We went to Pointe Venus as an all inclusive trip with Saga Holidays for 5 days. We were welcomed by the manager and instantly made to feel at home and told if there was anything we required we only had to ask. Not a 4 * hotel but a good 3*. Our rooms were clean and towels replaced regularly, and a regular supply of beach towels. The restaurant and bar staff could not have been more helpful. I require a special gluten free diet for medical reasons and if I could not eat anything the chef would cook me something special, but there was usually plenty of choice and it was not really a problem. We cannot understand why the other reviews were so critical. The evening music was by local artists and often in a traditionat theme, it was not excessively loud and you could have a conversation in the bar without having to shout and it did not last beyong 10.30pm. We have just met a lady who cancelled her holidy there after reading the previous reviews, and when we talked to her she was sorry she had done so.

I am a regular visitor to Rodrigues but never got a chance to go to Pointe Venus. Since there is so much advertisement about it being a 4 star hotel we decided to try it!!An absolute error.We booked for a couple and a baby and expected the baby cot to be in the room since obviously after travelling you would want to settle the baby but there was none. We asked the lady that brought us to our room and saw none arriving, we had to ask someone else again!!As for dinner it was a nightmare, all the 2 baby chairs were broken and we had to keep our baby on our lap and eat in turn, speaking of holidays, it became a nightmare. And it continued during the night, this hotel has loud music till 11.30 pm. Oh Yes no kidding how on earth are we supposed to sleep with a baby and they put it off after several phone calls from us. And it happened all over again the next night. Fed up we checked out and moved to another hotel.Nothing to regret swince the view from our balcony was marred by two giant electric pylons. Nothing exotic about this view, it's stressing more than exotic. As for the swimming pool, it was all dirty, murky with the paint coming off. Considering that this hotel has no beachfront and that the swimming pool is an absolute sham there is not much to do except those 3 poor channels (don't be fooled by the website that says satellite channels...),


One advice :DO NOT GO THERE!!!

I have now stayed at Pointe Venus on three seperate occasions (2005, 2008, and during May and June this year). I have stayed at many hotels around the main island of Mauritius. I cannot understand why the service standards at Pointe Venus are so appalling. The location is (so long as you are looking for town rather than beach) excellent, taking advantage of a historic location, an elevated position and a fine view of the lagoon, the reef beyond and a good part of the town below. Indeed sitting on the balcony of the room was a very enjoyable (although did have to ask the constantly strimming gardener to take his noisy machine elsewhere on a couple of occasions) part of the trip taking in the scenery during the day or the quiet relaxation of the night.

It is the way the services of the hotel are presented that seems to let it down badly.

The restaurant is in a fine location, with an overhanging roof to provide shade and shelter, but otherwise open to prove cool air on the hottest of days. The roof has been colonised by small birds and very large bees! The birds take advantage of the crumbs and scraps left on tables (and you might not even have finished your meal!) as their main source of food. No attempt is made by staff to shoo them away and no attempt is made to clear tables once meals are finished. So the scraps remain and the birds take over tables and parts of the restaurant.

Indeed the attitude of the staff is very worrying. It is as though they have been brought in to backfill for the proper staff. They demonstrate no particular standard nor suggest that they have been trained. Some days tables have condiments and other days they do not so you have to ask for them. Some days there are napkins on the tables and other days not. Coffee and tea at breakfast is a hot water flask next to some jars of instant coffee and boxes of tea bags. They will make real coffee for you but each time you have to ask, and yet in a 4* they should know their job is to offer coffee or tea to their guests. The menu was very limited and quite apalling - it could be undercooked and cold. Returned food took another 20 minutes to be re-heated. Two of us experienced severe gastro-enteritis while there and spent three days confined to bed to recover.

In other Mauritian hotels the restaurant staff are very attentive, ask what you want, tell you what is available, and do their best to assist. At Pointe Venus the restaurant staff do very little. They do their best to assist but appear to have been given no direction at all on how to welcome guests, how to seat them, when to offer them a menu, how to ensure their table is laid for their menu choice, how to present the food. Most times we got the distinct impression that we had surprised them by turning up at all! We found our own table. Some time later a photocopied menu would be handed to us. Our choices were then conveyed to the staff as they had little interest in finding out what we wanted (and that would not be difficult given that there were generally only 2 or 3 choices per course anyway). Most of the time the staff seemed to lean on the waiters station gossiping with each other or when bothered by guests requests disappear into the kitchen area for very long periods.

The beds were hard wooden boxes with mattresses that had lost their stuffing, their 'spring' had gone, and that was uncomfortable and caused bad backs.

The worst part was the smell in the rooms. It seems as though the foul drainage connects direct to a sewer and the dirt around the pipe connections is not attended to. Some basic cleaning with disinfectant would prove effective as an interim measure.

Overall hygiene appears not to be high on the agenda. The coiled up dead worm on the bottom of the swimming pool I saw on my first day was still there when I left several days later. The pool also has a black tide mark around the wall evidencing that, although the leaves and wind-blown debris might be scooped off every so often, the pool itself is not cleaned in any meaningful way.

All of the above may seem as though I am intent on doing a 'hatchet job' on Pointe Venus. Far from it. I like its location and feel that once it gets back to some basic standards of hygiene, service, and catering it could be the 4* hotel it seeks to be. A friend in Mauritius suggested that the problem is that this hotel is run by a tour company (Mauritours) and that they have no experience of or skills in managing hotels. That needs to change for, in the meantime, they are letting down the whole of Rodrigues, a beautiful paradise of an island with wonderful friendly people. They both deserve a lot more from the Pointe Venus Hotel.

On our trip second to rodrigues we stayed at Pointe Venus Hotel. Since my husband was on a business trip we chose Pointe Venus because of its proximity to Port Mathurin. The hotel is well decorated but not well kept. The swimming pool is dirty and the towels are disgusting.The staff though extremely friendly need a good training. They do not check the mini bar and we often had to wait a long time before getting the food we've ordered. The first time I've ordered a club sandwich the food was cold. I hated the food and did not like the spa at all. Next time we go to rodrigues we ll stay at the cotton bay hotel.