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This is a great place to stay when visiting Komodo national park, so I highly recommend it, but there are some things that need improvement.
The snorkelling off the beach is incredible - it felt like being in an aquarium, and we saw turtles several times and once a big ray. This is absolutely a good enough reason to stay here if you like snorkelling. The snorkelling half day tour was nice enough but the two spots - one for turtles and one for rays - weren’t nearly as good as the house reef, much deeper and busier and we didn’t see so much.
We’re not divers, and it would be good if a bit more attention was given to the activities of non-divers - eg briefings on snorkelling (best spots, what to look out for, info on tides and currents), kayaking (good routes, sunset spots to kayak to, tides), hiking (info about the amazing trek over the island). We had to figure this all out by trial and error. I recommend asking lots of questions to get the info you need early in your stay!
The full day national park speedboat tour was fine - a convenient way to see the main sights. The organisation wasn’t so good - no clear indications of how long we should be at each stop so some guests spent quite a bit of time hanging around waiting for each other. The way they run the tours is frustrating - there’s no proactive sharing of information about what tours are running when, it would be so easy to put up a board listing what they have definitely running in the coming days, and would run if eg two more people join.
The hike to the top of the island the hotel is on was a real highlight. It’s tough - took us over an hour and a half to the top and it was hot and steep. The views from the top are amazing and totally worth it. There’s a beach just off the path you can stop at on the way - I recommend leaving swimwear, snacks etc there and going to the top and then stopping at the beach for a while on the way back. (You can also kayak to this beach for sunset). It also looked like you could carry on hiking down the other side - would be great if the hotel offered to take you to the other end by boat and then you could walk back. Maybe ask!
The sunset spot is much nearer, maybe ten mins up, though worth walking a bit further across for a clearer sunset view.
Food - the daily specials served a la carte were usually delicious, the buffet food was fine. A lot of the food was fried or deep-fried. On our last night we saw someone order grilled fish, we’d have done that had the we known it was an option.
Rooms - we started in a new bungalow. These rooms have no dedicated beach loungers and there are no public ones, so if you stay in one of these rooms you have to sit on the sand if you want to sit on the beach. Then we moved to “private bungalow 1”, which was a misnomer, as the next door upstairs room looks directly onto its terrace and into the room - they put up a tarpaulin screen for us which solved the issue though obviously wasn’t very attractive! Also note the two private bungalows share a wall and noise carries across. If you can I suggest paying for the regular room type.
Massage - not great, masseuse was yawning and disengaged, room had peeling paint and ripped curtains, not a relaxing spa experience.
Overall - come for the snorkelling, ask lots of questions, know that you can order off-buffet! - via 