if you need a clean room to sleep in, this is it.

bed

- clean and big

bathroom

- spacious with shower area, bathtub,and separate toilet area

- there's even a stool for you to sit and blow your hair!

but should you want a good food, good beach, good service, or sea sports, this is not.

beach

- small. the musical chairs mentioned by another reviewer is true.

- crowded on the left since it's a pay-per-visit beach for the locals.

- fairly long walk from the hotel, need to cross the road. so walking from room to the beach in bathers is not an option

- only a small area is sectioned for swimming, the rest was deemed not safe. so technically u have a pool area that is smaller than the hotel pool to swim in.

service

- it was hard to get service @ the breakie table. few times the wait staff saw us but chose to carry on with their business

- despite us arriving in the evening, it still took more than 15minutes for them to fix us a room.

- no late check out unless you pay another half a day to stay till 6pm.

- concierge refused to call our preferred spa service for reservations, we had to spend 10minutes to negotiate for his help

sea sports

- poor selection

- the head staff of the beach area took us to marriot to snorkel. poor vis and no fish. no one mentioned to us until we emerged and complaint. this is when they agreed its not a good time to snorkel or dive.

- another staff decided to take us to the crowded sea sports shop on the left.

not impressed.

Won't reiterate what a lot of other people have said...the facilities are pretty good here and the rooms are excellent. Language is a bit hit and miss, but the service was excellent.

The only time the staff seemed a little overwhelmed was at breakfast, where they were overly keen to check that your room rate included breakfast, but then wandered off to leave you to find your own table...it was a free-for-all with people sharing tables in overflow rooms at "rush hour"...admittedly it was very busy but the sheer amount of staff could have coped better with a bit more training.

Pro's.

Great decor and design, friendly staff, efficient room cleaning, bell boys and front desk staff.

Cons.

1. Swimming pool was freezing cold and hardly used.

2. The Beach Bar. This really bugged me.....these days you rarely get 5* hotels that ban you from bringing your own drinks but then charge you for drinking water.

By all means charge for Evian, cokes, beers and snacks....but to charge what converted at £2.20 for a tiny bottle of local drinking water smaller than a can of coke was scandalous...you should be drinking 10 of these a day just to stay hydrated. Most hotels realise they have duty of care when it's 90 degrees and you're a captive customer...to try and profit from this is petty and inhospitable.

Cue surrepticious bottles...but you really shouldn't have to do that here.

The majority of the guests are Chinese or Russian (on package trips).

As has been mentioned, Yalong Bay is isolated and purposely designed as a 5* area, out of the price range of locals so you don't get much feeling of authenticity compared to Dadonghai or Sanya Bay.

The "Le Floret" shopping centre is directly attached to the hotel and they have a big interest in it....the hotel spills into it with offices and units. There's a major walkway direct from the lobby and the infrastructure is seamlessly joined. This is a moneyspinner and attracts guests from other hotels who are stuck with their inbuilt restaurants.

There's a little supermarket, a coffee shop, fruit shop and lots of overpriced tourist stuff like golf clothing, pearls, jewellery etc.....you've seen it before and can get it in Sanya City for a tenth of the price.

Some of the businesses are independently owned (Windjammer Bar...very good), some are hotel-owned and are advertised as such in the hotel (Spa, various restaurants).

The trouble with most hotel restaurants is that they tend to be overly protective of the customer and produce very bland, sanitised "safe" and expensive food for tourists.

The best thing i can say about them is that they were clean and the service was very attentive. They hand you a menu then stand at your shoulder waiting....then they bring your food and stand 6 feet away staring at you as you eat. Unfortunately my Mandarin doesn't extend to "can you just bugger off for 10 minutes" so it was a bit uncomfortable. We gave up trying to explain because they genuinely didn't understand and we didn't want to be rude.

We tried 2 of the Chinese restaurants, the Thai restaurant and the Brazilian barbecue and found all of them to be very poor.

