We spent a week at this beautiful resort and had a magnificent stay. Good restuarants, beatiful pool areas and generally top-notch physical product.

The service was mostly very good, but the property needs to work on consistency in their service delivery. Also, I'm surprised that the staff at an international resort does not speak better Englsh, but if you're used to traveling in Asia it's not a huge problem.

Would I recommend this property to a friend? Definetly!

We had no initial plan to stay in Intercontinental. Our earlier trip elsewhere was cancelled and we had to quickly decided where to go. This hotel had available rooms + cost was reasonable, so this was sort of no brainer. And TripAdvisor reviews were quite encouraging. So we thought let's have a try at IC Sanya resort. We did stay in 2 different rooms during our stay (Sky garden & Club floor).

The pros
- Hotel is 30 minutes drive away from the airport
- Sanya town is nearby = easy access to local restaurants & shops
- Food prices are ok (restaurant + room service)
- Rooms itself are quite decent (both Sky and Club room)
- Sea view from Sky garden room is ok (but with limitations, see cons)
- Sky garden room's toilet and bath area is quite spacious
- Swimming pools are decent
- Gym is ok
- Service at breakfast was ok + espresso good enough

The cons
- Nobody helped me to unload my luggage when we arrived
- Check-in itself did not make us particularly welcomed
- Higher floor Sky garden rooms do have ok sea view, but what you see is not that exciting
- Sky garden room's toilet has transparent door & walls = it is like sitting in acquarium
- Club level room felt somehow smaller than announced, toilet could have had more sun light + there was slightly unfresh mouldy odour.
- View from 2nd floor Club floor room was modest & the roof garden itself "was lacking the garden part" (add some flowers, colourful fishes etc. please)
- We had many small ants in room (no big deal itself)
- Twice our key cards stopped working
- I saw small girl around 2 years old running almost to one of the swimming pools from her room, which is nearby the children's slide. Would assume these rooms are not ideal for families with small children
- During first day we had to wait 15 minutes outside, in order to get free table at breakfast
- Breakfast itself in Mediterraneo was very uninspiring
- Orange juice... Well we had at least three different juices during our stay (some directly from the carton)
- Drinks were expensive, but that would be the case in similar other Sanya hotels
- Service was not even close to Intercontinental's normally great service level I have experienced outside China (e.g. nearby Hong Kong)
- Construction nearby did disturb us especially in mornings (affects Sky garden room's main building still for longer period of time)
- I did calculate at least 11 cranes on sight when watching from hotel's seafront
- Nearby area did have some rubbish, which was later cleaned (see the picture I enclose)
- Public beach directly in front of the hotel was practically not swimmable (plenty of rocks)
- Beach was also rather ugly (low tide during afternoon)
- Hotel takes 0 responsibility of any incident related to beach and I could understand that - I did spot lot of glass (assume from bottles) + all kind or rubbish including some pieces of glass (it is public beach, but in practice really connected to hotel property)
- Hotel's Chinese restaurant (Sea Pavillion) looked like some army barrack on top of the sea (shame on designer, see the pictures)

I would not recommend this hotel for somebody who is planning a relaxing holiday in Sanya & is looking for ideal value for money. There are clearly better options available. And I think they all are in Yalong bay. Xiao dong & Da dong bay areas are not nice looking in general + beaches are on bad side. I have never felt it takes too much time to pendel between Sanya and Yalong bay in any case. I would rather select best resort with best beach & when necessary opt to go for town.

Summa summarum: I think IC has made several cardinal errors with this hotel. To us property gave feeling of something is missing. Rather it is wasted opportunity vs. reaching the full potential this development could have. Hotel did also lack the resort feeling. In general architecture was on cold side. My better half was wondering why they have so few flowers in their area? Good question.

Your jaw drops the moment you step in, and this is just the room. The view simply eyecatching and to be enjoyed from your own private balony or jetted bathtub. I'm still smiling thinking about it. The service is friendly and professional, with smiles and excellent english. This resort was still in the midst of construction, when I stayed with my fiance and friends, and we were wowed when the door opened. The room is one of the best laid out I have stayed in, and everything from the taps in the bathroom to the button console for the sunshades and balcony nightlights, made the stay worthwhile. The devil is in the detail and this room hit every mark.

We stayed in Intercontinental Sanya during Christmas holiday for five days. We even celebrated the New Year’s eve there. The hotel was just opened for a few months when we came there. Everything was still so new and was not too organized yet. All staffs were very friendly and they tried very hard to do their best. Unfortunately many of them didn’t speak English at all, such those who took care of the swimming pool, the room cleaning service, etc. Some of the restaurants waiters and waitresses spoke very minimal English. It was a bit difficult to communicate. But we could see how hard they tried to give good service. The cleaning service in the morning was always a bit late. There’s no turn-down service in the evening, which was very unusual for a five-star-hotel.
As an Ambassador member, we got an upgrade to a clubroom. The room had a little bit of seaview but too far in the distance so we couldn’t really see it. It also had a plunge pool in front of the room. But the area around the plunge pool was very dusty. The water in the plunge pool was also very cold.
We got very good breakfast every morning as well as very relaxing tea time in the Lounge Club Intercontinental. We liked to have our breakfast and the tea time there as the club house was directly on the beach, a very relaxing place to spend the time with the family. There were not too many choices but good enough as it came for free.
We arrived very late on the first day. After checking-in, etc. we wanted to have dinner in the Asian Village restaurant. Despite it was almost closed, they were still willing to let us in and order whatever we wanted to eat. We appreciated very much. We also had our New Year’s eve dinner in the Mediterranean restaurant. The buffet was not too amazing.
On New Year’s eve there was a little celebration on the beach for all guests of the hotel. It was very nice and the weather was perfect. We enjoyed it very much.
The swimming pools were all nice. We used the one with warm water more often. It was more crowded than the others but there were always enough towels and sundecks for everybody.
The beach was not so amazing as it was rather rocky, so we couldn’t really swim in the sea. Moreover it was winter time, the sea water was also not too warm.
I used the spa once and it was fine. The spa area was very nice but the offers could be more vary.
Upon check-out it was a bit chaotic. We called the concierge to pick our luggage up but it never arrived in the receptionist area until one hour later. We got very mad because we had to catch our flight and the route from the hotel to the airport was very busy with lots of traffic jam. The front office staffs couldn’t even make the luggage to come faster than one hour.
What we also didn’t like was that the lobby area was always full of smoke. People who were sitting around there mostly smoking. It was very unpleasant for us as we brought a three years-old child and we’re all non-smokers.
However we had a good holiday there. Once we took a local tour with a private tour guide from a private tour company to drive around Sanya, had dinner outside the hotel and saw how the locals lived.