I would urge future visitors to be wary of the following:

a) Exorbitant prices for mineral water, drinks, lunch and taxis. For example a 1 litre bottle of water costs over £3.30 and a basic sandwich costs over £11. There are a few shops down the road (along the beach) where one can purchase cheaper soft drinks and water. The hotel charges through the roof for everything given the captive customer.

b) Customer service in the 180 degrees restaurant is weak- it takes 30-45min to get your basic food such as a sandwich. Generally waiting staff didnt seem very motivated and lacked any drive except a few who were diligent and friendly e.g. Harry and Sanjeev for instance were diligent. The concept of cleanliness needs to be considered around the kitchen and restaurants given the flies lurking over the food etc. The quality of the food was average to be generous.

c) The hotel is in a desparate need of some renovation and modernization - there is water leaking from the roofs and the exterior of the room is very poor. The floors are slippery and the buildings are in poor shape. We found large cockroaches and a large spider in our room over 4 nights.

d) No sure whats so special about the Nirvana wing - it looked pretty average to me.

Overall the beach/location is beautiful, other hotel facilities are reasonable and we had a decent holiday but the value proposition is weak given the above points. The hotel clearly charges a lot and doesnt deliver for what it charges (case of franchise abuse). One of the weakest Starwood properties I have stayed at around the world even thougn the location is beautiful.

I decided to stay here as I am an SPG gold member. Little did I know that hotels of this type could plumb to the depths that this one has done in terms of service. To start with the rooms are not very clean and the housekeeping staff poorly trained. Getting a room service menu was not possible during my entire stay.
This hotel is a tour group factory organized around full board buffets and the absolute minimum of service if anything falls outside the program of the groups. It is organized around the convenience of staff rather than the guests. Want room service, go to the restaurant and ask....
The phone will never be answered.
The guest relations manager Shivani operates like a hostel warden setting the rules. Friends that I had invited for lunch were not allowed in the hotel ostensibly because of the cyclone warning. Something that seems to have escaped the attention of the neighboring hotel that happily served us drinks and lunch. The poor service has to be experienced to be believed. Would never stay here again........

Just spent 10 days at the hotel and very, very disappointed. I have previously stayed at other Le Meridien hotels in Asia and Europe, but this hotel fell way short of those standards. It is badly in need of a refurbishment; the communal parts of the hotel looked tired and dated, with stains on ceilings and walls. The room we were given was ok, but certainly not of a 4* hotel standard.

Beware of the extortionate restaurant prices at the main restaurant (180 degrees) - 30 EUR p/p for what was only ordinary food and plenty of meat 'stews' (instead of steaks). There are 2 other restaurants providing cleaper a la carte meals, but which need to be reserved in advance. (We are not sure why as on our last stay, the restaurant was only half full - perhaps to force people into the more expensive 180 degrees main restaurant). The last restaurant is an Indian restaurant. At breakfast, the orange juice was diluted and it was questionable whether the coffee was filter coffee as it was rank. The bread was tasteless.....no fresh croissants!?!?

Whilst not necessarily a hotel issue, the taxi prices outside the hotel were also extortionate (30USD to travel 10km to Grand Bay for example) so I would recommend renting a car for the duration of your stay. After experiencing the meals at the restaurants, you'll need the rental car to sample the local restaurants in other cities!

Our group tour stayed at Le Meridien for 4 nights in total, 2 nights before and 2 nights after going to Madagascar and Reunion. Location of the hotel was beautiful with a good long beach. Some rooms in the hotel were quite old and certainly need renovation as well as retraining of staff again.

Although the room was in good size and bed rather comfortable, the paint in the toilet was coming off in many places. The bath tub was also rusty. There was a spider at the corner in my room next to the big writing table. The TV has around 23 channels with CNN, BBC, CNBC A channel, Euronews, ESPN, RAI, ZDF, Eurosports, Chinese and Indian channels as well. However, WiFi in room is very expensive at Rs 375 per hour, Rs 750 for 1 day or Rs 3,750 for 1 week. There was free WiFi in the lobby area but logging on was not easy. Finally the IT guy was called to help us logging in which was highly appreciated.

We were on half board basis and had dinner buffets for 3 nights. Despite different themes each night, quality and varieties were only so so. The waiters were not eager to help and only promised to come back to attend to our needs but never showed up again. Service of waitresses were much better. We ended up having our dinner at Shell Restaurant which offered set menu with 3 courses without additional charges. Food quality was better there but if you don’t like curry, choices were really limited. There were 2-3 other restaurants where dinner could be taken but reservation has to be made well in advance. Breakfast was similarly average and the salad bar only had lettuce, cucumber and carrot. Juice was not good but there were many kinds of fresh fruits. There was an open veranda area but before 8 a.m., it seemed nobody was serving that area and guests sitting in that area had to help themselves to tea and coffee. Also, there was stain in every single cup as the waiter had to search for clean cups from several desks before locating them. The standard of cleanliness has lots of room for improvement.

There were several free activities offered by the hotel which included glass bottom boat sightseeing, snorkeling, water skiing and sailing lessons. Make sure you reserve the activities well in advance. Had joined the 1-hour snorkeling trip but you shouldn’t expect too much for any free activities. There were lots of corals in the lagoon but all were grayish in color. Only saw 2 kinds of fishes within the 30 minutes in the water.