prashanth nair

Review of Amarterra Villa & Spa Bali Nus...

Excellent - villa, staff and spa, with an average ...

Excellent - villa, staff and spa, with an average restaurant

We booked a 7 nights package through Luxury escapes (was also available through Accor), which includes daily breakfast, airport transfers, massages at the spa and couple of dinners.
Firstly the positives - (negatives below).
Welcome and Check-in - traditional and beautiful Balinese welcome. Fast and efficient check-in, taking us through the what's on offer during our stay. Baggages were collected and taken to our villa. Our ever-smiling host took us to our villa, explained everything. Apologized too many times on behalf of the house-keeping person who was busy in his phone in our villa, when we entered.
Villa - this was obviously the best part of our whole stay. Very private. Lots of space, which included an outdoor living area right next to the pool, aesthetically designed bedroom with a comfy bed and seating, spacious walk-in wardrobe, clean and huge bath area with an outdoor rainshower. Soft towels and Toiletries provided were of good quality.
Staff - all the staff at the hotel lived up to the Balinese hospitality reputation of friendly and cheerful attitude, with great attention to detail most of the time. I am extremely thankful to them for putting the effort to make it special on my birthday, even though my wife only did mention about it at the end of our dinner when leaving back to our villa. Fantastic staff!
House-keeping - we were happy to come back and see the villa just like how it was on the first day, each time we got back after a tiring day out. No issues whatsoever. Great job by the house-keeping.
Spa - our Spa experience was top-notch right from the booking, the welcome, the expertly done massages in a relaxing ambience. The staff were attentive to our needs, making sure focus was given on the areas as per our requirements.
Food - Food preparation and presentation was fantastic.
Special mentions -
Rai - one of the duty managers (on his duty days) - for helping us with trip pointers, and most of all, for his great attitude towards his guests, keeping us well-attended to.
Ari - at the Restaurant - again for his fantastic friendly attitude, and for being such a friend to my little boy, who was particularly looking for Ari on the day we were leaving. Most impressive was - He was the only person who took responsibility for sub-standard service by someone else who was attending to us at the restaurant, by apologizing. Whereas in another case, another host only told that she would simply provide feedback to the manager, without taking the responsibility for her team.

To the negatives -
Restaurant - We had a great experience at the restaurant on our first evening for dinner, when we were attended to and checked on regularly. After this, we had to wait almost 30 minutes get our order taken, while being promised for our breads to be brought (which never arrived)
About 20 minutes between different servings
Fresh pineapple juice with 70% foam
Bottled orange when we requested the fresh
Wrong coffee order
And other little things.
It may be ok in context of a 3-star property / restaurant, but an improvement is required if it is to catch up with rating of rest of the property.
We left the restaurant without eating, on our last night when we chose to use the last of the two dinners, as they kept us waiting and ended up ordering a salad and other light stuff ( to eat the villa). It was worse as our next table was getting better and faster service. It shouldn't matter whether we are getting a dinner that's part of our package or having an ala carte meal as restaurant-only guests. Again, no apologies. Also, there must definitely be a better way of suggesting or recommending that if we skip appetizers and desserts, our kid's meal can get included as a package dinner! The restaurant team will need to take collective responsibility instead of assuming blame on a single person.
The restaurant will need to do a lot better to not let down the chefs and the rest of the property.
Professional concierge service - good addition in Lobbying