InterContinental Hayman Island Resort

My partner and I just spent 4 days here and I couldn’t leave without writing a review. I haven’t had an experience like this in years, to be honest I don’t even remember the last time I was treated this way. Their staff is top notch in all aspects. They care not only about you having a comfortable stay but an INCREDIBLE stay. Yasmin was on top of everything, this woman worked so so hard on giving us a memorable experience. She worked behind the scenes with my partner on his engagement proposal (that I obviously knew nothing about). She put in so much thought and hard work on it being a perfect day for me and it was so much beyond that. Another person that made a huge impact on us was Sam. He was so amazing to us, his hospitality is one of those that you truly don’t see anywhere nowadays and I can’t stop praising him since we left. We also took a helicopter ride with Pete as our pilot to Whitehaven beach and I’m so grateful for his kindness through it all. His knowledge too, because he taught us so much about the Whitsundays that I would never have learned outside of that ride. All this to say the staff of the Intercontinental at Hayman Island holds this place to the highest standard, they are absolutely incredible and I hope they get a chance to read this because they made sure I had the best 4 days of my life these past few days!!!

This is not a 5-star resort. We’ve stayed at places for less $$ and had a far better experience..! Save your money & book elsewhere. It’s not one main issue that stood out for us, instead a culminating list of issues we experienced nearly everyday of our trip that left us feeling frustrated and disappointed. Our stay was 7-nights in a 2-bedroom Hayman suite. Upon arrival, the check-in process was impersonal and felt more like a school excursion tour. Guests were bunched together (14+ people) for an induction conversation and then left to find our own rooms. We travelled with our 2 year old daughter and had issues from the very first day to try book dinner reservations before 8:30pm. No warning was given prior to our arrival that these booked out weeks in advance. It took my husband 3-4 separate conversations with concierge staff to try follow this up. There was no iron in our room. We tried calling housekeeping, they said someone would be up to replace this. No one came despite multiple follow ups. The next morning we went to boil the kettle to make coffee in our room.. we found a dead rotting cockroach inside and also had to ring housekeeping to request a new one. This also did not get replaced until 48hrs later (which was also followed up 4-5 times whenever our calls didn’t ring out). The iron we were eventually given was faulty and short-circuited all of the electrics in our bedroom. None of our curtains would therefore close and housekeeping never answered our calls to have this rectified before going to sleep. The plug in our bath didn’t pop back up so we couldn’t bathe our daughter. The fix was a plastic plug (larger than the bath hole) that my husband had to stomp on repeatedly to try get it to stay in place. Room service food was average. On one occasion we waited 1hr 40mins for food that was originally estimated to arrive in 30 mins. Items we ordered were missing and after waiting for so long we gave up on the idea of contacting staff to rectify. Despite the resort advertising ‘kids under 4 eat free’, we were charged $25 for our daughters lunch & dinner everyday - this resulted in having to make frequent trips to concierge to have this rectified. On one occasion the male concierge staff told us ‘to remind the staff it doesn’t need to be charged’ - like as if it was our responsibility to ensure staff were adequately trained. Drinks service was always slow, nearly every morning we’d finish breakfast before our coffee came to the table (approx. 