St. Regis Bora Bora Review: Paradise with Service Flaws

Despite beautiful hard product at the St. Regis Bora Bora, we found service in need of polish. You’re also on notice if you don’t like bugs.

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The prior installment discussed the beautiful hard product available at the St. Regis Bora Bora. This installment will solely focus on the soft product at the resort.

Welcome amenities from the St. Regis Bora Bora

With the room out of the way, let’s talk about the goodies from the St. Regis Bora Bora. First up is a nice, durable beach bag that we could take home. Our butlers mentioned it was a gift for Jenn.

The kids each received a stuffed animal as a welcome gift. Char got a stuffed turtle and a nice welcome letter.

Meanwhile, Alex got a stuffed shark and his own letter.

So what was my gift? Nothing specifically addressed to me, but let’s assume the welcome amenity is mine. On the table when we arrived was some mango juice, water, two bottles of rum, and some snacks.

Yeah, I’ll claim the rum is mine. That sounds about right.

Daily drink service

One “amenity” available for everyone at a St. Regis is being able to request a beverage for free in the morning. Your options include coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Some mornings we called to request the service, but we didn’t need it each morning.

Marriott Bonvoy Titanium Elite status benefits

If you have Platinum Elite status or higher, you’ll get free breakfast for two. But what else do you get? I received a letter at check in that details what a Titanium Elite gets:

Elite welcome amenities in your villa.
10% off branded products at the Maeva Boutique.
20% off the Cocktail of the Week (at 727 bar) or a Bloody Mary (at Aparima bar).
A free sarong when spending 15,000 XPF on products at the spa boutique.
A minor amount of bonus points for spa treatments:
- 60-minute treatments = 1,200 bonus Marriott points
- 90-minute treatments = 1,800 bonus Marriott points
- 110- or 120-minute treatments = 2,400 bonus Marriot points
- 150-minute treatments = 3,000 bonus Marriott points

Additional amenities for children at the St. Regis Bora Bora

We’ll chat about this more in future posts, but I do want to point out that children also receive a couple of extra bonuses:

Free ice cream at Aparima bar (as often as they want, all day long)
Free breakfast (meaning we did not need to pay anything as a Titanium Elite)
An activity book that they can complete and turn in to get a crafting kit

Getting around the St. Regis Bora Bora

If you’d like to get around the property, there are three main ways to do it:

Walk
Request a buggy to pick you up
Use the bicycles outside your front door

We found that calling a buggy is unreliable. They warn you that it may take 10 minutes for a buggy to arrive, but in reality, it was more than 20 minutes whenever we called. The wait was so bad that we just decided to walk instead.

The bicycles are a fun way to get around. They left one for each of us and had smaller bicycles that worked for the kids.

Char’s had training wheels on them, so it’s good that they have options for younger children.

However, one of the bicycles was broken (a jagged piece of metal was sticking out). We needed to call the bike doctor (yes, that’s his title) to come replace it.

The bug situation

OK, let’s take a brief moment to talk about the bugs. Inside your room is a card offering a warning.

Dear guests, Welcome to our tropical paradise! We are located in an exotic destination where you may encounter a few harmless local visitors. While we do our utmost to discourage their presence, they are inevitable in our natural environment. Please do not hesitate to contact our team if we may be of any assistance. We thank you for your kind understanding and we wish you a wonderful stay.

The biggest nuisance were the mosquitoes, which mostly made their presence felt outside the villa. There were some inside, but if you’re diligent about not leaving the door open, it shouldn’t be that problematic. Of course, that’s easy to say when these things fly around and hide in places you can’t reach.

There were two cockroaches I spotted on the property: one dead one in our room (weird it just died out in the open) and one live one walking around in the breakfast restaurant.

What about other creatures that aren’t bugs? There was a gecko that lived in the walls within our villa. We heard him chirping especially in the morning and sometimes saw him scamper off into the walls. Geckos eat mosquitoes, so we didn’t mind him living with us.

There was also a small crab that walked right up to the villa and I almost smushed him when I opened the sliding door.

Naturally, he didn’t move for a while after I nearly smushed him, so I thought I crippled it. The kids were saddened by my mistake, so they hung out with it for a while before breakfast. Thankfully it left, proving to the kids that I’m not a murderer.

My theory on the bugs

Let’s have a little nature lesson. The female mosquitoes are the ones that bite you. They need blood to help generate energy to make their eggs. The male mosquitoes have no interest in biting you. Instead, they live in and around the plants. Thus, if you hang out near the plants, you might see males but females looking to mate with the males will also be there.

If you have a land villa (like us) at the St. Regis Bora Bora, you’re going to have a lot of plants around you. That means a higher probability you end up interacting with mosquitoes. If you have a water villa, there is a smaller (but not non-zero) chance of mosquitoes being around you because there aren’t as many plants.

My hunch is that if you want to avoid getting bit at night, you’ll want an overwater villa.

Additionally, no matter what villa you choose, you’re at the mercy of whomever was in the villa before you. If that person loved keeping the doors open, your room might have more bugs in it. That seemed to be what happened in our case. We had bugs in the room at the start of our stay but we were diligent about keeping doors closed and killing what we saw inside. By the end of our stay, there were no more bugs (you’re welcome, future guests).

