Andy Shannon

Review of Anantara Al Jabal Al Akhdar

First let me say that if you're staying in one of ...

First let me say that if you're staying in one of the Anantara's villas, they are amazing. Both the garden and cliff villas are like your own little private world and come with your own villa host (ours was extremely good and nice). There are very few hotels that can offer the room / villa ambience of this place. More broadly, the location is breathtaking with mountain views that stretch miles.

The rest of Anantara Al Jabal, I'm sorry to say, disappointed.

Service / Upkeep: While the staff was all friendly, the maintenance and delivery of various items throughout the resort was not what you'd expect from a 5-star resort. For example, the pool ran out of towels, the tennis court did not have balls upon arrival / net wasn't set up properly, our omelettes at breakfast were never delivered, turndown service came late. Yes, these are small issues but not what we expected from an Anantara that's supposed to be one of the nicest hotels in Oman. Of course there were many apologies and the GM (nice guy) was gracious upon learning about the difficulties and even upgraded us, but there were just too many small service problems for them not to diminish our stay.

Food: The food was simply average. I expected more from both the breakfast and dinner buffets from a true 5-star world class hotel, neither had huge selections and the food was generally on the dry side (typical for a buffet). During our stay there was only 1 actual restaurant available (the Arabian 'fine dining' was closed to revamp the menu) which left us with the Italian bistro overlooking the cliffs. Again OK service and food, but lacking in atmosphere especially in the evening when we were hoping for a more upscale experience.

In general almost anything can be overlooked when you're staying in such a beautiful villa, but for Anantara to truly compete with other 5 star hotels they'll need to seriously improve both their service and food.