Nice to have Sinalei has our base for the first trip to Samoa in 30 years! Beautiful gardens and great views over the lagoon, reef and ocean. Fales spacious and clean, but lower profile pillows would help sleep comfort. Food on the Fiafia night was excellent (as was the show) but at other times it was just adequate (and sometimes very slow...what did kitchen staff do when taking 50 minutes to make a pizza?!). We checked out a few other resorts on the south coast (Aga Reef, Sea Breeze, Coconuts) and am sure Sinalei is a superior experience. Go and enjoy the ambience here.

My partner and I stayed in Sinalei for 4 nights after reading great reviews about this place.

Unfortunately our experience was awful and we did not have a relaxing time as we had anticipated.

We had ordered an airport pick up with the hotel, our flight had originally got cancelled and rescheduled but I had kept sinalei up to date the whole time and received confirmation they would pick us up.

When we arrived to the airport there was no pick up and we ended up spending an hour and half - having to buy SIM card and make calls - we were made to feel it was our fault as we should have arrived the day before! We were told the pick up driver had been and gone. They did advise for us to take a taxi that they would pay for which was great but I didn’t like they way they had made us feel on the phone.

When we arrived there was no welcome drink as per our booking, our check in was very poor, they then half hearty apologised for the taxi mishap and admitted it was a fault on their part.

The hotel was being privately hired out that weekend for a private event and we were unfortunate enough to stay the week leading up to it. We felt there was little consideration for the current paying guests, they was a lot of work being done - painting of various parts and cutting the lawn and it was noisy! We got woken up at 8 am once by a noisy lawn mower right outside our fale. It was like this most the day so hard to relax.

However the worst was to follow. The toilets in the fales are outdoors, one morning we arrived back from
Breakfast to find 2 men painting the outside of our fale, it was a little odd but we didn’t say anything. I went into the bathroom and whilst on the toilet I could hear rustling, I looked through the mirror and saw someone painting the back of the fale overlooking the toilet and shower! I was in utter shock. If you can’t have privacy in your own hotel bathroom where can you!
I told him to get down but he didn’t understand much english. In all I didn’t blame him personally as I purely believe this was a managerial issue and he had been doing as he was told.

I went to speak to the manager and found her to be insincere. She apologised and went to speak to the workers but I didn’t feel she was overly apologetic to us. I’m certain most other places would be mortified. We lost trust in the hotel and then spent most of our time out of the hotel. If I could have stayed elsewhere at this point I would have.

In addition to the above I also asked the water sports person for snorkels he literally told me they were ‘upstairs’ and could I come later to get them. I went later and he said he only had 1 and could my partner and I share. I asked him why there was only
1 and he said the rest were ‘upstairs’. I was lucky as the events organiser was present and told him he could get them, within a couple of minutes he was back with another snorkel! It seemed he was initially just too lazy!

I would not recommend this hotel, it was not the relaxing holiday my partner and I had hoped for and the managers response to things were so poor. On checkout she did refund 1 day free car ($110) but given we paid roughly $2100 tala for the week and then a similar amount for food and car hire I felt this very little given the above events.