Guest reviews Constance Ephélia

by R2003GEiainm Dublin, Ireland

Nice facilities and location, terrible service and management

Transfer from airport is about 40 minutes, taxi drivers will charge 50-60 euros. Pros: junior suites are spacious, nice bathroom and terrace, on demand movies and a wide range of channels on the TV. Gym/fitness centre is very good for a hotel..it has a bit of everything. Both beaches are very nice and the swimming pool bean bags are a nice touch. Unfortunates: the weather - stayed for 4 nights mid June which is supposed to be dry season and it's rained every day and only saw glimpses of sunshine. Cons: there are 5-6 swimming pools in total for guests none of which could be identified as a main pool when we asked on check in - this ends up with service being very poor/non existent around the pools. You can easily walk for 5 minutes before finding a staff member where you can order a coffee. They give you flags at the sun loungers to raise when you require service but it's a pointless exercise. Check in: we arrived early at 10am and told the room wouldn't be ready until 2pm which was fine. I was passing reception at 1.45 and enquired about the room, they said I would be sent a WhatsApp when ready. I came back around 2.20 and was told the room is ready, no WhatsApp. Lunch options in main restaurant are very basic, a few sandwiches/wraps and a vegetarian pizza for example after ordering you are told it can take 30-35 minutes for a club sandwich..we wait, 45 minutes later our club sandwich arrives - but there was nobody in the restaurant. A 500ml of Heineken is 220 rupees, roughly 15euro. Local beer is the same pice per ml, 7.50 euro per 280ml. 2 ice creams at the pool gave us a bill of 330 rupees, 22 euros. We were positioned at the very back of the resort which was a 7 minute walk to the breakfast buffet, on check in we were told the buggy/shuttle runs every 15 minutes if you didn't fancy walking. This is incorrect, it runs on demand so best to call. For us to get to the North beach we needed 2 shuttles menacing the journey could take 30 minutes on a shuttle or a 25 minute walk. Booking restaurants is a real pain, the staff make it as difficult as possible and this is where the real sour taste comes from. Adam and eve (asian/Thai) is the only one worthy of a position in a 5 star hotel, asked to book it on Friday morning and we were told it was booked out and to call again monday when a new program was released, called on Sunday and were told again to call on Monday, 1st thing Monday morning we go to reception to book a table and told its fully booked. The lady ahead of us in the queue said she has been here for 2 weeks and couldn't get a table. After insisting this was unacceptable we were given a table which makes me wonder what game they were playing in the 1st place!! The Mediterranean restaurant is very poor, virtually no meat on the menu without a big supplement. The local seafood restaurant is decent, again big supplements on a lot of the main dishes. It seems guests are pushed towards the buffet but the buffet itself has no real theme. Stayed here as part of a honeymoon package and moving to another resort in syechelles and I will be very glad to leave. The resort has a lot going for it, better staff or training would go a long way. If you value 5 star service in a 5 star resort certainly don't visit Constance Ephelia. 5 star resort, 1 star service.

by Sabrinaann1986 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

More 3 star needs a lot of work!

I was really surprised by this resort. To start check in was disorganized and took much longer than it should. We were only staying one night and had prepaid so expected it to be easy. The lady helpfully told us all the restaurants were already fully booked for dinner so our only option was the buffet. We asked for confirmation on our transfer and had to follow up twice just to get the timings. We went by buggy to the room, which was old. Yes rustic is lovely but the junior suites look like they really need a refurb. The beach towels with the little warning about them being returned or being find were a bit comical in a resort as expensive as this one. As we only stayed night we didn’t use any facilities but the pools looked nice. The buffet was basic, the selection was so small and the food really wasn’t great. We had initially considered this resort so I’m glad we didn’t end up booking it. There are many much better resorts to stay in the Seychelles.

by KhawlaAlHashimi United Arab Emirates

Beautiful location, horrible service

If you want a relaxing, hasstle-free trip then constance ephelia is certainly not for you. The service here is highly lacking in any sort of resort norms. We stayed at the hillside villa (2 bedrooms) and were designated a villa host. He certainly made zero effort to make our stay seamless and pleasurable: ALL our prebooked activities and dinners got messed up, he went on a sudden 2-day leave without informing us or handing over to another staff member, infact the only times we saw him during our stay was either by coincidence as he assisted other guests or on our last day - to inform us that our previously confirmed free late checkout was never actually confirmed and is actually a miscommunication. This resort certainly redefines luxury, and redefines what a resort has to offer. Of course some employees actually treated us very well and they were genuinely nice and wanted to help. But for the most part at constance ephelia, we felt that we were expected to fend for ourselves. Service was very slow - never expect to have any room service delivered in less than an hour. At one instance, we had someone knock our door complaining that we weren’t answering our phone (the phone we informed them didnt work since day 1). Someone from IT shows up literally 2 hours before we check out on our last day, to fix the phone.... we stayed for 4 nights. Another instance, we had booked our car to the airport through the hotel (villa host) and have a confirmation from him. It was scheduled for 8:45 pm; the car arrived at 9:20 pm. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my entire life - where they werent even telling us if we had a car coming or not. All employees were just confused and no one gave us a proper response if we have a car coming or not. These were just a few of the many issues we faced during our stay. Furthermore, the place certainly needs to be maintained and cleaned better. The spa treatment was good and the hike to the waterfall was fun and informative. I dont usually write reviews but the issues we faced certainly had to be shared. Please go somewhere else, your peace of mind will thank you for it.

by nsktravels Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Terrible Management - Don't Stay Here!

