Sheraton Sanya Haitang Bay Resort

We stayed here for two nights at the end of September. The resort is beautiful. Grand lobby, spacious room, beautiful beach, etc. I definitely would give the facility a 5-star rating, however, its service quality definitely requires improvement. Here I name a few: 1) We were told that the hotel provides free airport shuttle. The odd thing is that you can not book it more than a day advance. It HAS TO be 24 hours prior to the day of service. That's not necessary but they followed this rule seriously. That's just not convenient while our schedule was hectic already. 2) Check-in was ridiculously slow. There was only one lady at the front desk and there was like 5 groups before me. The lady really took her sweet time scanning passports, filling out paper after paper. Mind you, the hotel lobby didn't have AC and the temperature was over 90F. I was sweating like crazy. I was in the line for like 30 mins and then it took another easily 20 mins when it was finally my turn. I also had to exchange some USD to CNY. Gosh, I regret doing so because I didn't realize she had to handwrite all the serial numbers down and yet, it was paperwork after paperwork. 3) Room cleaning was also very slow and way behind schedule. We waited til like almost 3pm the next day and still no one came. After a few trips to the beach, we ran out of towels and our room got sandy. We finally had to call someone up and demanded service. 4) My 5-year old daughter was playing at one of the pools where they had all these blown up big floaties. They were super slippery and she slipped down one of them and was trapped under the floaty (which is like 10 ft x 8 ft ish). She managed to get out of it and was trapped behind it, where my husband couldn't see. She was crying hysterically and screaming for help. Two hotel employees (they may not be life guards but they are definitely hotel staff) were right next to her while my husband was on the other side of the pool. He screamed for their help since they were closer and could get to her much quicker. Both my husband and my daughter couldn't speak Chinese, however, seeing such a scene, language barrier shouldn't be a problem here. A Chinese couple next to us also had their boy trapped under the floaty and were trying to get help from these two hotel staff. To our very disappointment, these two guys ignored it completely and rather being entertained. When both kids were pulled out by my husband and the Chinese couple, my husband lost his cool and demanded a manager right away. It took them a while to finally agree to get the manager over. The manager apologized profoundly and offered to cover medical bill should it happen. He called back later that evening to check on my daughter and mentioned that the two staff on site were disciplined and they had made modifications to those floaties to ensure safety. They also delivered fruit basket and a stuffy bear to our room. Luckily my daughter was doing fine besides being scared. We were very disappointed with the pool staff but we appreciated the way the manager handled it. 4) We witnessed many times Chinese tourists letting their young children go potty on the beach in public. I am not sure if that's cultural accepted but at a 5-star resort, I don't think that should be allowed. 5) We appreciate having the toilet in a separate room from the tub/shower room. However, soap should be also provided by the sink in the toilet room. Common sense? 6) We visited the noodle restaurant a few times and my daughter had fun watching them making noodles. Service once again was very slow there. They offered children plastic ware, but the plastic spoon tip was like chewed up and it was fuzzy looking. My daughter didn't want to use it at all. One male waiter, (maybe manager?), was super helpful and knew how to hassle. The rest of the waitresses were just slow and seemed lost most of the time. 7) The indoor kid's playground was cute and offered quite a few options. They required adults wear socks, which is a neat policy. However, I saw an older guy walking around without socks. A few grandmothers with their toddler grandchildren eating on the mats. There were a few wet spots on the mat and I feared it was pee since we had seen more than once how Chinese parents just let their babies go wherever they needed to.

We had a 2-bedroom suite, spacious, new, with everything. One room is particularly fit for children with very cute wallpapers, beddings, many dolls, very beautiful dolphin ceiling light. There is a big balcony for the room. Views good too, down there is bush with swimming pool. The pools are of great fun. It's understaff. Things requested from room came very late and after a several urges. But in general, staff are polite and I could see they had tried the best already. It's just a matter for the management to train them up more. As you can expect, the buffet breakfast is very crowded and noisy (it's CHINA!!). Staff had already tried their best to clear dishes up. Choice of restaurants is rather limited. We dined at the sister hotel Belgonia next to it. I chose it because it had 2-bedroom. Otherwise I think there are other better choices. It's far from airport (over 1 hr) and taxi driver in China didn't give us an honest and reliable feeling. The driver sending us to this hotel refused to use meter but a price agreed. We had no choice as we arrived late at airport around 9:30pm at the dark. There is free shuttle bus from and to airport and duty-free mall though.