The weather mostly behaves

Most of the time, it was sunny or partly cloudy. June is supposed to be the dry season and is a great time to visit. Dry season in Bora Bora extends from May to October. However, despite it being dry season, there were occasional showers. These mostly occurred at night, but there were times when it happened during the day. When it rained, it typically didn’t last long and weather returned to being perfect.

Wi-Fi is not good at all

There is an access point in your villa and at other key locations around the island. However, there will be dead zones throughout, especially if you’re not by a restaurant.

But let’s assume you’re right by an access point. How fast is the internet? A dreadfully slow 1.2 Mbps. I tried the speed tests all throughout the day, including at odd hours. I also tried it at different locations around the resort. Those who remember my persistence at trying the terrible Celebrity Cruises internet would know I tried as much as possible to find a good place for internet. And yet that internet was much better than what we had here.

These are incredibly disappointing speeds, and not a place you should consider if you want to work while on vacation. The St. Regis Bora Bora should do better than this.

Service is not polished

Time for an honest conversation on the service at the St. Regis Bora Bora. If it weren’t for our butlers Chloé and Marion, it would be largely negative. So let me start with the positive.

The positives

Can I just say that I fully appreciated having both butlers? They met with us each morning at breakfast to outline our day, ask if we had questions, and resolved lingering issues that we had. Whenever they saw us around the resort, they would have the biggest smile and wave at us. It’s hard being “on” all day long, but they made it look easy. When they chatted with us, they always took notes, made phone calls, and followed up with us. Following up is key to good service.

We had two butlers purely because Marion is still in training and not because I’m so demanding that I need two.

Outside of Chloé and Marion, some of the restaurant staff also provided excellent service. We found that staff usually knew who we were when we showed up. And then tried to connect with us and remembered preferences from the prior day. It wasn’t consistent from all staff, but it’s seamless when it does happen.

The negatives

First, Chloé and Marion weren’t with us our entire stay. They were there for the first three nights, but for the last two nights we had Teaiki. Service noticeably dropped off after the exchange. We never had a warm handoff to introduce our new butler. Teaiki also didn’t show up to see us at breakfast. When we did activities, she might stop by to say hi but then immediately leave and not see us off. Even on the day we checked out, she didn’t stay to wave bye to us. It’s possible she was busy with her own guests, but it just wasn’t the same.

Calling the front desk was a crapshoot. When we needed a bike repaired, we called… and nothing happened. Chloé and Marion had to follow up to resolve the issue the next day. We called for clothes pressing, but again we needed to talk to our butlers to have it picked up. I already mentioned that the buggy sometimes doesn’t show up when promised.

And would you believe that we called for room service and they never did anything with the order? We waited 90 minutes for nothing to arrive, forcing us to call and ask. There wasn’t an acceptable resolution offered either, as they only offered to fire it up at that point and comp our food but by the time the food would show up, it would encroach into dinner. It would have been nice if they offered to make it free another day and I would have taken them up on that offer.

What is the point of showing us a photo of ourselves?

I ask this as a legitimate question: what was the point of giving us a photo of ourselves in that newspaper clipping?

There are only two things I can think of that could have resulted from their research:

Char likes sea turtles, and
Alex likes sharks (not discernable from the blog but noticeable on social media)

What welcome gifts did the kids get here? A turtle and a shark.

But they never said anything about our prior travels nor referenced any research they did. Just that they gave us a picture as though they knew us. I can assume positive intent and believe it was an attempt to show off that we’re here on another fun adventure like others we had in the past. And I do think staff is encouraged to memorize faces, so that likely plays into the research.

But, again, I don’t need to know that they did research on us. Imagine opening a folder and finding your face in it, presented to you by people you don’t know. It’s personal, but it feels too personal. If someone talked about it in some fashion to us, it might feel more natural like a conversation starter. But no follow up means it feels a little creepy, sadly. Shock value without any resolution.

Complimentary water shuttle

There is only one time daily (except Sunday) where the water shuttle to the main island is free. That’s the “Vaitape Shuttle”. It consists of the normal shuttle to the St. Regis dock on the main island, followed by a bus ride to the city.

Departs at 10:30AM from the St. Regis Bora Bora
Arrives at Vaitape Village around 11:10AM
Departure from Vaitape Village at 2PM
Returns to the St. Regis Bora Bora around 2:35PM

If you want to take the shuttle, make a reservation either before you arrive or with your butler.

There are some things to check out while you’re there. You could stock up on groceries or eat at St. James Restaurant.

Recommendation of the St. Regis Bora Bora: It’s mixed

I’m going to break this recommendation up into segments, as it’s easier to walk through. I think the hard product is great. Nothing was broken and the villa itself was fantastic. There are elements that reminded us of other ultra-luxurious hotels we’ve been to.

The food at the resort was also enjoyable. I didn’t yet talk about the food, but rest assured we had many great meals here. And we generally enjoyed the activities around the resort.

But the soft product is where the St. Regis Bora Bora struggles a bit. They don’t do a good job setting expectations as they don’t meet the timelines given. Service, aside from our original butlers and a few gems at the restaurants, was lacking. And the Wi-Fi could be one of the worst elements of the hotel, especially if you need to rely on it.

A hotel charging as much as it does shouldn’t have as many negatives as it has. Maybe I am being idealistic, but it’s disappointing when factoring in what we paid. If we kept our butlers the whole time, I might have a more positive outlook on the service. So I’ll phrase it as this:

If you highly value service, you might think the hotel isn’t worth the money
If you don’t value service as highly (or get a great butler), the stay could be worth it

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