The Chinese food was tasteless and the noodles were just cooked with a stock cube and tiny amounts of meat; the Thai restaurant served what they call "spicy" food without any evidence of spice or chilli which would make a real Thai chef slit his wrists in shame; the Brazilian Seafood barbecue turned out to be pork sausage, beef sausage, hot dog sausage, purple-raw beef, tiny chicken wings and thighs, tiny pieces of lamb and duck.....with the only seafood being 2cm pre-formed fishballs.

For the prices they charge (averaged about 500RMB for 2 people compared to about 300RMB for 6 people elsewhere) it was just poor value. You expect to pay more, but not for school dinners.

I'd only recommend one of the restaurants we tried as serving really good food at a reasonable price (Seafood Hotpot upstairs to the right by the road entrance).

This was the only place where they used proper tasty ingredients, let you choose your own live fish, prawns, lobster or meat, cooked as you want or self-cooked in a boiling hotpot with broth....everything you'd want and it saved our sanity.

(We didn't try the Zen chinese restaurant....this "looked" more authentic from the traditional chinese menu...but was hideously overpriced and mostly empty).

Dadonghai Bay has far better food but it's a 20min taxi ride and a drag to travel each night......much better supermarkets however and you can stock up on supplies like beer (4RMB a can compared to 30-32RMB at the hotel).

Stayed at Crown Plaza for 10 days from 17th Oct. Overall experience was very positive!!

Rooms..

The rooms are gorgeous! Great bathroom! We tried to get a room with private part of pool, were told they were full but when we got there it looked like a lot of them were empty. If you can get one, they look lovely! A couple of little niggles with the room...

1 The sofas, chairs and balcony furniture are all upholstered in white so are therefore quite stained and mildewed unfortunately!

2 Air conditioning system made quite a loud rattling noise.

Food...

Breakfast package is well worth having. Lots of choice and very good. The ''Trio' restaurant where breakfast is served has 'smoking' and 'no smoking' tables. However they are right next to each other.

The whole complex is full of restaurants. We had all of our meals in the complex and pretty much all of the food was great, but hardly cheap. There is a little Chinese restaurant in the 'havana plaza' next to the fountain which does really nice food and is cheaper than the other places. That's where all of the Chinese people eat, so it must be good! It was really a shame that the Japanese restaurant in the main part of the hotel was always empty as the food there was excellent! Don't bother with the 'Zen' restaurant as it is totally overpriced (about £4 for A prawn!!) and the atmosphere was very uncomfortable. The waitresses were rather intrusive and treated our meal as a spectator sport. We ended up rushing through an expensive meal so we could just get out of there!

Drinks

The 'Trade Wind' bar above the reception area is rather impressive! Huge, beautifully decorated bar with lovely staff. Again, always empty. Who knows why? The Thai restaurant also has a nice bar upstairs. Empty too! I wondered what the hell the other guests did every night!

Unfortunately the Crowne Plaza has not yet mastered the art of the cocktail, so the drinks are pretty disappointing. Expensive and taste a bit like they've been watered down!

Staff

Staff are generally lovely! I wanted to bring some of them home with me! Very helpful and sweet. Some of them have very little English, so be patient and try to learn a few words of Mandarin.

Pool and beach.

Lovely pool with swim up bar. A few days that we were there there was some construction work going on, so all the banging and crashing kind of destroyed the peace and quiet!

Unfortunately, as is the case in a lot of these hotels, guests have that irritating habit of 'saving' beds by putting a towel on them. I find this INFURIATING! I witnessed one poor member of staff being shooed away like a dog by a Russian guest when he tried to remove towels from 4 beds that she was 'saving' for her friends! The same happens at the beach. If we wanted to go down there we had to get up early before all the beds went! The beach is stunning but the hotel's area is far too small for number of guests!

Overall, the hotel is really lovely and could be perfect if a few little creases were ironed out.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza at the beginning of August. The rooms were large, very comfortable and spotless. We had the breakfast package and I agree with the previous reviewer about the quality of the fare - you could easily eat enough to last you the whole day!