30-40 min wait). Staff seemed flat and showed no passion to deliver good customer service. Tables were always sticky. Both pool locations rarely had towels stocked. One day it took until 9:45am for a trolley to first come out. Another day we walked down to the other pool for change of scenery. There were already 20+ people poolside with towels so we safely assumed there were towels stocked in the trolley nearby. Our daughter wanted to swim straight away so we all jumped in after ordering lunch. Once getting out, we realised there were no towels and when I politely asked staff about more, one snapped back ‘more is coming’ before walking off. Our 2-year old daughter’s lips were turning blue (it was a very windy day) and we drip dried ourselves while eating lunch poolside (as that’s all we could do for options other than room service which was useless). Nanny service was poor (FYI it’s actually non-dedicated staff ‘filling in’ and treating them like overtime shifts - could be a gardener one day, a barista the next). One nanny we booked didn’t show up for her shift starting at 8:15am. Security had to reach her and she eventually showed at 9am saying she ‘slept in and was feeling unwell the day before’. There were clear rules of no sick kids being watched by staff but sick Nanny’s were exempt? We also got charged for 3hrs of nanny service that day despite the nanny turning up an hour late. Front desk only offered a $50 credit to our account once I personally had to follow this up the next day. Our room felt unkept (bedroom furniture had exposed foam, balcony chairs were disintegrating in corners and covered with cigarette burn holes, there were bird poo stains everywhere so it wasn’t even an area we wanted to use). The Lagoon right outside our room was full of algae and left for cleaning once extremely overgrown. The only walkway we could use to reach the pool was also lined with buckets full of algae that staff were attempting to clean. Nothing got us more excited to sit poolside with cocktails after listening to the ‘slop’ of algae getting tipped into buckets and ofc the lovely smells that followed. To no surprise, upon checking out there were no questions asked about our stay or an opportunity to provide face to face feedback. Staff always seemed rushed and couldn’t care less on improving your stay. The only staff member that stood out for us was ‘Melanie’ who regularly covered the Bam Bam & Pacific restaurants, she was quick to take orders and lovely to deal with. Overall a very average family holiday and $18.5k (accommodation, flights & experiences) that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Wow - Barely ever write reviews, but this was such a horrible experience... * Front desk is unorganized and essentially could not arrange anything effectively, you sit there waiting on reception for 60 minutes so they can bring you to your room, almost like they forget you exist. * The front checkin person made us wait for other guests to arrive before giving us a welcome, because it was too hard for him to welcome us by himself, this would mean he has to do the welcome 2x. * No one was aware we were coming, regardless of the fact we hired their most expensive residence and we had to be called by security... * Some Restaurants were closed and unavailable, so we had to order an in-room BBQ, which was $140 per head, for cheap rump and skewers, (told it was wagyu). * When we did get into the restaraunt on the second night, 45 mins to get drinks, 1.5 hours to get food and again, they did not have our reservation so we did not have a table setup. * Could not get what we wanted ordered to our room, cocktails etc, it was a limited menu. * $10 fee to deliver stuff to the room, when you have paid $5000 per night? Wow... * Lastly the boat times, the only boats they have, leave at 645AM or 5PM at night? So, we had to get up at 5AM to get home at a reasonable time, same thing with arrivals, nothing during the middle of the day and again, they charge you $240 for a boat ride when you have paid $5000 Per night. * Not one person asked us how our trip was, or cared about our experience, they actually had no idea we had left the island, rang me in the afternoon to ask when I would be settling the bill, did not know we had left, did not ask a question about our stay. This is not a 5-star resort anymore, its hopeless, they have gone backwards since the one & only days and unfortunately just a rip off. We stay all over southeast Asia and this was the biggest rip off that I have ever experienced and I was so disappointed for my team. Save your money for Bali/Raffles/Alila/Kempinski - They actually know how to spoil their guest who spend $15k in a weekend. Days are unfortunately numbered for this place, literally everyone was complaining...

Great location, but sadly the resort is in dire need of maintenance and a makeover. The sink in our bathroom was smashed, paint chipped off walls and doors. The pool tiles have fallen off and the bottom of the pool has rust marks. There are a lot of other resorts that are 5 star, this is not one.

