Sofitel Vinpearl Resort Nha Trang

My Vietnamese fiance Myself, Mother, Mothers Partner and My Sister stayed at VinPearl just 6 months after it had opened, and I have to say we absolutely loved it.

We originally booked 2 nights but at on the last day decided to extend our stay for another night. The food was great and the cost of the hotel was very good when you compare the resort to other similar 5 star resorts that I have stayed at throughout Asia.

When we checked out of VinPearl we still had another day in Nha trang and spent it on the mainland, all that I can say is I wish we spent another day at VinPearl. The place is absolutely tranquil, and the mainland is a composite of VinPearl

My wife and I will be back in Vietnam in January 2006 for Tet and have already booked our stay at VinPearl, it will be good to see what is new and has changed since we where there last.

Stayed at the Vinpearl for two nights in an ocean view room. The hotel is located about a 10 min boat ride/shuttle ride from Nha Trang. The hotel has a private dock with nice waiting facilities on the mainland side, as the boat only runs every 30 minutes. Check-in was fine, and our room was well appointted with a nice view of the beach and huge pool. The only criticism of the design of the resort is that it can feel a little sterile and plain. Booked a snorkeling trip through the hotel and had a good time. Spent time down at the pool (pretty nice), and the beach (nice sand but pieces of trash in the water). Got a foot massage at the on-site spa, which is fine, though I had expected a better spa experience for a resort of this cost. Dining options seem okay, but really overpriced. We tried to go to the mainland for dinner. All in all an okay experience, but nothing amazingly special for $150/night. Also, the hotel almost didn't deliver the plane tickets we ordered before our departure, and they booked a bus trip for us to Dalat with a very low quality operator, which seemed odd for a 4 or 5 star hotel to do. If you are staying in Nha Trang and want the typical resort experience, try the Vinpearl (it seems in a better location than the Ana Mandara), though I can't vouch for the service there.

I absolutely loved staying at Vin Pearl. It is situated on Hon Tre Island which is about a 5-10 minute boat ride from the main land. It is definitely a place to go and relax, not alot goes on there. The resort is huge, 500 rooms, and the rooms are georgous and generous in size. DO NOT visit Vin Pearl if you are expecting large crouds. The staff were beautiful, english was not that great but I have travelled a lot through Asia and they were just as good as everywhere else I have been. The breakfast was great, a huge buffet, with lots of cuisine to choose from. Visit Vin Pearl if you want to relax by the pool all day and only get involved in the crouds if and when you feel like it. The pool is georgous and HUGE! You will always find a spot or chair by the pool. The bar overlooking the sea is beautiful. I fell in love with this wonderful resort.

I stayed at Vin Pearl with my Fiancee in June 2004 and it was one of the highlights of my two weeks in Vietnam. Unlike some of the other reviews you'll read here, service was excellent from the moment we were greeted on the mainland facility to the moment we left. Yes, the staff does not speak perfect English, put that was more than compensated for by their desire to create a warm atmosphere. Our on-beach room was wonderful - perfect for enjoying the virtually empty beach all day and listening to water lapping on the beach all night. In a small way the service at some of the facilities did suffer from lack of business. Because the hotel was about only 10 percent occupied (perhaps due to bad reviews on this website), the staff seemed surprised sometimes at orders for room service or orders for drinks at the wonderful on-beach bar and restaurant. But once they realized they had a customer, they snapped into action. And frankly, few things surpass the comfortable style of service provided by Vietnamese people. The beach was to die for. During my stay I oft times was the only person on the beach or in the water. The beach was manicured to within an inch of its life - God forbid I stub my toe on a piece of coral! And another thing, I can't count the number of other vacations I've take where the water was too cold. Not here! I spent hours swimming in the calm South China Sea (no wait, swim, what for? too hard, I was just floating) and drinking in the wonderful views. Does the architecture look like a Holiday Inn on steroids? Well that reviewer does have a point and I happen to be a fan of good architecture. But in this case, the staff, the service, the location, the wonderful Vietnamese food and fruit (Is it possible to eat too much Pho??) and in my case the very helpful management (I suppose he did not repeat the problem of handing out vouchers) more than made up for the style points lost on architecture. Did I forget to mention a tiled pool really feels nice on your feet versus concrete? Go there! I haven't been to Ana Manadara (yet), but in addition to everything else, you'll save $100s vs. Ana Mandara.

We had originally planned to stay at the Ana Mandara however they were fully booked and Vin Pearl came up as an option. After reading the previous negative reviews we reduced our time from 4 nights to 3 nights only and hoped it wasn't going to be as bad as some had experienced. I was more than pleasantly suprised, the resort rooms, facilities and the beachfront were beautiful. We dropped into the Ana Mandara and its starting to look dated when you compare it to the Vin Pearl, and the beach at the Vin Pearl has a much nicer outlook.

Thankfully Vin Peal were no longer bringing over day visitors. The place was actually very quiet and relaxing. There is a free bus & ferry service which takes you over to the mainland, which only takes about 10 minutes and runs every half hour from early morning to midnight, and its a fairly inexpensive taxi ride from the Jetty into the city centre.

