Luxury Australia: Some Comments
 

Voyages Hotel: Lizard, Ayers & Silky Oaks
For the past 3 months, my husband and I have been travelling all over Asia (China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia) and so we decided after having last been in Australia some 15 years ago, to add it to our big luxurious trip. We just returned on Monday and I feel strongly about posting something in this forum that has given us so many good tips.
For our trip, we stayed at some of the finest hotels in the eastern side of Oz plus Ayers. Lindrum (Melbourne) / Hyatt (Sydney) / Sails in the dessert (Ayers) 2 nights /Lizard Island (Queensland) 5 nights / Silky Oaks (2 nights). We were unaware that the last 3 ones belong to the same company: Voyages.
Voyages run so-called 5 Star hotels that are all located in amazing places but they are basically: 5* prices with 3*facilities and 2*services.
In case you are thinking of going there, please note the following:
Sails in the Dessert: this is the worst of the lot. We arrived at 1.30 pm and had the worst check-in experience ever, they made us wait and wait and after several complaints they gave us a smelly cheap looking room. Next day they forgot our wake up call, did not clean up the room, breakfast was a sorry affair, full of dirty tables and awful service. The staff is made up of temps, people who are there for 2-3 months at the time and have no training and are clueless. Plus it is very expensive: a mediocre dinner with no wine can easily set you back to US$ 150 – breakfast costs $25 pp. I could post a long list of complains but the bottom line is if you want to go to Ayers rock, stay at the cheapest hotel there. All of the hotels in the area belong to Voyages so you get the same (lack of) service but at least you are not paying for quality and service you are not going to get.
Lizard Island: This place is beautiful. No question about it. But is also the typical example of a company assuming that because the location is picture perfect, they can get away with average service, food and facilities. Lizard is very expensive (for the same money you can go to Polynesia, Fidji or Maldives and you’ll get far more) but is the place to be if you want to stay near the barrier. We had a Sunset Villa. The Villas are nice but as nice as they could be in a 3* hotel. There is nothing special or charming about them (the bathrooms are particularly sad). Food here is average. Again, most of the staff are temps so they smile a lot but are generally clueless. If you want to dive (my husband is a keen diver), this has to be the most expensive dive in the world). Half a day of diving (1hr) costs US$300 and a whole day costs approx US$600. For comparisons, a dive on the Maldives (#1 spot in the world for diving costs US$90).
Silky Oaks: again, beautiful setting...here the food and the spa are at least as good as the location. Service remains patchy. We had a casita on the river (their suites) – the casita was so basic... and then our main day was a Sunday. Guess what? All of their guides have that as a day off so basically we could not do any tour of the area because they had no guides. Next day, they also forgot to wake us up (we almost lost our flight), forgot to book the transfer, etc...
After being in Asia for a long time, coming to Australia was a disappointment in terms of hotels/service and it certainly put a damp to the whole experience. It was by far the most expensive part of our trip and yet again the service (or lack of) was bad, bad, bad. Even at the Hyatt in Sydney. Amazing country, truly blessed... except that their travel industry has some distance to go before offering good, reliable luxury services.

Well Miss Saigon, I am sorry you had a bad time but I wonder if you asked any of us "where to go and stay" because I would not go to any of those places you went and that goes for Ayers Rock itself. I have been saying and saying and saying that if you want a real treat then you go to Hinchinbrook Island, Bedarra or Hayman but actually I would do a liveaboard before I would stay on an island anyway. Anywhere that is run by a large conglomerate or is in the middle of nowhere like Sails in the Desert with a captive audience is not going to have attentive and committed staff.
Your comment about a dive on the Maldives being a lot cheaper is rather a stupid one though because it is going to be cheaper because that is not a 1st World country and the wages are nothing in comparison to Australia - ditto most of Asia. Yes I have "done" Asia in their "so called" 5 star hotels and thank you very much I am happy with those I know.

Being an Aussie and having stayed at many luxe places in Asia and America, I do agree that it's very expensive here and the pampering is er, not quite there. Wish you had a few more pleasant experiences to offset like unexpected acts of kindness and generosity from the locals. I'm used to the hospitality staff here, friendly service but as an equal.

I have just phoned Lizard Island and now I am sure that Miss Saigon is a troll set on trying to make Australia look bad.
THE COST OF DIVES FROM LIZARD ARE
HALF DAY....... $200 AUSTRALIAN which of course includes all drinks and food.

Full day with 2 dives to the outer reef is $340 and includes all food and drinks.

What else is incorrect from Miss Saigon?????????????

While I don't condone lack of service - I also think you should keep in mind that places like Ayers Rock rely on a limited number of people who are prepared to work in isolated places and for a limited time as such places only operate fully for several months of the year, and therefore do not have the luxury of a large employment base to work from.

Hi Miss Saigon!

I don't think that you're a "troll" as LizzyF mentions, but then, what do I know?! :)

What I DO know is that Voyages, IMO, has been going downhill now for sometime, which is a shame.

