Boujis Boutique Resort

Given the overwhelmingly positive reviews on this site, we had been looking forward to staying for five days at Bouji’s, but we were sadly disappointed. On the positive side, the views are to die for and the staff are friendly and efficient. Practically everything else did not live up to our expectations. First, the location. It’s situated on a cliff between a busy road and the sea. Great views, as mentioned, but there is no access to a beach or to the sea and there are no shops anywhere nearby. That means you have to leave the hotel and get along the busy road to get anywhere. There is no pavement, so this can be pretty dangerous, especially after dark. It’s easy to stop a cab or Tuk Tuk, however so this may not be a showstopper, but you should be aware. If the hotel had good facilities (a decent pool area, yoga/cookery classes or something) then you may want to spend more time on site, so the location wouldn’t be an issue, but it doesn’t! The only “facility” as such, is the pool area, which features six sun benches, all of which are falling apart, with very heavy mouldy mattresses. It is situated just the other side of the wall which separates the hotel from the road so it’s not exactly peaceful either. Our room was OK. The terrace furniture was in bad condition, but the bedrooms and bathrooms were clean enough, although a little dilapidated. The washbasin and bedroom wardrobe were both located in a separate room at the back of the unit which was OK, if a little unusual. In general, the hotel, and it’s grounds, seemed rather neglected, particularly when compared to Dr Frogs Restaurant, which is an integral part of the complex and also where you find the hotel “reception desk”. The final nail in the Bouji coffin came on our third day after several hours of heavy rain. Water started dripping in through the roof of our unit so we asked reception if it was possible to change rooms. We assumed this would be possible as we had hardly seen any other guests in the three days we had been there. This was not possible, we were told, because the hotel was fully booked. That surprising piece of information, coupled with the fact that the buildings and grounds were so neglected, made us think that perhaps the hotel business is being wound down in favour of the restaurant business. Just speculation, of course, but it would explain our experience compared to the other reviews and photos on this site. As they couldn’t reaccommodate us, we agreed on a refund for our last few days and found alternative accommodation. The staff were very helpful with this, so no issues with that at all, but I very much doubt that we will be returning to Bouji’s.

Overall, the most disappointing thing to me was service. I also saw the waiter several times just throwing trash right over the balcony of the restaurant to the beach and area below the restaurant including Christmas decoration stuff he was done with an coasters that seemed to be made of some sort of plastic. No idea why they wouldn’t take more care to keep clean their own environment. I also walked by the open view kitchen to see a lady spitting directly on the floor. We had a Christmas Eve dinner reservation for 6:30pm. Our food was ready at NINE, a two and a half hour wait for dinner with a set menu. Around 8:15 I asked if they could just deliver our food to our room (we paid over 200 USD for two for this meal) and a nine year old boy was starving and the table next to us had started smoking and putting out their cigarettes in the water glasses - at that point I thought at least I’ll try and distract him with a movie while we wait. I asked several times if food was coming to be told it would be there asap and it to not come. After over an hour and a half as we made our way to our room I said please just tell me if it’s going to be much longer so I can just order delivery and feed this child. They promised me ten more minutes for it to be another 35 and didn’t even bring the dessert. All of that to charge us full price for a meal we didn’t even get the entirety of. At minimum just a, “hey we’re really sorry about how service went, we’re going to provide a small discount to account for that, or let us deduct some for the dessert we didn’t even provide” would have been a good start. I can’t imagine what was going on in the kitchen to have caused that kind of evening and I’m sorry for those who were working it, but really terrible experience as a guest and more so with a child. Rooms were also not well cleaned- even when requesting the cleaning service. One of the showers had no hot water either. Pretty noisy from the street, don’t plan on walking anywhere but we were able to take short taxis to all destinations.