The staff and restaurants were great, and the breakfast buffet was by far the largest and nicest buffets we had experienced in all of Vietnam, much nicer than even the Hilton at Hanoi. I am not one to usually post reviews however, I thought it was worth letting people know that from what I experienced Vin Pearl has certainly improved on its earlier mistakes. I only wish I had of stayed longer!

We stayed for 6 nights and we thouroughly enjoyed our stay, the food was very good and the service pleasant, bear in mind it's a new Hotel, therefore I understand if it wasn't 100%, it was however better that when I stayed at the Ana Mandara 2 years ago.

Avoid the Vin Pearl at all costs. I stayed there in mid July and was horrified by it. Its big, tacky and not worthy of a five star rating. The entire resort looks like a Holiday Inn on steroids. When we were there, the place was deserted and it felt spooky. We were the only people at dinner, and the staff could not speak English so it was impossible to get our order through. That should not be a problem at a so-called five star resort. On the boat ride from the main town, someone riffled through my carry on bag and threw my travel wallet on the pier. Nothing was stolen, but still, that is unacceptable. The next morning, when we decided to check out a day early, the shuttle bus to the pier left without us. even though we had a reservation and had to make a flight. Save your money and stay at the Ana Mandara instead.

this hotel was one of the worst hotels ive ever been in!!!!!!! the atmosphere was horrific and the food was terrible!!!! although the swimming pool and the hotel room was cool, i would give this hotel none of my money to stay there EVER EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!! get used to these complaints because you will be seeing a lot of them about this hotel.

The only thing great about this hotel was the facility...and thats IT! I was looking through the Info Folder in the the hotel room, and I saw a "Complaint Paper" I read it and it said that you get a "Welcome Coconut." I didn't get that! I didn't get anything! The facility was georgeous! But everything else, 2 thumbs down.

First off, I would just like to say that my family and I are full blood Vietnemese living in California. This review will sound negative about Vietnamese residents and I apologize, but this is from my own observations, harsh as they may be, but very true.

My family and I decided to stay at the Vinpearl because of its stellar accomodations and class. We had heard that it was a brand new hotel and was on a separate island, which sounded wonderful. However, when we got there, we found that this hotel was not worthy of its 5 star rating. First off, the staff seemed very agitated and unenthusiastic. We found the main restaurant (during the lunch buffet) to be extremely busy, loud, boisterous, and crowded; it looked way too crowded to be ordinary tourists/guests. We asked the wait staff if there was a conference or a party of some sort and they told us, no, that the "guests" in the hotel turned out to be local Vietnamese residents who had come to the hotel because of vouchers the manager handed out. What the manager liked to do was to go out to local Vietnamese cities and hand out vouchers for his hotel to promote it; paying USD$20 per adult would entitle them to a free day of swimming and a buffet lunch at the restaurant all day long. If the voucher-holders wanted to stay a night at the hotel, it would only cost them USD$50, a far cry from the USD$100+ regular tourists spent. The whole staff in general, from check-in to waiters were strongly against the whole "voucher" idea, because that was simply not what a 5 star hotel did. Because of the extra guests, the staff was kept extra busy and lacked in attention. Keep in mind that these vouchers and slashed prices were only good for Vietnamese residents. So the weekend my family and I stayed during, about 200 vouchers had been handed out. It was quite evident because the restaurant was packed like a busy marketplace. I found the the "locals" to be rude and had no idea how to behave in a classy place. The restaurant had kids running around and breaking dishes, people cutting into the buffet line, people using their own utensils to grab food from the buffet line, people hoarding food at their table, and people taking their shoes off and putting their bare feet atop chairs and eating quite comfortably, like they were at home. Putting it mildly, the "locals" that the manager had given vouchers to were very impolite and ill-mannered. And then when my family and I went up to our room on the specifically-designated "Non-Smoking Floor", we found several voucher-holders sitting in the common sitting area smoking cigarettes, in front of a giant "Non-Smoking" sign. We also saw little kids knocking on doors and we heard them saying in Vietnamese that they wanted to see what the rooms looked like. The whole place, especiallly the hotel was out of control!

We stayed only 1 night, instead of the planned 3. The next day, we left for the Ana Mandera resort, which we had previously stayed before and was far superior. My experience at the Vinpearl was far from the promises of relaxation it had touted on its website. For the bulk of the afternoon and early evening, kids thundered up and down the halls and the restaurant was like a circus. All of this commotion was caused by the manager's need to fill up his hotel with guests, even though it detracted from the hotel's quality. THe hotel and landscaping itself was absolutely gorgeous, as was the beach. However, poor management ruined the hotel. I urge you to NOT stay at this hotel, unless you like a loud and bustling place to relax. If you have previously stayed at this hotel and had a much better experience than we did, then good for you; we wish we had that same wonderful stay. However our experience was horrible and according to the wait staff, "had been continuing throughout the summer and will still keep continuing". Hopefully, the management will change and we will be able to enjoy this "peaceful" resort. Thanks for reading my review and enjoy your trip!