THE WESTIN MAURITIUS TURTLE BAY RESORT AND SPA

The good: 1. Large and well appointed rooms 2. Lovely personal beach 3. Water sports included in the package 4. Courteous staff 5. Kids centre The not so good: 1. Very poor maintenance. Lots of broken handles, blocked drains, air conditioning problems. Though they were quickly addressed, its not what you want to spend time on during a holiday. 2. Super slow meal service. Specially at Kangan, the Indian restaurant. A meal could easily take 3 hours. 3. In such a hot, tropical place, where you need lots of water every day, one ends up paying so much for their exorbitantly priced water! That should be provided for free, or at much lower rates!

We spent our honeymoon at the Westin for 12 days and booked a suite with halfboard and access to the executive lounge, which was beautifully located at the adult’s pool. The suite was very spacious, tastefully decorated, had amazingly comfortable beds, a huge bathtub and separated shower and a big terrace with nice outdoor furniture and it’s own rotating sunloungers. We arrived very early in the morning and were very kindly welcomed. While we were waiting for our room, we enjoyed breakfast in the executive lounge and greeted by Adesh, who was absolutely amazing: a very smart and totally friendly young man who gave us outstanding service from the first encounter until our day of departure; always with a smile on his face and a unique passion to make his guests happy. Another young man, named Nadeem, is an absolute enrichment for the hotel: very polite, always service-oriented and a great presence. Thank you! We had the luck to check into our room at around 8 am already. The very detailed and friendly check -in was made by Jeed from the Front Desk who explained us everything about the property, it’s restaurants, happenings etc. and was as well an employee who made us feel special throughout our stay with his always courteous support and hospitality in all matters. We would also like to mention Dravish who does an outstanding job, always with a smile on his face. Thank you! The main restaurant „Seasonal Tastes“ serves breakfast and dinner and is a very modern, open restaurants facing the ocean with beautiful views and outside seating. A big variety of of breakfast dishes is offered: waffels, pancakes, omelets, beans, veggies, bread, croissants, danishes, fruits etc. The only things that we missed a little bit were fresh juices, oatmeal, a bigger variety of fruits, a selection of dark and whole-grain breads. Dinner was overall very tasty and had a great variety of cold salads, warm dishes, freshly roasted fish and meat and delicious desserts. We missed more mauritian dishes. Sure, there were a few, but we would bring them out more and describe them on little stand-up displays e.g. during a mauritian evening for all the guests. The service from most oft the waiters was fantastic and friendly. We would like to mention Ajay who kept us in mind with his friendly and obliging appearance; as well Rajeev, the barista, who delighted us with his beautiful arts on our coffee; Tom, who did also an amazing job. We have to admit though, that we got a culture shock a few times in the restaurant and the executive lounge. We experienced a lot of chinese guests who had absolutely no table manners at all: they spitted the food behind their backs, let cats eat from the chairs after placing the food there, using their spoon taking more food from the buffet. There was also an indian family who thought the executive lounge is their living room and play room for their kids by placing them and their toys on the couches where they played loud surrounded by food. The parents behaved absolutely impertinent while drinking so much alkohol in the afternoon that they threw up in the bathroom later. To our mind the 5-star-standard is also a must in the restaurations when it comes to manners in general and eating behavior of guests. The „Retreat Bar“ offers a huge variety of drinks, cocktails, alkoholic beverages, although they are quite expensive, so are the beverages in the restaurants of course (10,00 EUR for a beer); most oft them are imported, so that must be the reason why. A big THANK YOU to Ritesh who gave us fantastic service. With his funny character and his beautiful cocktail creations, he definitely enriched our stay! Unfortunately the theme evenings in the restaurants Fusion, Kangan, Mystique and the Beach Grill are really expensive (2.500 MRU = 80.00 EUR per person, you get a 1.000 MRU - discount), that is why we didn’t participate. Within our honeymoonpackage we had a candlelight dinner included; you can book it on 2 days of the week only and was unfortunately not what we were hoping for. Honeymooners would like to have their privacy, either to be completely alone or the tables should be at least so far away from each other that you are still able to enjoy your togetherness. A wonderful idea would be as well to offer that dinner while the sun goes down, so the guest could enjoy the sunset. It would be a huge plus for all the honeymooners and we are sure they would love it! For us there was no feeling of romance sitting in between 10 other honeymooners while it is completely dark outside. The food was nicely decorated, but the food was only heatened up (we had the catch oft he day and chicken as main dish) and was just ok; the original prize was 2.500 MRU, which is totally overprized for a 3-course-menue. The Heavenly Spa is a wonderful retreat, very appealing and relaxing. We enjoyed our included partnermassage. The prizes are very high though, comparable to european prizes. The poolarea and it’s infininity adult’s pool is beautiful. But it is not always a whisper area, since you also have families with children there who use the pool as a playground, so it can be very loud. The staff should stand behind the name „whisper area“, because guests choose to spend time at that pool to relax in a quiet surrounding. The beach is not very wide and water shoes are definitely a must, because of the coral reef, but you can enjoy beautiful sunsets by the water and enjoy cosy evenings outdoors at Mystique. The boathouse offers lots of complimentary activities like snorkeling, pedalos etc. which is really cool. The beach and poolchairs should be renewed, since they are rosty and run down already. The water in the pool was also really dirty and we actually haven’t seen anybody who cleaned it during our stay. The architecture of the Westin is very modern and open, we truly enjoyed to walk around in the amazing gardens with beautiful plants, trees and flowers who are very well maintained. You see gardeners everywhere who keep them clean and neat. We were not satisfied with our travel agency White Sand Tours at all, who were totally overprized and not helpful at all. We booked instead a trip to the south with a regular taxidriver over the Front Desk, which they recommended and was the best idea since it is private and flexible. Housekeeping was excellent. We would like to thank Archana and our maid Taneesha' for the excellent and super friendly service. Archana always greeted us by our name which was so nice! The so called „nurse“ who has an office close to the spa is an absolute no go. He was very incompetent and he had no medication available regarding cold or fever. Out of 12 days we were unlucky enough to have 8 days of pooring rain due to a cyclone which made our stay unfortunately not as beautiful and happy as expected. There was nothing much to do than hanging around the hotel and our suite, which we couldn’t really enjoy outside. Mauritius is quite worth a visit, we can also recommend the Westin for sure, since it has exceptional staff. Our tip: For a longer stay, we recommend either All Inclusive (which is quite prizey though) or at least half board but definitely with access to the executive lounge, since drinks and in general food is expensive. The souvenir shop doesn’t sell any beverages or little snacks, no supermarket close. Since medication is also very expensive, we recommend to bring everything from home.

