Le Meridien Ile Maurice

We had a fantastic stay at Le Meridien. What sets this hotel apart is the fabulous staff who work there. The food is also excellent - especially Waves restaurant. We also enjoyed the variety on offer at the Nomad buffet. Special mention to: Sheila in housekeeping at Nirvana for looking after us. Karmilla R at the Nirvana Pool Bar for great service. Baboo at breakfast for making us laugh. Asher for helping us with our luggage today when we were leaving.

We went to this hotel for our honeymoon and thoroughly enjoyed our stay. We had booked the Plunge Pool room and it genuinely was a beautiful room. We had an issue with the plunge pool on the first day where it required a deep clean, but aside from that, the room was perfect. Kesaven, our butler, was reachable and courteous at every point. We were able to get all the information required and things booked where needed! The staff at the hotel are extremely friendly, very helpful, and will always try and make sure you have the best experience possible. The restaurants for breakfast and dinner had ample vegetarian options. We had a half board and our only reservation was if we could choose as many dishes as we wanted for dinner. The limitation to half board is slightly disappointing. Food overall was great. Highly recommend the hotel and cannot wait to be back here.

Outside of the room (which I’ll come back to), the place is great. The gym is outstanding, the equipment is all brand new and it is continually cleaned and there is someone on duty from 8am. The beach area is very well maintained, I even saw a guy out one morning with a leaf blower on it and indeed the grounds generally are top class, the team do a great job maintaining them. The sea is lovely - warmer than the pools!! - and they supply water shoes if you need/want them for getting in and out as there are bits of coral. The main pool is great, it’s not heated but with the weather, that’s fine and it’s actually refreshing. Seats around the pool are limited and you have the usual English hogging them from before they even go for breakfast but in saying that, we always managed to get two and we usually moved to the beach in the afternoon where it was easier to get lounges. Water sports are all included which is a nice bonus, kids club is good but ours were too young. The playground is limited, effectively a slide and a climbing wall but lots of buckets for sand castles. The food in the hotel is excellent. Kumin is an outstanding Indian, Jade is superb, the sushi is excellent but has lots of Asian dishes too and Waves is lovely both for lunch and dinner. Nomad is an excellent buffet option with a wide variety beyond its core offering. The pool bar does a lunch option which is tasty and ideal when you don’t want a sit down option in Waves. There are reviews about service being slow but we found this not to be the case. Service everywhere is excellent. The food at the pool side does take about 20-25 minutes but they tell you that every time and they generally tell you 25-30 - it does come out piping hot so you know it’s freshly cooked. But drinks etc were all served promptly and the guys working the pool side are some of the busiest people in the hotel. There are too few of them given they have such a large area from the pool to the beach, it is a lot to cover and the max we saw at any time was 4. The rest of the staff were excellent and a particular shout out to Nalini who we first met in Waves and then she was in Nomad at breakfast and always looked out for it and was super with the kids. She really went out of her way to make us feel looked after - she deserves recognition! That’s not to take away from all the staff, there were all super friendly and helpful and they were 5 star. However, the hotel itself is an excellent 4 star. It is not a 5 because of one thing only and that is its rooms. We stayed in 117 and it was tired. I can see how it was once 5 star, the standard and quality of the doors separating the bedroom and bathroom as well of the marble shower room etc. but the laminate floor in the bedroom is chipped and broken and actually painful to catch your bare foot on. The tiling in the bathrooms needs the grouting redone and while our kids were small enough not to notice, the bottom of the fold out sofa had that aged sag to it. I would 100% recommend the hotel for those with kids and families, for honeymooners - they might want something a little less family friendly! A little refresh of the rooms and this would definitely be a 5 star review.