We didn't find the beach to be a problem as it was literaly a couple of minutes away - you can also use the hotels golf carts to get there which will give you a run around the extensive hotel grounds.

We ate most nights at the complex but you can eat much cheaper in Sanya city if you don't mind the 20 minute taxi ride.

We used the staff at the hotel to arrange our trips and taxi drivers. A visit to the pearl spa is well worth it but avoid the tourist trap 'local village' - very expensive and not very nice.

We used a local agent Caddie Lu to book this trip for us - she was very helpful and her choice of hotel was excellent!

My wife and me live in Beijing and wanted to take some break in the famous tropical Sanya mentioned by a lot of colleagues and guidebooks.

I am the person that likes to spend quite some time researching for the place and hotel to go since I don't want any bad surprises. So after a whole morning of comparing possibilities, offers and features we decided to go for the Crowne Plaza.

Indeed a good choice: In fact given the very attractive price, also very good compared to the other resorts at Yalong Bay, we can really suggest this place. There is only a few things which a visitor should know:

Generally about Yalong Bay, Sanya.

1. Yalong Bay is a resort area with no city or town closeby. Sanya is 23km from there, so no 'short stroll to the fish market' or going to a local restaurant. For our 5 days of doing nothing, this was just fine.

2. The Chinese way of beach holiday is different to the Western one.

We are European and expect from a good beach holiday to spend a lot of time playing but also swimming in the sea. At Yalong Bay all the present hotels (Hilton, Marriot, Sheraton, Horizon, Gloria, Crowne Plaza, Aegean were the ones I could make out) have a strip of private beach *and* sea. But all the sea sections are limited by ropes being carried by those swimming balls. Since most Chinese can't swim, *all* sea sections of the hotels limit the sea area you can swim in to a depth of about 2m. So for serious swimmers who don't just want to stand there waiting for the next wave, but also move around this is not really making happy. If you move out of the ropes, the hotel swimguards will continouusly blow their whistle , so even we returned to those areas after 3mins of frantic guards waving at us.

If you just want to play a little in the sea, it's fine. Note that this affected all the hotels (we did quite some beach walks).

By the way, the hotel 'lagoon' pool (well made in the Crowne Plaza) is also nowhere deeper than 1.3m.

Things about the Crowne Plaza.

+ We had a great 68sqm room with open bathroom, free-standing bathtub, wooden floor and balcony. Absolutely wonderful! We paid 900 RMB (About 85 EUR) incl. breakfast for two and the obligatory 15% service fee, August is more offseason.

+ Hotel area includes a shopping/restaurant/bar village with a lot of choices for food and alternatives for the hotel restaurants. Supermarket is there as well. Keeps expenses low and repetitive visits of the same hotel restaurant out.

+ Great breakfast buffet. I am very picky with that stuff and this one was one of the best I had all over the world.

+ Reasonable hotel food/beverage prices. A minibar to afford (not the 10 EUR Evian-Bottle type).

+ Complimentary internet access, DVD player in the room

- Not directly at the beach.

This is maybe also a reason for the cheaper rooms at Crowne Plaza. 2mins / 200m from the hotel, so not worth mentioning, but sorry, no sunset dinner directly at the beach (you can go next door for that)

- beach area of hotel very small, too few deck chairs at both beach and hotel pools.

We've been more off-season, but there were too few deck chairs available, so after 10am no more free places. Chinese people love lunch, though, so good chances at 12.30. Beach area was the smallest we saw at Yalong Bay.

So would we go there again?

Given the price, yes! But we discussed if a resort with bigger beach would be more suitable in the season.

Fabulous rooms, great service, shame not directly on the beach front (5 mins walk to private beach).

Rooms were huge with 6ft wide bed and LCD TV, and the bathrooms were also huge. If you like to retire early perhaps ask for a room with a mountain view and that does not overlook the shops or pool area.

