マンダリン オリエンタル 三亜 (三亜文華東方酒店) (三亜)

This is the Mandarin Oriental at $300/night, so of course I hold them to a higher standard. The hotel room and views were amazing - the grounds are nice, and the amenities are great. But the service isn't what I'd expect from a 5-star hotel. The foreign staff were great: Mihai at the reception helped get us into our room when it seemed the Chinese staff were bumbling through our check-in process, and went out of his way to make things go smoothly, especially at check-in. Seems that as Chinese hotels have cut back on foreign staff, the service has decreased, with several small but noticeable moments that stood out: 1. Withing 5 minutes of checking into our room, a service worker arrived unannounced and had to come in to change a lightbulb - something that should have been taken care of before our arrival, and certainly could have come with a phone call to warn us. 2. We stepped out of our room and noticed an emply cart passing, and asked "Can you please take us to the beach?" The driver simply said "No." and drove off... Was kinda surprised that he didn't at least offer to call us a ride. 3. At the restaurant "Fresh", the staff were fairly clueless as to how to describe the portion size, and struggled to open a bottle of beer. 4. At breakfast they took our orders for coffee, and after 10 minutes no coffee had arrived. I put in a second order, and they got very nervous and put some urgency in delivering our coffee - when it arrived it wasn't the right order.

The staff service was just amazing. Special mention to Cathy at breakfast who served with such warmth and enthusiasm, even preparing us some fruits for our excursion, and also Francis from reception who even came out to greet us goodbye at the end of stay. The whole team from buggy staff to reception to restaurant was young and hospitable. Excellent facilities and the convenience to downtown, yet secluded on a private beach, makes Sanya Mandarin a top 5-star hotel!