Spent 3 nights in this nice holiday resort with nice beach, however, the management and service was obviously out of date: 1. I was told at check in that as the room was booked by travel agency, the loyalty points could not be registered in my loyalty program. However, I would like to ask the hotel policy maker, how much % of business conference guests stay in this hotel ? Do they all book rooms via your hotel website ? As most of business guests book hotels via their corporate travel agencies, your policy would only make them to choose their conference hotel which can contribute to their loylty program! 2. The room is very large and well designed. However moisture is so high in the room and you couldn't sleep well despite you keep all windows shut and air conditioner on all day. I asked to replace quilt with a dry one and even called in a dehumidifier! It is still the same with the new replaced quilt feeling soaked. 3. The shuttle bus driver who sent us to Sanya airport (dept at 11am, 29July 2017) was terrible! He shouted to us when he was told that we would like to go to international terminal right after domestic terminal stop. He wanted us to walk from Domestic to International terminal as it would make him turning another round inside the airport. 4. I intended to make this remark on their Starwood hotel website, however, you couldn't! They keep asking your SPG login pwd, hotel booking #, reject your submission, reset your pwd, etc BEFORE you can write a single word. Do they really want to hear you? Do they really care about their customers ? This is a classic example in MBA cases.

What a fabulous hotel! The management and staff were outstanding. Friendly, kind and willing to go the extra mile. They're attention to detail was absolutely flawless. I found most of the staff could speak English and if not then it wasn't too much of a hassle to find another staff member that could assist or translate. We booked the Grand Pool Access Suite. It came with its own private plunge pool, separate living room, spacious outdoor area, walk in wardrobe and more! The space was huge... and very clean. Cable TV, complimentary toiletries to use and tea/coffee making facilities. Room service was delicious and always delivered on time. Breakfast was lovely, plentiful and fresh. It does however get very busy from around 9am and the line up is long but the staff did very well at managing this. We ate at the restaurant 'Feast' a lot of the time for a tasty buffet dinner and bottomless beers. Great little kids buffet section too! The resort has its own private beach with plenty of beach chairs, drink/food menu and umbrellas to enjoy including a variety of water sport activities. The beach was closed for swimming during our stay but you can still put your feet in the water, play in the sand and enjoy the view. The hotel grounds are peaceful, tropical and kept immaculate. The hotel lobby lounge offers live music each evening and great cocktails or you can enjoy a coffee. The lobby also has an ice cream cart selling fresh ice cream in a cup. You can buy can of drinks, fruit and amazing little cakes from there too. My son loved the kids indoor playground. It was clean, safe and had plenty of things for the kids to do. They also offered a 2 day Kids Camp which looked amazing but my son was a little shy to attend this time. There are a lot of different types of pools for everyone to enjoy here too. It never felt overcrowded or too busy. There is a Duty Free mall (hotel offers free return shuttle bus) just 5 minutes down the road where you can buy a lot of designer brand name items. They have a few fast food restaurants and a food court on the top floor. Just a 10 minute drive away is a small street with a basic supermarket, bakery and fruit shops. We went there to stock up on some snacks as there isn't anything much around the resort. I saw a movie theatre just a few minutes drive down the road too which looked good. Overall we absolutely loved our stay here at the Sheraton!! Big shout out to Michael, Bernard, Wicken, Lily & Masa for their incredible service and genuine care. We will be back!

Beautiful setting The hotel is a bit dated but rooms are large with everything in them and immaculately clean. Had a Seaview room with large balcony. View of the ocean and the tropical gardens of the hotel. property is huge with Gardens a well maintained and lush. Several pools, no problem getting sun beds or umbrellas. Staff were very friendly and helpful. No problem finding someone to communicate in English. Most guests were Chinese and it was very busy for the first 3 days as it was a long week-end. The other days were very quiet. Buffet breakfast had a huge choice of foods - everything from fresh fruit to omelettes cooked to your taste by the chef. Again, staff were efficient and friendly. It's a long way from Australia but if you're in China and want a break from the cities would recommend this hotel.

