Riviera Bay Resort Malacca - Reviews - Malacca

This Hotel is also known as the Everly Resort

My family and I stayed here in November 2005. We had booked ourselves after finding information on the internet. As my husband and I had our two young daughters with us we liked the fact that this hotel had a supervised Kid's Club. It also had family rooms, which meant a sitting area and two seperate bedrooms. There was a large pool, it was right beside the beach and it was cheap (for Australian and definitely Dutch standards!) What more could you want?

When we arrived from Kuala Lumpur by taxi bus, we had trouble finding the entrance as there was scaffolding everywhere. When we walked inside the hotel lobby was very pleasant and luxurious. As it turned out later, this is the case in a lot of Malaysian hotels. Once you get past the reception desk it's usually downhill from there though...
The staff was friendly and it was explained where our room was. It turned out that we could get part of the way by lift (elevator) but had to walk part of the way as well. And this was no short walk!
When we got to the room it was quite nice, until we inspected it more closely. It was dirty, cigarette butts on the window sill outside, hairs in the beds and bathrooms, not what you would expect. The kitchenette only had a bar fridge and no actual cooking facilies but I didn't care about that so much as we didn't intend on cooking anyway. We complained about the cleanliness and everyone was very apologetic and they cleaned the room.
When we went downstairs to check out the Kid's Club we couldn't find it so we asked where it was and we were told it hadn't actually been operating for quite a while. Another disappointment... We explained that it was one of the reasons we had booked into this hotel, and we were told that they did have a babysitting service which we would have to pay for. Again I made it clear that I wasn't very happy about that as we had wanted to spend some time alone in our room, to read a book, watch some tv or relax. We had just spent almost seven weeks in a car with the two kids and had shared cabins at night. So they made an offer: we pay for the babysitter and they provide an extra room where the kids could be babysit. A pretty sweet deal I must say!
A few hours later we decided to check out the pool and the pool bar. To get into the pool you could either jump or use some broken rusty stes, not very safe. The pool bar was not in use so you couldn't sit there, but waiters would take your order and get in from inside.
Then the beach: this was not long after the Tsunami hit but as far as we can gather the beach always looked disgusting. Too dirty to swim in the sea or even walk on the beach. Both the pool and the beach made for a spectacular view from our room though!
As we had so many problems and disappointments the reservations manager actually came to meet us and she had to come from Kuala Lumpur to do that so that made us feel pretty special. She also sent a fruit basket and we were treated to champagne at dinner (at Papagallo's, a very nice restaurant on-site).
All in all quite disappointing, although the staff made up for some of it. They were always friendly and curtious. Even though this hotel was cheap in our eyes, it was one of the more expensive ones and very expensive for Malay standards. And comparied to other hotels in Malacca it wasn't the worst!