I booked a Premium room but was upgraded to a Suite upon check-in. I LOVED the room - it was huge! Large separate mini kitchen, dining and lounge with a balcony and then a large king size bed with side lounge, plasma and another balcony in the other room which had full wall of sliding doors behind which opened into a large bathroom with the biggest tub I have ever seen in the middle of the room. The furniture, decorations and finishes were very nice - mix of modern Western and Asian. The view was of other resort buidlings as Crowne Plaza not beachfront - something that I didnt think I would mind but I found it a little disappointing when I arrived - the beach isnt too far away at all (5 min walk) but it would have been nice to view the surf and Yalong Bay (plus we might have caught some cool ocean breezes). Dining was ok - menus catered for Chinese, Western and Japanese. As a Westerner, there wasnt alot of variety for us and those dishes that were available tasted ok - nothing special. Prices were not too expensive. Service was ok too - alot of people seem to complain about it after reading other comments here and in other comments for other hotels - I dont understand how people can expect that it will be like in the US or elsewhere where people come running to the cab to carry your bag etc - its China people!!! I think all employees where quite competent, friendly, always smiling and tried to assist when asked - yes there is some language difficulty but if both sides have a little patience then you get there in the end eventually. The pools were nice - very clean but not really deep. The swim up bar was great. However the area lacked a resort atmosphere for some reason - maybe because there was not much grass/palms surrounding the lagoon pools. Crowne is situated near the "shopping mall" - a few shops selling clothes and jewellery - I dont rate them at all so a waste of time going - they have a "supermarket" but it is just full of junk food but you can buy beer/water/soft drinks which could keep your cost down in the resort. There are lots of cafes/bars here too ranging from Chinese to Sth American to US themes - no atmosphere when we went so I wouldnt return again. The Crowne seemed to have a few different conferences while we were there - I think they have the most business facilities of all Yalong hotels so I reckon it is more Business orientated than resort. We tried the Tea Tree Spa which was great - really good range of massages and facials and again the cost wasnt outrageous. Overall, I loved the suite but the hotel and its ffood/facilities was just satisfactory. I would come back to Yalong Bay again as the area is clean, quiet and the beach is nice but I will try either the Sheraton/Mariott/Hilton next.

We changed to Crowne Plaza and enjoyed the service and facilities immensely after being a little disappointed with the Holiday Inn. We had a lovely mountain view room, right above the pond, where frogs croak in the evening. We sat on really nice balcony furniture and enjoyed an aperitif there every night. The rooms are huge, very well maintained and the twin beds are very comfy and big. The bathtub is in the middle of the room, extra shower and toilet are in the back, both impeccably clean as well.

The outdoor pools are very spacious and there is always a seat, plenty of clean towels, a nice pool bar with good choice of drinks, where you can both sit in the water or next to the pool. The grounds with flowers and lush grass are very well maintained and invite for strolls. You can take bikes to the beach, which is a short walk across the road, but kept private. The beach and the water is clean, not too crowded. The Beach bar is lovely.

The restaurant by the pool is very nice (try the champagne ice cream!), furthermore there is a shopping center next door which also offers a nice Thai and some other restaurants. The staff are extremely friendly and helpful, most of them speak some English. The breakfast buffet is huge with both chinese and western food including a wide choice of fruit, bread, cheese, ham, english breakfast, waffles, cakes, eggs cooked to your liking, fresh sushi, fried noodles, dumplings, congee, yogurts and in addition to the usual juices, tea and coffee also good Cappucino and Latte (which sometimes in China are hard to get). The Internet rates seem high, but asking directly we had a great offer. Next time going to Sanya, we'll definetely book the Crowne Plaza again...

We stayed at Crowne Plaza for 11 nights and have nothing but good to say about the amazing hotel. The room, the beach, the restaurants, all of it was top quality! April seems to be kind of a low season month and it felt as if there were more staff than hotel guests. But we liked the tranquility. It is not a "party place".

The weather was great during our stay and ranged between + 25-32 degrees celsius. Some clouds a times, but they rapidly dissolved as the sun rised.

If you don't care for beach the hotel offers big pool areas. One pool even has a warm jacuzzi right beside it! It may sound a bit too hot in the warm weather but it felt great to relax in.

