Welcome to my last installment about our four night stay at the St. Regis Bora Bora. In previous installments I covered the three night stay in our nice Reefside Garden Villa, and our one night stay in a disappointing Overwater Superior Villa. Now let’s talk about the rest of the resort.
Getting to the St. Regis Bora Bora
To get to the St. Regis you first have to fly to Bora Bora. Once you arrive, all the hotels have welcome desks, so we quickly found the St. Regis welcome desk.
St. Regis Bora Bora airport welcome desk
We had arranged our transfer through the hotel in advance. They charge $130 per person roundtrip for the transfer, though since we were switching to the Conrad, we had to pay just half that amount, since we were only using their services one-way.
Once all the passengers heading to our resort arrived (there were two other couples), we started the 20 minute boat ride to the resort.
St. Regis Bora Bora boat transfer
It goes without saying that the views on the boat ride were breathtaking.
St. Regis Bora Bora boat transfer
As we arrived at the resort we were welcomed by the butler who would be looking after us for the first couple of days. He was a French guy who moved from continental France to Bora Bora many years ago, and ended up never leaving.
St. Regis Bora Bora welcome
St. Regis Bora Bora lobby & concierge
As you might expect, a vast majority of the public areas of the hotel are outdoors, both given Polynesian design, and also just generally given the beautiful surroundings. When we arrived at the dock there was a pathway leading up towards reception.
St. Regis Bora Bora entryway
The lobby was a mixed indoor/outdoor space, and was fairly small. There was a traditional check-in desk, though in reality the only time you’ll really come here is when you’re checking in or out, as the lobby isn’t otherwise the focal point of the hotel.
St. Regis Bora Bora lobby
St. Regis Bora Bora lobby
There was also some seating just outside reception.
St. Regis Bora Bora lobby
We were informed that our room wasn’t quite ready, but generously the hotel invited us to enjoy breakfast on the house. That seems like something they do as a standard feature for those arriving early, which is very kind, since they don’t have to do that.
We first explored the hotel a bit. For reference, here’s a map of the hotel:
Just outside the lobby were a few shops with souvenirs and jewelry.
St. Regis Bora Bora shops
Nearby is the exploration room, which is where you can arrange activities with the concierge. There’s also a pool table here, and frankly it’s a nice place to go once in a while if you just want to cool off without returning to your room.
St. Regis Bora Bora concierge
St. Regis Bora Bora concierge
St. Regis Bora Bora pools
The St. Regis Bora Bora has two pools. There’s the main pool, located near the beach. It’s quite large, though in my opinion feels kind of outdated and uninspiring, and not very St. Regis-esque.
St. Regis Bora Bora main pool
The greenery around the pool is cool, and I also appreciate that there’s a swim-up bar, as well as some lounge chairs in the water.
St. Regis Bora Bora main pool
Then there’s a second pool, which is over near the land villas. This pool is for adults only, and was always extremely quiet when we walked past.
St. Regis Bora Bora second pool
St. Regis Bora Bora second pool
St. Regis Bora Bora beach, ocean, and lagoon
The real reason you come to Bora Bora is for the beach and ocean, and that’s one area where this hotel most definitely doesn’t disappoint. The beach is gorgeous, and the water is crystal clear. I’ll let the pictures speak mostly for themselves.
St. Regis Bora Bora beach
St. Regis Bora Bora beach
St. Regis Bora Bora beach
St. Regis Bora Bora overwater bungalows
I loved the hammock in the water.
St. Regis Bora Bora ocean hammock
On top of that, there were all kinds of complimentary non-motorized water sports, so we kayaked several times, which was fun.
St. Regis Bora Bora activities
St. Regis Bora Bora kayaks
One day we also went on a jet ski tour. It was my first ever time on a jet ski (my oldest brother died on one when I was very young, and it’s something that has always stuck with me).
Nonetheless I decided to get over that “fear,” so we did a lunch tour that left at 11:30AM and returned at 2PM. We had a really great time, as we first took the jet ski for about an hour, then stopped somewhere for lunch, and then returned again.
St. Regis Bora Bora jet ski
Our guide was great, though the downside was that the only other people on the “tour” were hotel interns, and they acted like complete morons. They were “driving” like crazy the whole time, and the guide had to repeatedly tell them that they needed to follow instructions.
