Hotel Banu

The Hotel Banu was a pleasant change for Grand Terre after our experiences further north. A comfortable bed in a spacious, clean and well-appointed bungalow for a reasonable price of XPF6350 . The only minor annoyances were the need to close all the windows at dusk to stop mosquito entry and the lack of sound-proofing between the bathroom and the main room. But those were trivial compared to the overall comfort and quality.

We chose to have dinner at the Asian restaurant across the road – which was excellent – so I cannot comment on the Hotel restaurant.

As a side note, the hotel is quite famous for it's accommodation of American servicemen during WWII and also has a quirky collection of baseball caps hanging from the ceiling in reception, see the photo.

With such a positive report I still had two problems with reception. On arrival the evening manager could find no record of my booking, despite me showing her my copy of their email. It was lucky that they had a vacant bungalow anyway. As a separate matter, when I was first planning the trip I had sent an enquiry asking for tariff and availability details for an earlier date; after receiving the reply we changed our itinerary and spent the first night in Noumea instead. When checking out the lady manager became very aggressive about my failure to cancel that earlier booking – when it was never a booking, just an inquiry. On return home I sent her an email with copies of all the correspondence requesting an apology, but none has been received.

Be very careful in how you word an inquiry. However, that does not change the value or quality of the hotel.