Flamboyant Hotel

1 reader found this review helpful

Hotel Flamboyant
We were booked into this hotel from 22nd Dec 2010 to 6th Jan 2011
Scenery – Magnificent view across Grand Anse Bay from every room -that is the selling point of this hotel. Unfortunately all the rest of the selling points were horribly oversold.
Staff
Reception desk not particularly welcoming. Only really paid us any attention when we started to complain. Despite this report we are not persistent or habitual complainers
Hotel
The Hotel is situated on a steep hillside and the number of steps and the steepness of the steps were not made clear by the travel company. See pictures .My husband has had back surgery and found the distance up to the room and down to the restaurant / beach a real struggle. We used the golf cart provided a couple of times but mostly it seemed to be in use by the able bodied who could not be ****** to walk up or down
The 68 bedrooms were barely occupied- 30 was the most guests we ever saw at meals. Except Christmas day –see later
The public beach in the hotel boundary is the size of a postage stamp and when the tide starts to come in the sunbeds are moved onto the grass outside the dive centre.
Some little things missing – such as most of the letters on the computer keyboard – unless you were a touch typist you were stuffed. Perhaps it was to stop feedback about the hotel online.
Despite being all inclusive we had to sign for everything we ate or drank which was a pain – but we were wearing bands that differentiated us from the non all inclusive guests. We did not mind signing for items that were not on the all inclusive tariff – but why do everything?
Rooms were OK – clean and basic – but we saw no evidence of the new drapes and bedding that were being crowed about by the manager on a travel trade show online.
A minibar / fridge with nothing in it but 2 half litres of water which were never replaced- hardly a luxury item when the daytime temp was 30oC
We had no hot water in the mornings for 3 days and when we brought this to the attention of the management on day 2 the electrical boost to the solar heating was applied to the hot water tank on the roof of the room. All this managed to do was to boil the water in the tank and to cascade boiling water down the roof – luckily caught by the guttering and fed down a wall at the end of the room block. Still none in the room before about 10 am
On Day 4 we had boiling hot water in the shower but no cold pressure at all in the room – we were told to try again in an hour as all (!) of the guests must have been showering at once. We tried – still no cold water pressure.
Torrential rain seemed to compromise the electrics of some rooms in our block and we saw ( before they were rapidly taken away by the electricians) burned out circuit breakers (ie Melted). This is not surprising when appliances were wired directly into the wall behind the socket – eg unfused and a fire risk (& illegal in the UK and I would hope in most of the world)
On day 5 we were moved to another room – see pictures of the electrics in this room -we were afraid to switch anything on.
Luckily we did not have to……… see later.
Food – advertised on line as fine cuisine.
Breakfast – buffet style but often cold and greasy with insufficient guests in the hotel to turn over the food in the heating dishes (which mostly had the heating tins unlit). After trying it on day 1 we resorted to fruit and yoghurt each day. and even that was running out if you appeared after 9 am
Lunch was a bit of a free for all with non- hotel guests appearing in the beachside terrace where lunch was served.
Sometimes buffet, sometimes A La Carte – but A La Carte could and often did mean a long wait for food – up to an hour for a Pizza for example. and competing for your lunch with the birds and flies.
Evening meals – once buffet but mostly a la carte.
Choice of usually 4 main entrees but we did see the same meats etc served for lunch in the buffet – which restricted choice for the evening.
The first nights meal was Ok, but my husbands mutton curry was mostly bits of bone! The next evenings meal was OK (ish ) but not very good and quite a lot of it seemed to be going back on the plates when the staff cleared the tables.
Desserts were usually slices of bought in flan.
The Christmas Evening meal was a fiasco, we were asked what time we intended to eat as the restaurant was expected to be busy We opted for 7pm and were expecting something wonderful.
When we arrived - no welcoming drink, a 30 minute wait for the appetiser, another 25 minutes for the truly disgusting slimy breadfruit soup, and another 25 minutes for the “rack of lamb with a medley of vegetables and starch of the day”. I asked for no starch but more vegetables.
This meal, when it arrived was beautifully presented (all of the meals were)- but comprised 2 tough overcooked ? lamb ? mutton chops – a carved chunk of carrot and 3 slices of ? courgette. We told the waitress we were unhappy who told the restaurant manager, but the evening was a write off, and we declined another choice of food and left. (missing out on the selection of bought in flans) .
There were obviously serious problems with the kitchen and the restaurant could not cope with even the 32 guests ( about half of which were a private external party) at our sitting. The staff were wandering around topping up water glasses and wine glasses but the delays and quality of food from the kitchen were intolerable.The bottles of wine that were on offer as non inclusive were very expensive and raised a few eyebrows. The house wine was OK so we stuck with that.
We had an equally unsatisfying experience the next night when a buffer was served which included leather hard and overcooked roast beef kept in the same heating dish with the Yorkshire puddings- Ie LIMP & soggy .
When asked for rare beef the chef told the guests that “we never cook rare meat because it makes you ill”.
We were approached by the manager at this meal and told him of our complaints no hot water, poor quality food, chaotic service – he offered us steaks at no extra charge if we wanted them but I like my steaks rare – see above.
Lunch the next day was it’s usual unremarkable self until the curdled Crème brulee arrived and was sent back. The HR manager approached us on this occasion and was told that her cooks could not even manage the basics – let alone fine cuisine.
Most meals were beautifully presented but inedible.
We walked to the local supermarket and bought food – not good for an all inclusive holiday!.
We had, on day 5, already approached our tour company rep and told her that we wanted to be moved to another hotel. We had paid a lot of money for the two Christmas/ New year weeks, it was my husbands 50th birthday in a few days time, Christmas had already been ruined and nothing was improving – even the change of room was to one with even more dangerous electrics. We waited in the new room until we were told we were moving hotels that afternoon.
When we got home we were told by my boss that what we described was almost identical to what he and a party of friends had experienced in that hotel a couple of years ago.
Grenada was pretty and the people were lovely but this hotel has put us off ever going back. Even our subsequent stay in an infinitely better hotel which offered rare meat !and an incredible New Years Eve party did not undo our Cr*p Christmas experience.
The most ironic thing was that we could have had 3 weeks in Cuba at a 5 star hotel we knew was good for much less money but we did not have enough holiday to take it.