared. 

We loved the jetskiing. At US$300 per hour per jetski, though, it is an expensive but very fun excursion. Thankfully, we had almost 2 full hours at no charge. 

My husband and I toured the spa on our arrival tour--and it is beautiful. It has its own lagoon with outside massage/treatment areas, as well as beautiful treatment rooms inside. My husband had a massage and loved it. Our friends had treatments and loved it. Everyone commented on how beautiful the setting was. 

While we never laid out by the beach, here are some photos of the beach area by the lagoon, the beach club/restaurant area, and the main pool area:

AIR TAHITI NUI LAX-PPT:

We were fortunate in that we used SPG points transferred to American Airlines miles and used those for our Air Tahiti Nui business class roundtrip flights from LAX-PPT. Each roundtrip ticket was 62,500 AA miles.

Our outbound LAX-PPT flight was canceled on April 20, due to mechanical issues from CDG-LAX. An Air Tahiti Nui representative called us at 8 am on April 20 to inform us of the cancellation and that there was space in business on the April 21 flight--but that we'd have to call AA to get it re-ticketed. (This is the biggest nightmare of using miles from one airline on another!) After an hour, we had been re-booked by AA on the April 21 flight.

The business class section on the outbound was on the newer Air Tahiti Nui business class:

We were in row 6, which was closest to the galley behind us, but we actually didn't notice any noise, surprisingly. (We originally had selected row 3 for April 20...but beggars can't be choosers!) The food was pretty mediocre to poor, but the seat was fine...though in flat position it was poorly angle flat at an awkward angle. Service was fine...friendly but missing for long stretches of time. Whenever I needed an FA, I simply used the FA button. The angle flat position was not terribly comfortable, so I was delighted that this was a daytime flight from 3:30 pm LAX - 8:50 pm PPT. The flight time of 8.5 hours was not too bad. The IFE was solid, better than I was expecting...with decent but not an impressive array of maybe 20-30 movies, lots of TV shows, etc.

AIR TAHITI PPT-MOZ-BOR:

It is important to note that Air Tahiti Nui is the international carrier; Air Tahiti is a separate domestic carrier. They are not the same airline. You have to purchase/acquire your tickets separately.

The ATR 72 aircraft was fine. Everyone tries to get seats on the left to see Bora Bora or Moorea on landing. We were on a PPT-Moorea-Bora Bora flight on April 22, but had orignally been booked nonstop PPT-BOR. I forgot to take any photos, sorry. It was just a 15 min flight PPT-MOZ and a 50 min flight MOZ-BOR. 

AIR TAHITI BOR-PPT:

On our April 28 return, there was a massive thunderstorm with lightning--and massive torrential rain. After our boat shuttle got us back to the airport (15 min), we knew there might be delays due to the storm. In the end, our flight departed maybe 30-40 min late--but with lightning a plenty in the area. The lightning scared the devil out of MANY American passengers who clearly had never flown outside the USA before! It was remarkably calm for 20-25 min, shocking me and my husband considering the strong winds and lightning and torrential rains below. About 30 min in, we got hit by massive turbulence and got knocked around pretty hard--sometimes dropping maybe 100-150 feet a few times, and being knocked side to side pretty hard a few times. There were screams galore, indeed...entertaining me and my husband. But we otherwise made it to PPT with no issue.

AIR TAHITI NUI PPT-LAX:

This flight was delayed almost an hour for no understandable reason--it wasn't even raining. It was very frustrating...and it was quite chaotic at the boarding gate. I think their computers went down. We didn't board until 11:30 pm for this overnight flight that was supposed to depart at 11:00 am.

Once we boarded,  we realized we'd had the new business class on our outbound flight. The business class on this plane is the old recliner seats from the 1990s and VERY early 2000s. It was like a time warp. It was so late, however, and boarding was so chaotic, that I forgot to take photos.

Surprisingly, I probably had more legroom on these awful recliner seats than I had in the more updated business class from our outbound flight. The seat was not terribly comfortable to sleep, but I took 2 15 mg temazapam pills and slept a good 5-6 hrs on the 8.25 hr flight. I wouldn't want to do that again...but it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. 

We had breakfast--solid, unremarkable. Otherwise, we just slept and wanted to get home!

OVERALL--Air Tahiti Nui business class was as lame as we'd expected. But for 62,500 AA miles, it was a steal. We had considered Air France business class, but (1) they were still angle flat business class when we got our tickets, and (2) they required 300K AF miles per seat, which was preposterous. Ultimately, we assume the food and service and IFE on the AF business class was most likely better. 

Overall, the St Regis Bora Bora is a tremendous property. The biggest plug is that if I ever were to return to Bora Bora, I'd definitely want to return to the St. Regis. Hearng that the Four Seasons had subpar food made me sure that the St. Regis was the best resort for us. Seeing the regular deluxe villas at the St. Regis also made us realize how wonderful and sizable even the regular accommodations are at the St. Regis. And the service, while uneven at first, really became quite tremendous in the end. 

The St. Regis Bora Bora is an amazing property...and certainly one of the jewels in the Starwood (and soon to be Marriott) empire.