Heritage Le Telfair Golf and Wellness Resort

Once again we were looked after from arrival to departure by a very friendly and professional team - from gardeners to managers. It was good to meet staff who are still there from our first visit over 10 years ago. - Mukesh, Ashley Dhiray ...... Melvin our host could not have been more helpful in organising our golf and eating arrangements. We are golfers so the Gourmet All Inclusive Package is particularly good value. The course was in excellent condition and the 2 caddie masters and golf club staff were most helpful in making our rounds enjoyable. If only our own club cleaned our clubs overnight! Lunches in the golf club have improved and the little extra touches from Deepak were much appreciated eg having picked up it was somebodies birthday a little cake appeared. The food at Le Chateau and Gin'ja was outstanding. The slightly stuffy service at Le Chateau previously has given way to a friendly top class style of service. Informative and friendly sommeliers in all the restaurants made wine tasting interesting. We look forward to the 2nd 18 hole golf course opening in Dec 2023. What makes this hotel exceptional is the staff.

We booked a “junior suite garden view” for a full week, half board, arriving on May 18 in the late afternoon. Check-in was quick and welcoming. We were met by a male staff member who will have been our personal concierge for our stay. We settled in room 2005, located at the first floor of one of the many beautiful building in colonial style which typically hosts 8 junior suites in total. Our room was generously sized, clean, comfortable and featured a nice beach view in spite of being a “garden view” suite. This property is wonderfully located, gorgeously architected and well maintained. Staff was mainly very kind, warm and welcoming, with just a few who probably were having a bad day. The location is superb, with a large offer in term of activities, SPA, water-sports and, obviously, golf. Food is served in various restaurants scattered around the property, transportation from and to some of them happens by golf cars. The quality of the food varies from good to very good. I’m happy to report that our dinner at Le Château de Bel Ombre met our expectations and the treatments we booked at the SPA exceeded them. Having said all that, here’s a couple of things to be aware of, as for some they could be a deal breaker. First of all, the property looks like being an ideal destination for families with small children. During our stay the hotel was rather well packed and we estimated probably more that 3/4 of the guests had up to three children many of whom were babies. The property has an internal kindergarten, a kid-club and offers baby-sitting services, nevertheless, at meal time, children will be found everywhere and will stay around until late evening, many unnoticed but some crying, other crawling around, other yet running and screaming. We heard a few of them even during our late dinner at the Château… And, obviously, breakfast time was very busy. Our second point is related to the rather convoluted pricing model the resort applies to restaurant booking, food & beverages. By choosing a booking “package” there’ll be a list of “included” and “excluded” restaurants. Luckily, nothing is impossible, it'll just become nightmarish as you go into the details. You’ll discover that there are items included, items included against a surcharge, items excluded which however can be purchased against an extra fee and items which are excluded which are offered at a discount. Furthermore, included restaurants (where you i.e. have a three course meal allowance in the half board rate) may turn excluded when one of the many special weekly events takes place. In this case (or if you choose to have dinner at a restaurant excluded from your package) you’ll have a “credit”, or a “discount” if you prefer, but nothing more. Drinks & wine lists go into painful details as to define the price and "in" or "out" nature of each individual beverage according to the various “packages”. One has to wonder why management went such a long way to set-up a model which will produce a bill that can challenge a corporate auditor. After a few interactions with the staff the sales-pitch became however rather obvious to us. Honestly, we think that it’ll difficult to remain an exclusive destination by implementing annoying department store pricing models. All in all we nevertheless enjoyed our stay and we even took the opportunity to exit the resort and visit the beautiful island.