The sun beads a great with comfy matrasess. The hotel offers you free towles at the poolside and by the beach, so no need to bring your own towels.

The hotel area is filled with many different restaurants and they all serve food with excellent quality and taste.

The only thing that was a bit troublesome is the language issue. English is not spoken by the staff as well as one might think at a big hotel like this. We brought a small chinese-english lexicon and we used it from time to time.

But please don't let this stop you from going to Hainan and to Crowne Plaza. We did well and had an amazing time and we really felt what relaxation is all about! Enjoy!

This is a great resort with everything being high end. They are not located directly on the beach but you just have to cross the street to access their private beach space. There you can have long chairs and towels. I have a great room with direct private access to the pool (room 1107). The food is excellent and you have a number of restaurants (pizza, bbq, japanese, etc). The surrounding make you feel you are not in China as the surrounding are luxurious but also the prices are not Chinese at all. A Tsintao beer will set you back 35cny (that is 4 times what you pay in Yangshuo). Lunch at the hotel restaurant will set you back $50 for 2.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Sanya during Decemeber, 2007, and the hotel well exceeded our expectations. For about $130 US per night for a "King Bed Premier" room, it was worth every penny. The room was HUGE, and the bathroom was fantastic. Because the hotel isn't located directly on the beach, (it's about a 5 minute walk), we were able to find a much cheaper rate than the other premium hotels on Yalong Bay. One great feature about the Crowne Plaza that the other hotels don't have is its own shopping plaza. They variety of bars and restaurants there really present a nice alternative to eating all of your meals in the hotel restaurant. I would definitely go back in a second!

WOW! What a place!! The Crowne plaza was fantastic. I was worried after reading someof the reviews from last year but all I can say is what were they on about?? The hotel is pure luxury in fact one of the best I have stayed in and I have been many places in the far east and maldives. It is immaculatly clean and with all the best comforts like REAL wood sunloungers with foam mattresses. The rooms are huge and the shower amazing. The hotel does all the services like laundry and internet and calling home all very cheap! Sanya is beautiful. Beaches are fab and there is loads to do. The hot springs were amazing and we did an island tour and saw some of the real culture. We also did the beijing trip with Airtours which we booked while in Sanya but it would have been cheaper to do before we came but not by much. I am so glad we went there beijing was amazing. So clean compared to Bangkok and the shopping was great! And it is so safe! The food was fab to. we found a sizzlers and tcb icecream place in beijing and many more so its not all chinese food and i didnt see any cockroaches on a stick!!

Highly reccomend china!!

recently visited the Crowne Plaza and Hainan Island with Airtours and it was absolutley amazing both the hotel and Island is stunning the hotel has everything you could want and more with staff that cant do enough to please you. Sanya and Yalong are beautiful places and are so unspoilt that you can really experience the chinese culture and have the bonus of a city and amazing beaches. I done the twin centre with beijing and a trip to hong kong which is definatley worth it. overall i would return to both Sanya and this hotel again in and instant.

This hotel was fantastic.. I stayed here in May 07 and had a wonderful time, the staff were always on hand to help with any query or problems you had, If they couldn't help the English Manager was easily found.. The pool area and beach (5 mins walk away) were always very clean and well maintained they have a snack bar and swim up bar at the pool which offers a very good selection of english food.. The food was one thing that I was concerned about before I travelled but I needn't of worried as the choice you had at breakfast time was the same choice you would get at any hotel round the world.. I would definitely recommend this hotel to anyone looking a peaceful,relexing Heaven close to the beach...