Although the resort location and grounds were absolutely stunning, our four night stay at Constance Ephelia was far from satisfactory. The service was excruciatingly slow all around: Check-in took almost an hour, any room service orders, even something as simple as a drink, took over an hour and a half to arrive, response time for any requests took way longer than necessary. I will attempt to summarize the issues we had below, it’s going to take a while. Once we got to our 2 bedroom hillside villa, our villa host explained that they would leave us a buggy to drive ourselves around the resort. Although this proved very useful later on (considering the slow service), it was shocking to have been given the responsibility to not only find our way around the grounds, rain or shine, but also try to maneuver ourselves down the hill in the dark at night without falling off the side of the cliff. Not to mention that the buggy battery was low and no one had taught us how to use the thing. We later found out that it was also our responsibility to charge the buggy at the charging station, several villas downhill. The villa itself had a breathtaking view of the bay underneath and the forest beyond. The villa layout however was very odd, with one bedroom being attached to the living room, and the other bedroom having to be accessed by walking across the deck to the opposite side and having to use a key again to access it. I would definitely not recommend this for families with children. Another annoyance was that the deck was almost entirely shaded by trees and we hardly got any sun unless it was mid-day. Further to this, and although we had booked all our dinners and activities about 3-4 weeks prior to our arrival, we were shocked to have to deal with complete lack of communication between the hotel staff. In one instance where we had booked dinner in a restaurant with a live band and local dance show, we were seated at the very back of the restaurant, on a lower level and next to a very noisy family group with children running around screaming. Neither the band nor the dancers were visible from this area. After complaining to the staff that this was unacceptable and if they could please find us a better table, we were treated very coldly with a completely careless attitude. After insisting to several members of staff, one of them was kind enough to find a solution and moved the tables onto a sand patch closer to the band area. No apologies were made. The view wasn’t great but at least there weren’t any kids and we made the most of it. In another instance, we were getting ready to go to our private zip-lining session (again, booked weeks in advance), when we were intercepted at our villa by a staff member telling us we had missed our slot because we were late, when according to our itinerary we still had over 30 minutes to go. We tried contacting our villa host only to find out he had conveniently gone on leave without informing us or assigning anyone else to our group. At last we managed to reschedule our session till the next morning. We arrived at the zip-line location promptly at the agreed time, only to find out that once again there was a miscommunication and our session was actually an hour later. When we arrived at our pre-booked private yoga session at the spa, there was a complete mix-up which resulted in a 20-minute delay in the beginning. Additionally, the “instructor” did not seem to be a legitimate yoga instructor at all, and was dressed in the spa therapist uniform. The class was very poorly planned and we honestly left feeling as though we would have put together a better session without the supposed “instructor”. On our last day at the resort, we contacted the villa host to confirm that we had late check-out. Note that this was communicated to the resort staff at the time of booking a month before, and we had even shared our flight details to ensure that they understood that our flight was late at night and we had no choice but to remain at the hotel until that evening. Despite this, no one from the staff or hotel management had spoken to us to confirm this during our stay there and so we had to make sure they were aware, considering their poor communication skills throughout our stay. True to form, no one was aware of the issue and we had to spend two hours of our last day sorting out their communication problems. They finally offered us late check-out on one of the two rooms we were occupying, which we were grateful for. Except when we were being escorted to our room to pack up our things, the villa host literally stopped us en route to explain how the mix-up was not their fault and that he did us a tremendous favor by allowing us to stay. After packing there was no one there to help us so we had to carry our belongings to the other villa, and despite twice informing them to deliver our suitcases to the other room, they hadn’t arrived till we called again 3 hours later. Check-out went unusually smoothly which was a pleasant surprise. Our car to the airport was booked for 8:45 PM, which was confirmed earlier that day and again during our ride to the reception with the villa host at 8:00. At 8:45 we were outside asking if our car had arrived. The staff asked us which company we were booked with, as if it was our responsibility to know which third party car service the hotel had booked us with. They couldn’t find our names on the list so we had to check the list ourselves. We found our names and which company we were booked with, however the company manager who was standing there mentioned that we were not on his list and therefore there was actually no car booked for us. By then it was almost 9 PM. We obviously showed our frustration to both the villa host and a member of management but the response we were given was in their usual cold unapologetic manner which we were used to by then. Finally another car was booked and we left the hotel 30 minutes later than the agreed time. Although this review may sound like it was written by a snob, I am someone who has stayed in 1 and 2 star hotels in Europe and Asia with no complaints. When I pay a 5 star price I expect 5 star service, and I sadly did not get it here. I have never been tempted to write a review about any hotel I have stayed in in my entire life, but after my experience at Constance Ephelia, I honestly just want to make sure no one goes through the same disappointment we did. Spend a little more and stay at one of the other resorts on the island – it’s worth it.

by mohamedjz

Paradise with great Staff and restaurants

The beach willa was amazing abd very close to the beach and the staff are good and fast the fishing trips are a bit expensive but you will enjoy it and the resort resturants can cook the fish for you. Great staaf with excellent hospitality especially our frind "Simon"