If you’re an employee of the hotel and presumably getting this as some sort of benefit or significant discount, you could at least not act like a moron. Still, we had a nice time, and I’d highly recommend it, in spite of the high cost.
In addition to the beautiful beach, the St. Regis has a lagoon that goes through parts of the resort. I can’t emphasize enough that the St. Regis really has the most beautiful location and setting in Bora Bora. The resort is 44 acres, it’s right across from Mount Otemanu, and it has these beautiful lagoons, so the hotel has that going for them.
St. Regis Bora Bora lagoon
St. Regis Bora Bora lagoon
St. Regis Bora Bora shark
St. Regis Bora Bora gym
The hotel has a sufficient 24/7 gym, which is located near the land villas.
St. Regis Bora Bora gym
St. Regis Bora Bora gym
St. Regis Bora Bora spa
As you’d expect, the St. Regis Bora Bora has a spa, which is operated by Clarins. We didn’t get any treatments while here (goodness knows we were spending enough already), though here’s the spa menu:
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast
Our rate at the St. Regis Bora Bora included breakfast, though otherwise we could have gotten breakfast due to my Marriott elite status.
Breakfast is served at Te Pahu, which is open for breakfast and dinner. The restaurant has outdoor seating, and is a large space.
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast restaurant
Breakfast is served from 6:30AM until 10:30AM, and consists of a buffet. The buffet was good, though I wouldn’t say it was spectacular.
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast buffet
In addition to the buffet, you could supplement that with eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc. The menu for that read as follows:
Over the course of our stay we tried the omelet, poached eggs, and waffles.
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast
St. Regis Bora Bora breakfast
The first morning I ordered a cappuccino, which was watery and disappointing.
St. Regis Bora Bora cappuccino
So on subsequent mornings I just ordered an iced Americano, which hit the spot.
St. Regis Bora Bora iced coffee
Now let’s talk about some of the other food at the hotel.
St. Regis Bora Bora Te Pahu Restaurant
Te Pahu is otherwise just open for dinner two days a week, when they do an international buffet. The selling point is that there’s a live performance, so we figured we should go there one night.
St. Regis Bora Bora Te Pahu Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Te Pahu Restaurant
The performance was good, but otherwise I thought the buffet was just meh.
St. Regis Bora Bora Te Pahu Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Te Pahu Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar
Okay, now this is where my confusion with food at this hotel starts. The hotel has five restaurants, yet only one is open for lunch. I understand people mostly want to be at the beach during the day, but couldn’t they open at least one more restaurant for lunch?
Anyway, the lunch restaurant was Aparima Bar, which was right next to the pool.
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar
The swim-up bar is also part of this.
St. Regis Bora Bora pool bar
The menu read as follows:
And I appreciated this disclaimer on the menu:
We ate here a couple of times for lunch, and ordered the vegetarian pizza, the butter chicken, and the Indian vegetable curry. The food wasn’t good at all, especially the pizza, which was vile.
Before anyone says “I wouldn’t expect a good pizza in Bora Bora,” there are plenty of good luxury hotels outside of Italy that can make a decent pizza (including the St. Regis Maldives, which had some of the best pizza I’ve had outside of Italy).
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar — lunch
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar — lunch
St. Regis Bora Bora Aparima Bar — lunch
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
The hotel’s signature restaurant is Lagoon Restaurant by Jean-Georges, which is open six days per week from 6:30PM until 10:30PM. This restaurant is right near the hotel’s dock, and has views of Mount Otemanu.
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
The real reason to come here is for cocktails, since the restaurant has a huge outdoor area with the best views afforded by the hotel. It’s too bad that this is only open in the evenings — you’d think they could turn the outside area into a lunch restaurant, or something.
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant view
We came here a couple of times for cocktails. Personally I found the drink list to be uninspiring, as they only had eight options (in addition to being able to order “regular” drinks), and none of them really appealed to me.
The drink list read as follows:
Nonetheless it was worth it for the views.
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant drinks
One night we also had dinner at Lagoon Restaurant, which is the only fully indoor restaurant.
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant
The restaurant has glass panels on the floor so you can look into the water while enjoying your dinner (there’s an area that’s netted, so there are a few sharks there).
