Marari Beach Resort Alleppey- a CGH Earth Experience

The property boasts well-maintained rooms, a mineral pool, private beach, and bungalows with pleasant seating areas. Guests appreciate the courteous staff and prime beachfront location for a relaxing stay.

Good to stay with family

Having stayed at this hotel’s sister property at Coconut Lagoon, which was perfect, we had high hopes for our stay at this hotel. Unfortunately, it fell well short of our expectations, substantially. It is described as an ‘Eco friendly resort’, I never quite worked out why other than it had an excellent salt water pool as opposed to a chlorinated one, some trendy ECO toiletries and some recycle bins, admittedly unusual in India. Rather amusingly, they require you to sign an A4 sized piece of paper for every single drink and meal and present you with sheaths of copies of them (in a recycled newspaper envelope) when you check out, the accounting system is archaic t both locations. The whole property is a little run down, it’s starting to show its age and beginning to look a little forlorn. It’s definitely time to start thinking of a little refurbishment during the next monsoons. Having said that the bungalows are well kept and have every amenity and the pool area, whilst a little tight on sunbeds is lovely. Where it all begins to unravel is in the main restaurant. There was apparently another seafood location but we never found it as my friend isn’t mad on seafood which was the thing there and it requires a reservation apparently. Whatever the hotel will lead you to believe, this is a package deal hotel and nothing else. It caters solely for groups of mainly European and South American tourists on trips around the south. To be fair, if you’re paying a nett rate with a tour operator, which I suspect was far lower than our £235.00 a night room, it’s a good deal, you are after all in a group and expect to be treated as such. For those on rack rate, it was a little disappointing. At the sister property, the food was exemplary, largely due to the fact that there were a lot more Indian guests and the service perfect. This was the first time I detected a little attitude at an ‘upmarket’ Indian hotel, possibly due to the fact that, at times, the restaurant flooded with guests all demanding drinks and jumping on the buffet as if they not eaten for days. The buffet itself was inferior to the other hotel, a strange mix of European and Indian that really didn’t work. Odd looking Arancini balls and sad spaghetti next to curries that had been doctored to accommodate a less exotic taste bud, I actually had the worst Biriani I’ve had in India for 40 years, which was sent back. It was all a little underwhelming and the whole thing turned into a bun flight at breakfast if you wanted eggs and it was a full house. The staff just assumed you were with a group and a couple of times I lost my omelette to a large table of tourists. The grounds are well kept, no complaint there, however if you wanted to sit on the beach, they bizarrely had no sun umbrellas, just literally… umbrellas. This area, immediately in front of the hotel was filthy. Why someone can’t just pick up all of the rubbish is beyond me. You’re expected to literally sit on the beach, amongst a pil