Gayana Marine Resort - Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

- May 10, 2021

Gayana Marine Resort is located in Gaya Island, just next to Gaya Island Resort. It's approximately 25 minutes slow ferry ride from Jesselton Point to Gayana Marine Resort. Their customer service is poor because nobody seems to pick up the phone and they took weeks to respond to our inquiry email. Finally they responded via email and asked us to confirm our booking on the same day, which was a Thursday. Since we're quite flexible in terms of time, we agreed for the weekend stay.

There's 4 types of villa - Rainforest villa (private balcony overlooking the forest), Ocean villa (the room features a private balcony with stairs that lead straight into the sea), Breeze villa (family room with additional bedding and two bathrooms) and Palm villa (private plunge pool and deck). However, their current promotion only available for 3 types of villa excluding Breeze villa.

We booked a 2 days 1 night stay package (RM 550 for 2 pax in a Rainforest villa). Currently the resort only opens on Friday, Saturday and Sunday on alternate weekend basis. Package includes breakfast for 2 person, 1 night accommodation and return boat transfer (Jesselton Point - Gayana Marine Resort - Jesselton Point).

Our room comes with a king size bed, in-room safe, mini fridge, LCD TV (variety of channels), 6 bottles of drinking water, minibar (a bottle of wine and selection of can drinks without a price list), coffee or tea making facilities, self controlled air conditioning, mosquito repellent, complete toiletries, disposable slippers and a large balcony with sun beds overlooking the forest. Make sure to keep your balcony door locked all the time to prevent those mischievous monkeys from entering your room. Our room is spacious and the bed is comfy. However, the TV remote controller, room phone and in-room safe is not working. It seems like a norm that most hotel room that we stayed have this in-room safe issue.

What could be more worse than no water supply in the toilet. Guess what! That happened when I was about to take a shower around 5pm. We have no idea who to contact because the room phone is not working and it's too far for us to walk all the way to the resort lobby. So we called their sales & marketing office using our handphone. We were directed to another phone number but sadly there was no answer. Finally someone returned our call and told us that there's some pipe problems. Their maintenance team is working on it. Glad that the water supply returned after 30 minutes. However, the next morning the water was cloudy. I wouldn't have realized that thanks to the the clogged wash basin.

Water pressure in the shower is good and most importantly water is hot enough. However, their body wash does not produce a lot of lather. I believe most adults like a body wash that lathers well. Our room is a bit warm because the air conditioner is not cooling our room. I overheard a hotel guest gave the same feedback too when one of the resort staff asked how's his stay. They even mentioned that there's no hot water in their shower. Seems that we're not the only one having issues with the room. Overall it's an unpleasant stay.

Weekends stay offer (only for Friday - Sunday on an alternate weekend basis)
a) Rainforest Villa - RM 550 per room
b) Ocean Villa - RM 850 per room
c) Palm Villa - RM 1,350 per room

Inclusive:
a) Daily breakfast
b) Return scheduled boat transfer via Jesselton Point
Boat depart from jetty - 12pm
Boat depart from island - 11am
c) 20% food discount

Check in time: 12pm
Check out time: 11am

Weekend stay offer only available for residents and expats in Malaysia. Promotion only application from 19th March 2021 onwards until further notice.