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant view
The menu read as follows:
The food here was very good, definitely the highlight of the food at the hotel. Furthermore, given the generally crazy food prices at the hotel, I didn’t find the markup here to be too bad.
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora Lagoon Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant
One night we had dinner at Far Niente, the hotel’s Italian restaurant. Next to that is the Chinese restaurant, which we didn’t have a chance to check out.
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant
The menu read as follows:
The food here was very good as well.
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora Far Niente Restaurant — dinner
St. Regis Bora Bora room service
A couple of times we also ordered room service, given that there was only one restaurant open for lunch. The room service menu read as follows:
While we had generally good experience with the restaurant food, I found most of the room service to be pretty lousy. The mahi mahi was good…
St. Regis Bora Bora room service
Unfortunately the burger, tostadas with chicken, and ceviche, were all disgusting.
St. Regis Bora Bora room service
St. Regis Bora Bora room service
Yes, this is actually how it was presented…
St. Regis Bora Bora room service
St. Regis Bora Bora service
In general we found the service at the St. Regis to be good, but not great. A majority of the employees are locals, and I’d say they were friendly and well intentioned, but also on island time. Things were often forgotten, we often had to ask for things a couple of times, but not problematically so.
So yeah, service was good, but not amazing.
St. Regis Bora Bora terrible condition
I really ripped into the St. Regis Bora Bora in my review of the overwater villa, which I thought was in horrible condition. Unfortunately the same was true in so many of the public areas.
Yes, the hotel in general just feels a bit outdated, and I’m fine with that, since I sort of expected that going in. But what disappointed me so much was the very simple ways in which they chose to not invest in the upkeep of the resort.
For example, virtually every single golf cart on the island looked like it had just come back from a war zone. Is this really what you should expect from a St. Regis charging $1,000+ per night?
St. Regis Bora Bora golf carts
The pool deck and pool tiles also just looked sort of disgusting.
St. Regis Bora Bora bad maintenance
Then every room has two bikes you can use to get around the resort, though I didn’t take a single bike that didn’t have serious issues, some of which were dangerous. We’re talking about problems ranging from kickstands not working to brakes not working.
About two days into my stay I just started to feel bad for the hotel. How on earth is it possible for hotel management to just care so little about the condition of their hotel? Take some pride…
In case you’re wondering how this is possible, reader DavidF had some interesting insights on a post a while back:
But the St Regis was sold on a couple of years ago to the Chinese HNA group. A company whose CEO fell to his death from a cliff in France five months ago as creditors began to circle.
I’m just not certain that the owners have the capital to maintain a hotel whose size and level of luxury – combined with a very high French Polynesian minimum wage – give it such a high cost base.
To put it in perspective, at the St Regis Maldives the staff probably each earn 20% of what the staff at St Regis Princeville did. And the staff at St Regis Bora Bora probably earn 40% more than the Princeville staff did.
It’s not just the cost of imports. It’s labor costs too.
St. Regis Bora Bora bottom line
Unfortunately I wouldn’t return to the St. Regis Bora Bora, and unless you’re Marriott-points-rich, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Let’s start with the positive. I truly believe the St. Regis has the best property and location of any hotel in Bora Bora. It’s a massive property, it has a beautiful view of Mount Otemanu, and it has lagoons you won’t find anywhere else. This hotel should be the best of the major ones in Bora Bora.
Beautiful views from St. Regis Bora Bora
But unfortunately the rest of the hotel just disappointed me. Worst of all is the condition of the hotel. I found the lack of upkeep and basic maintenance in so many areas to just be shocking. It made me sad to think I was in a place where people cared so little about taking pride in their product.
The food was also a mixed bag. There were five restaurants, but I just found everything a bit strange, yet only one was open for lunch, and the food ranged from quite good to awful.
Please don’t get me wrong — we still had such a lovely time here, as Bora Bora is stunning and we loved enjoying a leisurely breakfast, swimming, sitting on the beach, etc.
But in terms of food, service, and facilities, this hotel in no way compares to the nearby Conrad Bora Bora. For that matter, it’s shocking that this is branded as a St. Regis, as this in no way compares to the St. Regis Maldives.
If you’ve stayed at the St. Regis Bora Bora, what was your experience like?
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