My wife and I got married late last year and could not afford to go on the honeymoon we would have liked to immediately at the time. We decided to work for the next few months to save up for the honeymoon we wanted. We are both nature/wildlife lovers and were amazed by the beachfront pavilion rooms that this hotel offered and knew it would be the perfect blend of comfort and natural beauty. We decided to splurge on this room thinking that our first ever stay in a 5 star hotel would be worth the money. Our Experience here has soured “5-star” hotels for us and going forward we know that we will be disappointed less by going back to more modest lodgements. We arrived in the evening and after checking in we arrived in our beach-front pavilion room around 7pm. While we were familiarising ourselves with our room we noticed that none of the switches for the lights seemed to be working, lights that were on when we arrived could not be turned off and the rest of the lights were not turning on. We were both getting hungry and also needed to wait for our luggage bags to be taken to our room to begin unpacking so we checked our options for eating dinner and noticed that on the Hayman island app it said all the restaurants on the island closed at 8:30. We decided to eat first and then ask at reception for help with our room and assumed in the time that it would take to finish our meal our luggage bags would be delivered to our room and we could unpack that night. Ate a nice meal but with a relatively long wait time for it(servers were excellent but seemed stretched thin). We came back to reception to get help with our room and a concierge drove us back (where we found our luggage had still not been delivered to us) and tried to help us with our lights, proving that every switch and button in the building was not functioning. They returned to reception and shortly after we received a call that the issue was server based and could not be fixed that night so we would have to stay in a different room in the hotel building proper. We asked if our bags can be dropped to our new temporary room and finally got our luggage back albeit with no reason to fully unpack our belongings and make ourselves comfortable as we assumed we would be moving back to our fixed room early the next morning. We were tired at this point and decided to go to sleep with no alarm, then see if we can move back into our original room after breakfast to unpack with the daylight, even if they were still working on resolving the issue. Ate breakfast the next morning around 9am and enquired at reception about our room. We were informed that the engineers were currently in our room working on resolving the problem(so not just a server-based issue then) and we would not be able to enter our room until they were finished. They told us that we would be contacted as soon as it was resolved and even took our personal phone number. Because we were so eager to move into the room which we paid for we chose to stay in our room to wait for them to finish fixing the issue and be ready for when they contacted us that it is ready. Hours passed until 2pm and we were getting hungry with no calls or knock on our door so we left the room to have lunch. After lunch we asked again at reception for an update about the status of our room and we were actually told it was ready, and that they were trying to reach us to tell us. Unsure if they only rang our room while we were at the restaurant and forgot about taking our mobile number but regardless this was good news and we were told that as soon as we were ready to be taken to our proper room they would take us and the luggage. Went back to our temporary room and said to each other that we would call them immediately to come take us to our room because we only had a small few things unpacked and lying around. Well this was another issue as we could not get through to reception. Neither phone in the room seemed to be working(perhaps explaining why they could not contact us but they still had our mobile/could have knocked) and out of frustration we just hauled all our baggage back to reception ourselves after we were done. Arrived in reception and said we would like to be taken to our room now. This was apparently another issue for them because a group of ~15 people were arriving at reception at that time and we were told that “as soon as we are done with this batch of arrivals, then we will take you to your room.” We were at a loss as to why this group of people arriving then was given priority over us, who had arrived almost 24 hours prior and were still not in the room we had paid for. Approximately 20 minutes later a receptionist who just came back from break was told to bring us to our room. To her credit she did offer to help us with our bags, we were however not comfortable letting such a small lady attempt to lift a luggage bag that likely weighed more than half her bodyweight so we again carried our own luggage on the journey to our room. After unpacking it was evening time and only then we felt like we could actually begin our short holiday here, losing 1 out of the 4 days that we booked in our room. We took a walk on the beach in the twilight and then went to have a meal together. At no point was any kind of recompense offered/mentioned to us throughout our troubles so far but as we knew we were entitled to something we went to reception again and asked what can be done for us. They told us we would receive credit on our room, I asked if that was all that we would receive and they repeated that yes the room credit is all that they will give to us. I was livid after this exchange and later checked the value of our room for that night. The room credit we were given was less than 1/3 the value of our room for that night. Even after we were moved into our proper room there was still issues present. Some clothes that we had sent for laundry returned still stained. The ceiling fans in the bedroom and deck were not responsive, unable to turn on at times and then impossible to turn off. The shower heads were also not working properly, only the rain shower head worked and the detachable head could not be turned on. The toilet also constantly dripped water into the bowl which made it hard for me to sleep. Although these issues were present, my wife and I were so fed up with not being appropriately assisted that we chose not to ask for any more repairs/raise any ticket requests on the app as we just wanted to be with each other as much as possible without dealing with the hotel. As we checked out we did list the issues still present in the room to, hopefully, ensure they were dealt with before the next guests arrived in that room. Overall, it felt like we were always the lowest priority throughout our stay and that we were forgotten about because we would not kick up much of a fuss. The location itself is breath-taking and we loved every close encounter we had with the wildlife on the island but is is a shame that this hotel is the only location you can stay at in such a beautiful location.