The Ultimate
Club Med Bali Review
Before you read this Club Med Bali review, there are a few things you need to know!
- This is a really detailed review! By the time you finish reading it, you will know everything you need to know about Club Med Bali – good and bad!
- You will be able to easily decide whether Club Med Bali is the right kind of holiday for you and your family.
- For the record, Club Med have never provided me or my family with discounts, free accommodation or any kind of freebies (much to my disappointment!)
After 40 Club Med holidays in total (OMG – I hear you shriek), 20 of them in Club Med Bali, I know a bit about Club Med holidays!
I’m confident I can give you an extremely accurate and detailed review of how well this Club Med village will meet you and your family’s holiday expectations.
This review is so detailed you will need a lot of time to get through it!
For those who are time poor, it is divided into sections.
Just click on the heading below to reveal all the information about that topic.
Club Med Bali Location
Ok – no prizes for guessing it is on the very beautiful island of Bali, the island of the Gods.
Club Med Bali is located on its own beach with uninterrupted beach access (unlike Club Med Phuket). Manicured lawns stretch from the bar/main pool area, all the way to the sand on the beach.
It is set in approx 500 hectares of magnificent gardens and located in Nusa Dua, a very upmarket and very safe part of Bali. Many other international hotels are located in the same area. It is about as far removed from the hustle and bustle of Kuta as you could possibly get. However, if you want to be a thrill seeker, it is only a 15-minute taxi trip to “The Bar” area of Kuta, scene of the Bali bombings.
The weather in Bali is at its best from May through to October. The fact that this time coincides with the Australian winter is a great bonus!
What is close by?
A 20 min walk from Club Med Bali will put you in a major shopping /restaurant precinct (The Bali Collection) and there are also numerous market stalls in a
A leisurely afternoon walk along the beach-front (approx 4
With the exception of the
How to get the best out of your Club Med Bali holiday
Club Med Bali and indeed all Club Med’s around the world, operate like a village. There is a good chance that by the end of your stay in any Club Med you will have spoken to, mixed with and possibly even shared a meal with people that you had never previously met.
How much you enjoy in this atmosphere is dependent on you and your family making an effort to socialise.
Sure, if you wish, you can spend the entire duration of your stay speaking with no one, engaging in no activities and more likely than not complaining that it is not your kind of holiday.
If you are thinking about a Club Med holiday, you will be spending a considerable sum of money, especially if you are taking your family. Here is our first tip, if interacting with other people is not your idea of a great holiday, save yourself the money and don’t go to a Club Med! We have found that the more personable you are, especially to the staff, the better the holiday you will have. To this day we still meet up at various locations throughout the world, with people whom we have met in Club Med. They have become lifelong friends.
How do you get to Club Med Bali?
If your flying from Australia there are direct flights from all capital cities to Denpassar airport in Bali. Obviously if your flying from Perth the flying time is quicker (3hrs) than say flying from Melbourne or Sydney (both approx 5.5 hours).
Whilst there are always cheap flights available, it is worth investigating what time they will actually get you to
In our experience, many of these cheaper flights, particularly from the eastern states of Australia, do not arrive until around midnight. By the time you get into your bed at Club Med Bali, it is well and truly into the early hours of the morning.
What does Club Med Bali cost?
There are three cost components to a Club Med Bali holiday, only two of which you can control.
Airfare
You have a choice of a number of ‘low-cost carriers’ and
Remember that with low-cost carriers, the advertised price is for your seat only. You will be paying extra for baggage, food, drinks, entertainment, even a blanket. In the future, you will probably have to pay extra for toilet paper. (alright I made that up!)
The alternative is a full-service airline like Garuda where all of the above is included in your airfare.
Sure, it is a bit more expensive but the peace of mind of not having to reach for your credit card every time one of your children wants something during the flight, is priceless!
Make sure you check out the flight arrival and departure times of your prefered flights in and out of Bali
Some of the cheaper flights, particularly from the East coast of Australia, tend to arrive very late at night, whereas Garuda flights usually arrive mid-afternoon.
Depending on immigration queues at Denpasar airport, it will most likely be at least two hours from the time you land till the time you actually get to your room in Club Med.
You don’t want to be travelling with young children, who perhaps didn’t sleep at all on the flight and arrive in Bali around midnight local time. Your children’s body clock will be up to three hours later, making it around 3.00am for them. Seriously, do you want to have to cope with that whilst being exhausted yourself? As a parent, you know that will not end well!
In addition, if you have teenage children, you will be paying for two rooms and depending on the time of year you go, you might end up paying nearly a $1,000 for essentially a bed for a few hours.
You might want to rethink that ‘cheap’ airfare!
My wife and I have discovered the slightly more expensive Garuda airfare
Similarly, on the last day of your stay, you will need to leave Club Med at least three hours before your flight home. It is worth doing your own research into flight schedules for your return trip.
By using “red eye” (overnight) flights to get home you can depart much later on your last day, (often around midnight if you are flying from
By all means, feel free to book your own airfare but beware of the pitfalls. There is an alternative…. more on that in a minute.
Airport transfers
You have two choices.
Either have the Club Med representative meet
or
Face the chaos that is Denpasar airport, bargain with one of the numerous drivers who will be harassing you, try to corral your children around you, get all your bags into a very small car or bus and pay a total of about $20.00 AUS for the experience.
