My wife and I have gone to Bali about thirteen times. We continue to return to Bali’s wonderful people, unique culture, relaxing tropical environment, and wonderful laid-back environment.
I give this place an average rating, which is really a combination of five star things and one-star annoyances. Out of my 13 visits, I would rank my five day visit to this place in last place.
Let’s start with the positives. The Grand Hyatt Bali in Nusa Dua (GHB) is in an easy to access location, about half an hour south of the airport in Denpasar. The hotel grounds are huge, tastefully decorated, and the landscaping is well manicured. The rooms are well appointed, very large and comfortable. The grounds have four pools, one large main pool that snakes around in a faux river with two small water slides. There are plenty of pool lounges and free-flow of fluffy white beach towels. The beach itself is artificial, which is a good thing. The sand is clean, soft and light like brown demerara sugar sand with almost no waves, sand fleas, or rubbish. Safe enough for even toddlers. There are lots of facilities, including a well-appointed gym, an on-site doctor, numerous shops in three different “villages”, and ample taxis on hand. The hotel is also right next to “Bali Collection” shopping mall and “The Bay” dining area – which includes Indonesia, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai dining options, plus cocktails by the beach. The hotel also has a small area where it has Bali’s own mesmerizing “Kecak” dance, done by a troupe of mostly local adolescents. The place also serves pork bacon. Real bacon is a major plus in my book.
Now the negatives. Nusa Dua is not a great location for seeing other sites on Bali like Ubud, Tanah Lot, or Seminyak. Bali’s economy is developing faster than its infrastructure, which has created horrible traffic jams, which can turn a trip that would take 15 minutes at 9am into a two hour headache at 3pm. Bali is getting a new expressway, supposedly finishing sometime in 2014 – but it’s anybody’s guess when it will really open. So an early flight is recommended, even if it means not having a room ready when you arrive because it is better to wait by the pool with a book and a cocktail in your hand then be in the back of a taxi.
By far the worst thing about GHB is the food. The resort is huge, having over 600 rooms, yet only have two restaurants (open-air Salsa Verde and Garden Café for indoor dining for breakfast/lunch) and a third for dinner (Nampu – Japanese tepanyaki). Salsa Verde is Italian fare while Garden Café is Indonesian. Breakfast is always an International buffet with western, Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese, and Indonesian options. However, the huge resort and only two dining areas makes getting seating difficult, food constantly ran out, and coffee/clean up service was poor. Clean-up is so slow that the place has a rampant fly problem at the restaurants. The food is also average but inauthentic (at best) and downright awful at its worst. One expects better quality from the Grand Hyatt. Alas, the German F&B Manager, Mr. Christian Craner, is failing at his job. When you go to Bali, normally the food is amazing thanks to ample fresh ingredients, amazing spices, and incredible recipe heritage behind the national dishes. Alas, this was some of the worst Indonesian food I’ve ever had, and I am including airports, petrol kiosks, and roadside dives. They made bad pizza and spaghetti Bolognese, the latter not having hardly any tomatoes in its sauce and being almost entirely brown ground meat. The food is so disappointing that we joined a nightly parade of other patrons filing off the grounds to go next door to the Bay Club for better food, better service, cleaner facilities, cheaper prices, and a place where they actually knew how to mix a drink. We ordered one cocktail at GHB that didn’t use the house vodka. I’m ok with paying a premium, but a US$26 drink (before the 21% surcharge) is insulting. Drinks were so expensive that nobody took advantage of even the 50% off “Crush Time” happy hour from 4-6pm because the drink offering was miniscule and half-off was not a bargain.
Good help is hard to find. GHB is full of wide-eyed, well-meaning staff who, unfortunately have not been well trained by the General Manager Mr. Detlief True. As a result, nearly every interaction with staff was messed up. Room ready? No. Greeted properly? No. Security done remotely competently? No. Bill correctly done? No. Did the front desk staff know how many restaurants they have and their locations? No. Promised newspaper ever delivered? No, on four out of five days. When my wife collapsed from illness at a restaurant, I had to tell them to call a doctor when they stood there gawking. And then I had to sternly suggest shortly thereafter that a doctor was a higher priority than clearing dirty dishes from beneath her prostrate body. I was too stunned to slap my forehead. Water and juice that I put on a tray and send with a waitress ever make it to the doctor’s office 50 meters away? No. Here’s another good example. Wanted to know when high tide was at Tanah Lot, but very nice trip centre lady had no idea how to check even though she had a computer in front of her. She said she thought it was 4pm because someone else went last year at 4pm. I explained that tides were caused by the moon, which doesn’t have a 24 hour cycle. She said she would check, but was concerned on whether the same tide would be in effect in Tanah Lot since it was on another part of Bali. Again, missed opportunity to slap my own forehead. Got concierge to arrange for taxi to Tanah Lot. They said it took about 60 minutes to Tanah Lot. We knew it took longer having been to Bali so many times. She revised her opinion to 90 minute, against our verbal doubts. We barely made it to the airport in two hours, which was about one-quarter the way there. Taxi driver laughed at us because *of course* one can’t make it there in 90 minutes, because it’s closer to five hours at that time of day. One should probably expect their concierge to know something about the best known tourist site where they are at. Shame on you Mr. True. Train your people.
The kid’s club was a thatched hut of sadness. The exterior looked nice with a playground, swing set, a colourful playroom, and a trampoline. However, there were two older aunties in this un-airconditioned room who did close to nothing to interact with the kids. The planned activities were boring (learn Bahasa Indonesia, which was learning like five words, mask making which was colouring for seven minutes on a photocopied white-paper sheet, and then strapping it on with a brittle rubber band). As an insult to injury, I paid Rp50,000 (US$7) for that photocopy of paper. The kids were not played with. I saw a kid wander off to swing on her own in a lightning storm, some stare at foreign cartoon on the TV, and another whimper until their parents came to pick them up. Service is the difference between delightful and horrible.
There are so many other annoyances. Bottled water was $3 when ordered at a restaurant with the bottle, but free without the bottle and given away free in unlimited supplies from the room. WiFi service was spotty and exceptionally expensive. The infrequent mosquito fogging meant there were lots of mozzies. Hardly any of the shops had any employees, so you couldn’t shop in the villages even if you wanted to. Water sports were outsourced to a third party, who cited that it was only a five minute wait only to find out it was about a three hour wait. The Kecak dance troupe was amateur kids who giggled and mugged, whereas other places (like the places in Ubud and Uluwatu) are professionals who took this amazing dance seriously. And there were a conspicuous lack of attention to details that other places do right that GHB does not. Cold hibiscus tea on arrival? Nope. Welcome gong? No. Occasional light tinkling of gamelan music? No. Candlelight at night? Incense? Free DVD library? No, no, and no.
Bottom line: It was two star staff running a four star hotel at five star prices. By the last two days, I was looking forward to going home, where the ambience, food, and service is miles better than the GHC. I don’t think I’ve ever had a vacation that I wanted to go faster until now.