Our stay at the Sheraton Haitang Bay was unfortunately one of the worst experiences we have had in 10 years of visiting Sanya. I will preface this by saying that the room was fantastic and the pools and facilities are pretty good, but the experience of actually staying there was really not good. We are actually still in the middle of this week long holiday but have left the Sheraton early and cancelled the remainder of the booking, we’ve moved to the exceptional Shangri-la next door. This is going to be long below, if you don’t want to read it all the summary is simply to not choose this hotel, go next door as it is so much better. The problems started before even leaving home. I had heard very little about the booking apart from the confirmation and hadn’t received any confirmation of the ‘free shuttle’ included in our package that we had already requested online through the booking website. I called the hotel and the person answering didn’t speak English, I was passed to someone that did and told that we did have a reservation for the free shuttle but only for 1 person. Our booking was for two adults and two children! I requested having all of us on that reservation and was told they would see what they could do, eventually I got a call back confirming it and instructions to go to the SPG lounge at the airport arrivals. Once we actually arrived at the airport at Sanya we soon found that there is no SPG lounge at arrivals, I asked staff at the airport and others and no one knew what I was talking about. I decided to call the Sheraton to check and yet again the person answering the phone couldn’t speak English. I was passed to someone else who was also unhelpful before finally being passed on again. This person did not seem to understand we were at the international terminal and not the domestic, he suggested I walk to domestic (with two kids and all our luggage). Then after a couple of minutes he changed his mind and said I should go to the bus park, he could not direct me to it though and there were no signs for a bus park. I asked more people around and no one knew. The guy on the phone eventually asked if I had WeChat on my phone so he can send me a picture. I don’t have WeChat so decided after 20 minutes of walking around in the heat to give up on the free shuttle and just get a taxi at our own expense. A little annoyed we arrived at the hotel. The next problems came at check-in. First having spoken to 3 of their staff just before arriving I expected at least an acknowledgement of the screw up or an apology for the shuttle problems. But nothing. They didn’t even know about it at the desk when I asked. We had booked a family package that was supposed to include a number of things. The people on the desk appeared not to know this and didn’t mention anything about these things. I raised it as it was supposed to include a free evening meal. The woman behind the desk seemed confused and I had to show her the package details I had printed. She then fetched a voucher for the meal. We did not receive the supposed ‘Children’s Check-in’ or the ‘Children’s star card’, so I have no idea what they were on the package. I asked about the children’s activities included and got a blank look. We were tired and a bit grumpy already so just decided to go to the room. The room itself was a 2 bedroom family suite which was really nice, as mentioned at the top. The only issue with the room was that the safe was already locked. I figured that wouldn’t be a problem to fix so tried to call reception. The phone rang… and rang … and rang. I tried a few times but nothing. I decided to just go and ask myself in person after breakfast in the morning. The first morning when we woke up we went to breakfast early to avoid the free-for-all that happens around 9:00am due to Sheraton stuffing the hotel with really cheap package groups and deals. It was ok. I went to the desk to get the safe fixed and experienced, for the first time, staff running away and hiding out of view so they didn’t have to speak English when they saw me approach. Not a good thing for Sheraton’s 5 star resort staff to do. We went for a swim after this and after finding one of the extremely dirty and grubby loungers to sit on (seriously they need cleaning) I noticed that no one had any towels. I went to the towel kiosk and he just shrugged, no English spoken. Looking around people were bringing down bath towels from their rooms, that seemed a little odd for a 5 star resort. Eventually another man turned up with a bin full of towels (I assume clean) and everyone just dug in to grab them. After our swim we returned to the room and there was a knock at the door. The staff member had a piece of paper with signatures and waved it at me while talking in Chinese. I have no idea what this was about and eventually after realising I didn’t understand she left. About 20 minutes later there was another knock on the door and this time I got more clipboard waving and Chinese but this time with an envelope. I took it and opened it, inside was some sort of coupon for something with a letter. I have no idea what it was for or what the letter said as it was all in Chinese. We decided to go to the children’s play room, which again is really nice. The staff didn’t speak any English so it took about 10 minutes to communicate through phone translation apps to order a couple of drinks and another 10 to explain we wanted to put the charge on the room (plus another staff member). We wanted to ask about children's activity booking as well for the next day but there was no chance of being able to communicate this. We ate dinner in the Feast restaurant. It advertises a buffet, I can only assume this was not on as the restaurant was completely empty with only a few bits of salad on the side. We ate the rather limited a la carte menu. It was overpriced and uninspiring. The next day around the pool we really did notice the differences to the other 5 star resorts we’ve stayed in in Sanya before. No staff seemed to engage with guests, no one came to chat or play with the children like they do at the Shangri-la. Just staff standing chatting to each other or silently sitting all day. There doesn’t appear to be any poolside food or drinks available at this hotel. We decided to swim to the pool bar as someone had been standing there all day with no customers. He seemed a little confused at the idea of customers but eventually was able to bring in a few ice creams from somewhere else, some spring rolls that looked like they had been in a traffic accident and Parmesan fries with truffle (it was just a normal bucket of fries). Again, zero English spoken by staff. For dinner we made the mistake of trying the take out option as the kids were tired and we were already at the play room again. I pointed to the big ‘take out’ board outside the restaurant. The waitress just shrugged. She didn’t speak any English but in the end showed me the room service menu and pointed out the door and gestured a phone call. I understood this to say to call room service. This was at 8:00pm. I went up to the room and tried to do just that. However I had the same phone experience. It rang … and rang … and went silent and I waited …. and tried again a few more times. It was at this point I figured the phone wasn’t working as this was all that seemed to happen when we tried to use it. I took another walk down to reception and informed them the phone was faulty and that we wanted to order room service. Yet again I saw the staff on my approach look, poke each other, giggle and then hide behind the partition leaving only one person to talk to me. This is a bit rude. The man behind the desk sent an engineer after about 20 minutes to fix the phone so we could finally order dinner. It turns out the phone wasn’t broken at all, it’s just that no one was picking up the calls for reception or room service. Finally by about 8:45 we managed to get through to room service to order …… but….. no one there spoke any English so couldn’t take our order. I realise this hotel is in China but this is supposed to be a 5 star Sheraton that advertises fully in English on it’s website, yet no staff can speak it. The front desk said they would send someone to the room who speaks English to take the order. They came after about another 20 minutes. It was now about 9:20pm having tried to order this from 8:00. The guy took the order and went away. After about 15 minutes a knock on the door and he was back again, having forgotten the order. We told him again and then an even longer wait. At a bit after 10:00pm the food finally arrived. For some reason he didn’t wheel the table in as tends to happen in 5 star hotels, he just brought in a tray and put it on the side in front of the TV. So we enjoyed our dinner sat in bed, 5 Star! We decided at this point that trying to do anything at this hotel was going to be a real struggle due to the poor customer service, badly trained or motivated staff and the language issues. We have been to Sanya at least once a year for 10 years and have never experienced this is any hotel we have stayed in (we have stayed in most of the big ones in Yalong Bay and Haitang Bay before). We made the decision that in the morning we would explain the problems to the manager and ask to check out of the hotel early and move to a better one. We are on this holiday for a week and we want to enjoy it, not for it to be a constant struggle to do anything. Thankfully this was accepted (as well as the issues we complained about) by the acting manager. He informed us that all other management are away on business trips so the front desk manager is running the entire hotel. I can understand why this hotel has so many problems if the management are neither very present or engaged. I am not surprised the restaurants are all empty (apart from the breakfast crush) and that there is no atmosphere or buzz about the resort, it just seems poorly managed. This is not the fault of the front desk manager standing in, this poor management clearly comes from the top. My recommendation is to choose any of the other excellent 5 star resorts in Sanya as many are outstanding. We have moved to the Shangri-la, the moment you walk through the door it is night and day difference. Staff are smiling and warm and nice with the children. Everyone greets you and chats, it’s how a 5 star resort should be. The Sheraton Haitang Bay is not a 5 star resort, no way near. The facilities are great but that is it. The service is bad and it is not geared up to accept international travellers at all, avoid it.

