Complaint

-Ms Than can you findout the room have wehad any airconcomplaints

- For the attention of: Susan Noonan, General Manager

Susan

As you know, sadly we’re leaving Ana Mandara today to return to the UK.

We’ve had a great holiday in Vietnam and have certainly enjoyed our stay at Ana Mandara. We wanted to share some feedback with you, which we hope is useful – especially as the hotel is relatively recently opened and we believe about to undergo a further phase of capital investment.

 We’ve certainly liked and enjoyed:

1.       The beautiful gardens and beachfront at the hotel

2.       The hotel’s room design and room facilities including very comfortable beds, the separate loo and access to an almost outside shower

3.       Afternoon canapés (although these were the same every day)

4.       Very friendly and charming staff

5.       The most comfortable sun loungers we’ve ever come across!

6.       Very good breakfast buffet and selection

7.       Complimentary yoga by the pool

We have also really appreciated your personal touch and extremely friendly and helpful approach which has been lovely.

However, it would appear that the hotel is still ‘finding its feet’ and there are several areas where we feel the hotel falls somewhat short of its 5-star billing. To be honest, we weren’t surprised to hear that you are not yet actively marketing the hotel to Europeans.

Please find below suggestions where we believe there could be improvements. This has been compiled in the spirit of constructive criticism, and we suspect that most of these points won’t be a surprise to you.

8. Spa treatments being provided in a hotel room (this is not appropriate for 5-star hotel, and it refers on the website to luxury spa and wellness, which one could fairly assume to mean a spa)

9.       Only one restaurant open for lunch and dinner, which we believe isn’t appropriate for a 5-star hotel (and again contradicts your website: it refers to the Ana Sand House restaurant being open for breakfast, lunch and dinner). There appears to be minimal effort to make the beach restaurant different for dinner compared to lunch (e.g. table cloths, flowers on the tables)

10.   Erratic room service - sometimes we had to ask twice for drinks and the room service operator often didn’t understand our request (e.g. when requesting the wine was very cold, we had to be put through to reception) although they were always very friendly 

11.   The TVs switch on every time the key card is put in which can be annoying (and means we have to switch them off every time we enter the room!)

12.   Room service wine list seemingly doesn’t correspond with the centrally held wine list (e.g. there is at least one wine on the room service list not listed in the master wine list and the stocks of wine seemed very low)

13.   Internet access in our room didn’t work initially for email (but we appreciate this was quickly fixed on a Sunday)

14.   One of the blinds in our master bedroom needs to be fixed / moved (you can’t close the bedroom door properly with the blind down in its current position) 

15.   Door handle to the separate loo (off the sitting room) appears not to work properly from the inside

16.   The standard of service in the Ana Beach House restaurant was very erratic (including our first night when my wife was served undercooked pork; subsequently food orders were forgotten, napkins not provided, wrong drinks delivered). Overall, the service is generally pretty slow – even allowing for the relaxed beachside setting - despite the low occupancy rate; empty drinks were not cleared from the table or bar area by the pool

17.   The slightly unsightly concrete roof of the Ana Beach House (visible from our Villa 31 and also from the beach / sun loungers on the grass by the pool)

18.   Your website is very misleading: it refers to the pool bar with a separate drinks and food menu which we haven’t seen (or been offered) while we’ve been staying

19.   Inconsistent food preparation (e.g. the fish and chips ordered came with no fries – despite this being on the menu; the chicken burger had mozzarella added one day, but not previously). Your F&B manager explained that this was because the new chef had introduced a new menu, but the menus for guests hadn’t yet been printed yet (so guests didn’t know!)

20.   We weren’t offered all menus (we had to ask for light snacks menu on multiple occasions from the pool restaurant)

21.   Erratic housekeeping (on our first day by lunchtime had to ask for room to be made up); occasionally the used water bottles / glasses were cleared from bedside, but not always

22.   No map of the hotel provided in the hotel rooms (we think this would be very helpful)

23.   No water sports (although it says on the website that there are beach activities which we assume must just mean the volleyball)

24.   Need to improve the standard of English for key staff (too often we suspect issues arise because the staff don’t understand what we are saying – there was an example where we ended up having to use Google translate which under lots of circumstances would be fine but not for a 5-star hotel and given what we’ve paid to stay at Ana Mandara).

We’ve noticed that the hotel is currently offering a 50% discount on the advertised room rate, we assume due to the low occupancy rate and the fact that the actual facilities don’t match with those advertised on the hotel website.

Considering the above, can we please request that we are offered the same 50% discount for the room rate when it comes to settling our bill for the past week?

May we take this opportunity to thank you personally and your staff and wish you every success in the further development of the hotel which, as we discussed with you, is in a beautiful setting and should thrive. We hope to return. 

Kind regards

Mark and Vanessa Maydon

Villa 31