Good Things First. Great Room; lovely View of the sea; a very comfortable bed; superb bathtub. Friendly Staff. Two staff members in particular need mention. Mystique manager Kavi - we are vegetarians and he helped us have a wonderful vegetarian Dinner Executive Chef - Kiran Ramkalawon - when we mentioned our need for indian vegetarian breakfast, he ensured that we had a wonderful indian vegetarian breakfast Now the problems. For a new hotel, the equipment is faulty. the shower knob in the bathroom came off in my hand the cord less phone near the bed did not work. the service staff informed us that it was being charged. actually it was being charged for the five days we were here and couldn't be used the staff of the infirmary were extremely rude. we wanted a band aid and were told that only two band aids would be given. for somebody with multiple bruises, it was an issue. finally for the two rooms we had, we got four band aids but the attitude was one of indifference.

Stunning hotel food amazing great restaurants to choose from all inclusive good. Beautifully oppointed rooms make sure you get one of the rooms that goes out to the beach/sea. Very relaxing time the only down side is you cannot swim on the sea however there are 2 pools which are lovely and I would recommend a car to make it easier to visit he rest of the island driving over there is easy.

I have to echo the review below of julest230. Some of the staff are superb, but there are a lot of service issues. Senior management did try hard to make it up to us, but we could see every day that there were other guests with frustrations. It's not what you expect for a honeymoon in a 5* hotel at c.£310 a night. My main issue with this hotel is that so many guests were frustrated, and it seemed you had to complain to receive the service that you should have been given in the first place. We probably got off to a bad start - our "beachfront" deluxe room actually looked out onto grass and the pool, and would be better sold as such with the upside of a partial sea view, rather than trying to sell it as a beachfront room and causing disappointment. After the first night and a complaint, we were moved to an actual beachfront room which was good. The service in the restaurants was very hit and miss. Service at Mystique was the worst - it took ages to get food and drinks, and some tables were served completely the wrong meals. The Beach Grill was also hit and miss - generally faster, but our orders were wrong on multiple occasions. The food at Fusion was superb, but expensive. The food at Kangan was excellent, but again the service was very slow even when there was only a handful of guests dining. The main frustration with the restaurants was the frequent "special" or "theme" nights. Basically these meant that if you wanted to dine at that restaurant, there was a large supplement to pay on top of the "all inclusive" package, which put us off multiple times. Over our 12 night stay here, we spent about an additional £500-£600 on food. It's certainly not a true all inclusive - so budget and be ready to pay supplements on your dining. With all the issues, the more senior staff did try hard to rectify. Azagen and Jeremie were particularly friendly and helpful, and the managers Daven and Tristan did try to address the problems. They gave us various freebies to try to make up for the shortfalls, which were lovely gestures. When we did day trips from the hotel, the hotel taxi was a Mercedes E Class, which is worth paying the extra for to get decent aircon. The upsides of the hotel are that the watersports are all included (even the waterskiing, snorkeling trip etc.), there is an adults only pool (which remained adults only for the most part) and the food at Fusion and Kangan is good (but expensive). On balance, the service here seriously needs to improve, and we would not stay at this hotel again with so much choice in Mauritius.