Sanya is stunning and so is this hotel! Had an AMAZING TIME here, my room was stunning, food fantastic and the people are so friendly and eager to please. I cant recomend this hotel highly enough. loved it!!!

i was on the fisrt charter flight to sanya with mytravel and stayed at the crowne plaza its a luxurious hotel i booked through going places with airtours and twin centerd it with beijing the hotel has excellent faciliteies that are reasonably priced a massage £21

and you'll be a sleep by the end of it. the rooms are spacious with a huge bathroom and the breakfast buffet has plenty of choice. The hotel manager is on hand if you have any questions. the staff are currently undergoing english lessons as in all airtours properties. Sanya has been described as the oreintal hawaii and i see why its fantastic!!!!! the beaches are better than the carribean tranquil waters and white sands i would recommend this to anyone who wants rest and relaxation. Hit beijing if you like to shop til you drop the silk market is best for bargains. I stayed on 060507 weather was great but take your mossie repelant.

We've been to Sanya twice, both trips were in 2006. For the first time, we stayed at the Hilton which was just opened. For the second time, we picked Crowne just to try something different. We would like to highlight the following:

Room Quality

We stayed at the suite which was over 1000sq ft. The room was very well appointed. We loved the bathroom which was substantially spacious. The bed was comfortable, the living area and the bedroom area were both spacious. The suite has got 2 TV, the one in the bedroom was Plasma. The bathroom amenities were well provisioned, we were able to locate tissues easily and the quality of such as shampoo, bath foam etc were also better than those in Hilton. In Hilton, we were provided with only 1 tissue box, imagine we brought our 18 months old baby with us, we used up tissues very quickly. The rainforest shower was good, there were 2 basins so we didn’t need to wait for using. The air-cond was less noisy than in Hilton which in our last trip there, we had to turn it to medium fan so as to eliminate the noise. However, the air-cond wasn’t cool enough even we turned to the highest fan probably due to large room area, sot we closed the sliding door of the bathrooms, then it was fine.

Service

Their staff was very friendly, helpful and courteous. We found smiling faces everywhere we met them. For example, one day we went to the beach at around 2:30pm and we wanted to eat late lunch at the beach. Supposing, only ice-cream and drinks were served at the beach bar, so I asked their restaurant staff to arrange the delivery to the beach, she didn’t refuse at once but asked for her manager, then she managed to do it for me. So I experienced the kind of service that went beyond customer’s expectation here.

Food

The food price was reasonable compared to other 5 star hotels like Marriott, Sheraton etc., though I wouldn’t say it’s cheap. The variety of food for breakfast could be improved by offering e.g. more fruit types.

Beach

Though the hotel wasn’t right on the beach, we didn’t see this as a problem because it took only 5 minutes to get there, yet therefore the hotel was lack of seaview / beach view. Their beach was good and appeared to be more private because it limited the public access from the streets, though everyone can still access to it via walking along the Yalong Bay. They had the shower and toilet near the beach bar (In Hilton, we had to walk all the way to the restaurant area in order to go to toilet, not convenience).

The major downsides or potential issues are:

1.Some facilities are not yet ready, e.g. kids room until this Oct. The major advantage of their location was expected to be close to the shops / restaurants in the arcade that were going to be in operation later this year. However, I had some reservation on this because they’re not only close but very open, there were even some rooms located on the floor where the shops were just located on, and anyone who visited the shopping mall would have easy access to the hotel areas, so I felt that there may be noise and privacy problems, and probably the hotel needs to reinforce the security there.

2.The view and the atmosphere

Because of its location, the hotel was lack of the atmosphere that one may be looking for when staying at a resort type of hotel, things like seaview, grand open area like those lagoon views in Hilton. What you would expect to see from your room was the room buildings. So if you didn’t like this, you may consider to request for a room with mountain view. Also, their music band played Chinese music in the bar, so you couldn’t find those elevated music or modern music that were played in Sheraton or Hilton. Well, this would be really depend on your preference, it wasn’t something wrong. BTW, the architecture of the lobby and the main building was meant to be in Chinese style. That’s why the local there has named it as “Forbidden city of Sanya”.

Overall, Crowne was great at their room quality and services. I would definitely return to this resort because room quality was important to me and it’s very good for the money. Yet if you like western style of architecture, being very close to the beach, want to be pampered in the ambience of a more resort type (well, this is very personal, I can only say at least to me Hilton has got the better ambience), then you may want to try some others and then compared the hotels for yourself.