I know this from personal experience (Dunk Island where the service was awful, and I'm talking about very basic things, such as dirty dishes left by the pool for 24 hours); as well as client feedback, which is why I haven't booked any of my clients into Sails for over 2 years.

You're completely correct in your assessment of the staff being temps. Basically,Voyages employees have the option of moving to another resort after 3 or 4 months, per their contract. So what ends up happening is that you have mostly 20-something employees who were employed as a maid at Sails getting bored and transferring to waitstaff position somewhere else with apparently little training.

If you'd posted your itinerary and I missed it, I'm sorry, because I would have given you a caution about making reservations there.

As far as diving costs go, I do think that it's not fair to compare one location to another - that's like apples and oranges. Different wages, different exchange rate, etc.
Sort of like comparing food costs in Thailand to Sydney prices.

There are some amazing luxury resorts in Australia; it's just unfortunate that you didn't experience them.

Regards,

Melodie
Certified Aussie Specialist

It's just PATHETIC how some people really have NOTHING better to do than make phone calls to resorts they have no intention of going to just to prove strangers who post on a forum wrong. You don't own Australia, do you LizzyF? Because I wonder perhaps you do with all the time you spend defending the damn country. I love it too, but I also love where I come from and it doesn't bother me when people have negative comments to make. Geez, get a life!

Sorry, but I am obviously very frustrated that a lot of the Australia posts have comments like this from this one particular poster who is so overly defensive and calls people "trolls". How old are you?

Don't take the bait. Just move on. . . . .

Next time go "moderate budget" and you will meet the most amazingly helpful people and have great service and stay in as nice or almost as nice places. Most of us would love to stay on Lizard for the local snorkeling alone but can't afford it. Too bad you didn't get what you think you paid for, but the country has so much to offer, I hope you had a good time anyway.
Sally in Seattle

Wonderful to see my favourite part of Australia still being discussed here on the Fodors Forum. We enjoy the banter and free entertainment provided here by some of the resident posters and come in frequently to check out what’s going on in the land of OZ. We cannot comment on voyages or how they run their lodges although we did the Lizard Island Day Tour with Daintree air. The tour is an absolute must while in Australia. The views of waterfalls, rainforests,reefs and so on on the way to and from the Island are nearly as exciting as the snorkelling and seeing all that marine life.
What memories.

I have always had great experiences at Lizard. Its the only 5 star resort thats on the great barrier reef.

I guess I am biased as I love Lizard.

Just adding my $.02, we stayed at Silky Oaks (4 nights), Lizard (4 nights), and Longitude 131 (3 nights). Silky Oaks was "eh," and the river-view room was more of a "river-hear" room. We voluntarily downgraded to one of the cheaper rooms and were just as happy (or happier, since we saved money). Four days, fyi, is a bit too long to spend there, although we took some really wonderful guided tours arranged via the hotel of the rainforest. The food was, I thought, pretty mediocre, and they really nail you on the cost of your non-included lunch. Still, certain of the guided tours were very special experiences.

Lizard Island: We stayed four nights. If I had to do it over again, I would probably have stayed 6 or 8 nights there, and either reduced or eliminated our Silky Oaks stay (although we were ultimately okay with how things turned out). I thought Lizard Island was well worth the money; my wife and I both got our open-water certification there, and we generally found it to be a great experience, with surprisingly good food. I thought the service was fine, and maybe even a bit better than Silky Oaks.

Longitude 131: I thought this was very much not worth the price, and that I should have chosen Sails in the Desert, although based on the first post in this thread, maybe I should have gone the budget route. The service was not great (although the general manager was very good), probably because it's so hard to keep people and as previously noted, the staff is 18-20 year olds. Three days is a good amount of time to stay here, but Longitude really wasn’t worth the price (whereas I thought Lizard was).

We also stayed at the Park Hyatt in Sydney and enjoyed the location, but were not wowed by the service either. Lots of other hotels located nearby to choose instead.

jgold - any recommendations for hotels near Park Hyatt in Sydney?

Lil Ricky: In similar $zone to Park Hyatt, you might look at Four Seasons, Intercontinental, Sir Stamford, Observatory, Shangri-La. Of these, 4 Seasons is closest to Park Hyatt and Circular Quay.

Just agreeing with Bokhara2, the Four Seasons is maybe five blocks from the Park Hyatt and looked very nice. It's actually even slighly better located, because the Park Hyatt is on a kind of deserted street, so you have to walk a block or block-and-a-half to get to stores (if you exit from the main entrance). OTOH, the Park Hyatt's back entrance puts you right on the water and there are very nice Opera view rooms. That being said, if you're okay walking two short blocks to the water (I think that's what it was), the FS is fine. One difference is that the Park Hyatt is a much smaller hotel than the FS (I think the Park Hyatt only had four floors), so it seems a bit more intimate. Sorry I can't be of more help--we didn't go into any of the other hotels we passed.

The Four Seasons (formerly The Regent) is diagonally opposite Circular Quay. The Shangri La (formerly ANA) is a block west & 1 south of CQ.

The executive chef from a few years ago has returned to Silky Oaks after running his own Restaurant for two years and then taking a year to go travelling.