Good hotel, did tick most of the boxes, staff in the main are excellent and very friendly. Beach lovely. Can recommend the spa. Loads of sun loungers available on the beach although the hotel was only at 50% capacity as is currently having a renovation. Should be finsihed before Christmas they said. Restaurants - good choice of food, no complaints.

HOTEL: We visited this hotel in October 2009. Weather was great, sea warm. Hotel looks nice, rooms are spacy, clean and nicely decorated. There is very nice garden. We had beeen given at first the room on the ground floor close to the ventilation. We weren´t happy about it (very noisy) and they managed to move us after 3 days to the first floor. The garden view was so beautiful. Everything in the shops in the hotel is very expensive. YOu can get it outside for half the price. Staff is very friendly. Hotel is really very clean.
BEACH, POOL:Swimming pool looked nicely. Placed under the pulmeria trees. To be able to have a nice place to lie you had to place the towel before breakfast and the same was for the beach. Hotel beach - awful! Tiny and almost no water there. The ships of the fisherment stay here and although it´s very pictoresque to watch them you cannot swimm properly. If you want to sit in the water and no swimming this would be right place for you. But...you can go with shuttle bus to the Bali Collection or take a taxi and from this shopping mall it´s very nice walk to Geger beach. It´s brilliant.
If you don´t surf never go to Dreamland beach. Bad people there, huge waves...
FOOD: We had just breakfast in the hotel. It was everyday the same. I love fruit but the choice was very very limited. We were happy not to have AI. Here I would love to recommend you the restauran Sary. It is behind hotel Conrad on the opposite side of the road. Sary the restaurant owner is so friendly and the food is sipmle the best what we have eaten there and prices are reasonable :-)
TOURS: If you want to explore the island, which I highly recommend you it´s really great to ask for Blacky - it´s a taxi driver and guide and speaks very good English. He is always in front of the hotel next to the tiny grocery. He showed us such nice places, was very nice and knew the island very very well. The price is uncomparable to the agencies and you can adjust the trip as you want to. Really worth trying!

There are much better hotels around for sure but this was not bad choice, not a huge hotel, more private and good value for your money. Great garden, very clean, nice staff. After all we didn´t stay there much, we explored the island and because the hotel beach is not that good we discover the Geger beach and it was just perfect. On the other hand the beach is very good for children because they cannot drown :-)

We stayed for 10 days in mid-october'09. The facilities are quite nice, the location was great and the price was reasonable. The food was nothing to rave about but it was ok for an all-inclusive resort. We found the food at the a la carte restaurants quite good. Cleanliness in the resort was pretty good, however we did see a roach in the restaurant one night.

The problems:
Example 1- If you book day-trips through the hotel staff, expect to pay at least double. This is normal and we expected this. The problem however is that guests should be able to book with vendors directly without the hotel's involvement. We booked directly with several outside vendors for trips. When we made the bookings we found out that the tour operators would not pick us up from the hotel as they would be 'black-listed' by the hotel's management (for not referring us back to the hotel's staff). Needless to say, this is a very aggravating business practice. If you book your trips directly with tour operators, don't be surprised when they ask to arrange pickup/dropoffs away from the resort.

Example 2 - The hotel laundry service is about 10-times as expensive as going to a local laundry service and you get the same service (provided you don't need anything dry-cleaned). We brought our laundry to a local shop and they delivered it back to the hotel about 10 hours later (nice same-day service). The hotel decided that they didn't like us using an outside laundry service, so they just didn't inform us when the laundry was delivered to the front desk. The decided to shove the clearly-marked package in a storage closet. When our laundry didn't arrive as expected we contacted the front desk 3 times over the next day and a half. Then we confirmed the delivery with the laundry mat (it was delivered the previous day as promised). Only after raising hell with the management did someone "find" our laundry. Very, very un-professional Melia Benoa!

Example 3 - Our booking was confirmed in US dollars. When we checked-out, we were informed that our only option was to pay in Rupiah. Needless to say, the conversion of the room rate back to rupiah was tilted in the hotel's favour. On top of that, I then got hit for the conversion by the credit card company. All things included, this ended up costing an extra $100 US on the 10 day trip.

I have plenty of other examples but no more time to write them down. Overall its a pretty nice resort but there is way too much b/s for me. The management needs to give their head a shake for treating guests like this. I definitely won't be staying here again. Not recommended!

We ended our honeymoon with 6 nights at Melia Benao and it was a lovely hotel. I was slightly disappointment to start with because we did not get the automatic upgrade to an executive suite (when on your honeymoon). Make sure your travel agent lets them know in advance.

The hotel rooms are spacious and the hotel grounds are lovely. The food was to a very high standard and the buffet they do on the beach was especially good. For lunch I'd recommend eating the lunch buffet by the beach, rather than the hotel restaurant.

There is entertainment every night, with cultural dances and cabarat nights which are fun. There is also a karakoe room for those of you that love to sing! Apart from that, not that much to do in the evening, so you would need to venture out of the resort. If you were staying here longer than a week the food and entertainment might get repetitive.

We had travelled around the island before arriving in South Bali and we would definitely recommend this. Ubud is especially nice and there are lots of excursions you can do. Try and make it to one of the large temples in Bali to get a taste of the culture. Also we loved the white water rafting...it was 10KM of pure enjoyment!

Nearly everyone at the hotel is on the blue all inclusive package and that's all you need. You can pretty much get everyone the Gold package includes apart from a few small things. If you wanted these then just pay extra whilst you're there. On the blue package make sure you take advantage of the free watersports (non motorised).

We took out the hotel bikes (for free) and rode along the different beach resorts which was good fun. There is also a little craft market next to the hotel if you need to pick up some gifts. When you are haggling, go in at least 1/5th of what they ask for. Usually if they say 200, then you'll get it for about 50.

If you want a reasonable priced massage, walk along the beach and you can get one cheaper than the hotel massages.

A lovely hotel with great food and fantastic way to end the honeymoon.