Sheraton Sanya Haitian bay resort is the perfect place to escape the busy city life and get into relaxation mode. Great welcome from the moment we arrived. Rooms are perfect and well decorated, clean and situated in a nice green environment. Plenty of choices in pools and with the beach close by nothing can go wrong to catch that holiday feeling. Delicious breakfast and great choice for lunch and dinner. The attention we received from the staff made our stay very special. The surroundings are well maintained, so green and colorful which gives this location a great feeling of wellness. Our compliments to the staff, thanks of taking care of us during our stay!!

Had a great time with my whole family. Huge kids club for kids to play and stay busy. Huge lobby with band performing almost every night and can request some nice song to sing for you. Breakfast was good specially at their Vip Lounge, Noodle restaurant. The place is not crowded. Good service and very attentive.

Try to repair damage things immediately as soon as possible after all i stay in hotel for 3 days and the edge near door wasn't repair and it looks ugly and make me uncomfortable . About restaurants service is very slow along with the standard was also not maintained as should be in 5 star category hotels. Housekeeping services is also similar to service not satisfying. Although i got some problems there were staff who show friendly behavior towards me and i appreciate that specially the foreigner boy help me to show different outlets of hotel and do help to go some places other rest of thing were all comfortabl. 3 days stay in Sheraton was a good memories in sanya.