Royal Sonesta Kauai

What a strange place. Giant dated white building set on a beach next to a port. It should be torn down and replaced with a nice resort and the port area cleaned up to be more attractive.

Our stay started badly and has not improved. The resort property is pretentious, oversized, overblown and difficult to navigate. The registration desk is invisible from the drive up entry, and staff are mostly indifferent. We arrived before our room was ready and instead of directing us to a place to rest and/ or providing a schedule of resort activities, they just cut us loose, saying they would call or text us when the room was ready. They didn't. Four hours later, after getting trapped in Lihue traffic and getting overpriced takeout from a Lihue deli, we still had not heard from them and had to return to inquire. The room (nearly $1,000/night) is in a remote tower requiring us to wind around the facility on foot with no guidance from staff. Yes, the pool is nice but the overall facility feels fake and pretentious, with design features having little to do with Kauai or Hawaii, and amenities including lounge musicians playing retreads of Neil Diamond. We will not be back. We feel greatly misled by your rating of this resort as a "real gem" (which we relied on when booking) and suggest you revisit and re-evaluate. Thanks. David Olson Email: cableczar1@gmail.com

Pictures online don’t do this place justice. Beautiful setting. Rooms looked recently renovated. Prperty extremely well kept. Helpful staff. On site restauarants good and short walk away (less than 1/8th of mile) many other restaurants. Great golf course. Free shuttle to/from airport which is 5 min. away. Kauai much more laid back than other Hi. islands and residents very friendly. Went to Beach House for our big dinner. Spectacular view/setting.

Worst service. Front desk staff not helpful and probably the least friendly in Hawaii. Ugliest hotel- looks worse than Hilton garden inn. No amenities in rooms and suites. When I asked for a kettle and cup to make tea in my suite, they said they don’t have ceramic cups, only plastic, and they brought a plastic kettle. The coffee machine doesn’t work. The towels have holes in them. Room wasn’t very clean, especially the bathroom. Kitchen in suite but nothing in the cabinets so it’s useless. Please go elsewhere. The Hyatt looks amazing and our lunch there was good. Places in princevilke also look good. Finally, it doesn’t look like a luxury hotel. It’s weirdly designed, takes ages to walk through the hotel, and doesn’t look like it was remodeled.

We had a few issues during our stay ie broken toilet, smell of mustiness in the room. They said they had no other rooms available even though their website states differently. We’re able to move rooms the next day. Volleyball tournament was going on for 3 days on the ‘private’ beach which woke us early every day which we were not warned about - not ideal whilst on honeymoon and wanting to relax. We were then woken very early to drilling and hammering from the room above us which no-one was warned about. We were told they would be finish by 5pm. But then, the next morning, the very same noise was happening right outside our door with again no warning! Upon check out the hotel manager confirmed we should have been given a food voucher card to check off our included spend. We were overcharged as we thought we had used our allowance which we hadn’t as apparently tips and tax aren’t taken off the allowance. We were promised an email within an hour confirming our new invoice to show correcting the food deduction as well as the resort fees due to the inconvenience and issues. We heard nothing. But they charged our card £265 unauthorised! 2 weeks later and we have still not heard anything from the hotel. Our third party provider have been fantastic in trying to mop up their messes. The hotel has also lied to them saying we were offered a room upgrade which we declined! They declined OUR request to change rooms. They also said they have refunded us which has still not credited our account. Be careful about this hotel. It is extremely overpriced for what the hotel is worth but worse than that, the customer service is awful. We are taking things up with the CEO of the hotel group.