Fairmont Orchid

I stayed at Fairmont Orchid with my husband and 2 young kids in July. I definitely will not come back. The hotel is nice, the rooms are pretty clean, staff is mostly friendly, there are comfortable beds but there are a few must haves that are missing and made the trip uncomfortable. There is absolutely no shade at the beach. You can rent an umbrella type chair that has 2 seats for $150 a day (not sure for how many hours), and even these are not full shade. I am used to resorts having tons of umbrellas on their beach for everyone to use. It is unacceptable not to have umbrellas set up at a 5 star hotel beach especially when there are no trees for shade. It is also almost impossible to find shady seats at the pool as people snag them all before 9am and leave their stuff on them all day. The pool is fully sunny with no trees to shade any area of the pool. So if you love full sun you won’t mind but with small kids I like to have some shady areas to play. It is a typical resort— they charge for everything. You can borrow snorkel gear for 1 hour a day but other than that if you want it longer or want a paddle board or something you have to pay. The area surrounding the hotel is all lava rocks/desert so not great for exploring unless you drive 1.5 hours away to the other side of the island which also wasn’t so great. Had I known I was staying on Mars with all of the lava rocks I definitely would have gone to another island. The food at the hotel is also pretty bad. It is almost impossible to find healthy options for the kids for lunch, there’s a food truck for tacos but then they cook the fish in vegetable oil which defeats the purpose of healthy fish. The food at the restaurants was mediocre and a total rip off. We left the property for most meals as the food ******. I recommend checking out another island!