Your call! – but I know what I would be doing!
Accommodation
No matter what standard of room you choose (see Club Med Bali rooms) there is no negotiating the price of your accommodation.
The price is what it is although it varies throughout the year. School holidays, religious celebrations, monsoon season and numerous other factors can all affect what you pay for your accommodation.
The important thing to remember is that the earlier you book, the cheaper it is. This applies to airfares as well.
Club Med offers up to 30% off the cost of your stay, if you book up to nine months in advance. When you go to clubmed.com.au and see the prices you will begin to appreciate what a great saving this can be.
Ok, so you’ve scoured the internet and got the cheapest airfare you can possibly find, then what?
Well you still have to get to the Club Med Bali resort from the airport (20 minutes max)
Ok, so you got your El cheapo airfare, doing battle with the throng at Denpasar airport doesn’t worry you and you’ve booked your discounted accommodation separately. WOO HOO I hear you say!
But what if something goes wrong? Well fortunately, there is another way.
The Club Med Bali Package
Imagine if everything I have just mentioned above was all done for you?
Just think, when something goes wrong with your flights, or transfers or your accommodation, wouldn’t it be great if it becomes somebody else’s problem to have to fix it for you?
If you book directly with Club Med’s own travel agency, all your worries disappear.
Go to clubmed.com.au and navigate to the Bali resort. Just insert your travel dates, how many people are travelling and the capital city from which you are departing and you will see instant pricing.
You will be given a choice of airlines, choice of room type and many other options.
Tip: If you go ahead and book online you will be required to pay the full amount at the time of booking. If you ring the Club Med booking agency and book through them, you will only be required to pay the airfare component immediately. Your accommodation cost can be paid up to 52 days before you depart.
If you have found a flight that is not listed in the available flights in their package, ring the Club Med booking agency and ask for a package quote using the flight you have found. Chances are Club Med can get it cheaper than you can anyway!
When you book ‘the package’, airfares are included, transfers and baggage to your room are included and so, of course, is your accommodation.
Basically, when you book the package, Club Med will look after you from the time you get on the aircraft in Australia to the time you step off it when you get home.
Because your airport transfers are included, if your return flight doesn’t leave till midnight as many do, you get to eat, drink and enjoy all the activities available until after dinner, at no extra charge!
For a small hourly fee, you can even keep your room until 6.00pm so you don’t have to sit around all day in your travel clothes.
Club Med Bali room types
Okay, let’s start by reiterating what we have said earlier. If you are going to any Club Med thinking you are going to get a luxurious room similar to a 5 star hotel, then you will be bitterly disappointed.
Even if you book a suite (which is just 2 rooms converted into 1 – and you pay double) it will be far short of what a discerning person would call ‘luxury’. Sure, the Suite being the top of the accommodation range in club Med is infinitely better than the standard room but ‘Luxurious” I would say not!
Lets have a look at what optoins you have
Superior Room
As this is the most basic level of accommodation in Club Med Bali, so I’m not sure what it is actually superior to?
This is the room type included in the price you first see on the Club Med website. These rooms have no balcony and are in essence just a box. Think small motel room!
- Separate toilet
- Air-conditioning
- Hair dryer
- U.S. electrical sockets / 220 Volts
- Telephone
- Kettle
- Shower
- Safe deposit box
- Minibar (
non provisioned) - Branded pack (shampoo, shower gel, cream, …)
- TV Screen
- Umbrella
- Air conditioning / Heating system
- Socket type
F : 220 – 240 V - Socket type
C : 200 – 240 V - Wi-Fi Access
Superior room with balcony
Before you get too excited, this is just the basic superior room with a balcony added.
Yep, there is a sliding door and you can walk out on your balcony, but it’s only one metre wide. It comes with a couple of chairs and a small table and it is handy for drying clothes or if you just want to get some fresh air.
These rooms tend to have slightly better views but you are paying something like an extra $350 – $400 per week for that balcony! If you are taking teenagers they will have to have their own room so you are looking at a substantial amount just to be able to walk outside,
3 THE ROOMS
The rooms in CM Bali were last renovated about 13 years ago (we were there during this process) and there is
In Club Med Bali your choice starts with a ‘Club room’. This is a basic room, no balcony and usually found on the upper levels. Next is a superior room on the middle levels. This is the same as a club room but with a very small balcony. Or you can have a terrace room, situated on the ground floor only with lots of shrubbery outside and with a terrace that has an umbrella and two sun loungers. By default, the outside area of these rooms is a mosquito breeding haven. (despite regular spraying of an
Booking tip! If you want a connecting room, specify this first and then ask if the room type you want has interconnecting rooms. One of the most common problems reception has to deal with is people who have requested a particular room type, then on arrival they say they want an interconnecting room, only to be told the particular room type they have requested does not have interconnecting rooms or that all the interconnecting rooms, for the class of room they have booked, have already been allocated. People, if you want an interconnecting room, request one when booking, not at the front desk on arrival!
The air-conditioning in all classes of rooms has often been described by other reviewers as being ‘not cold’. However, what is not cold to you may be freezing to us and vice versa. For the record, I can tell you our room was 24.9 degrees C at night and 25.5 degrees C in the daytime on the coldest setting. (Yes, I did take a digital indoor/outdoor thermometer with me!) The insulation of having a room above us may have helped. It may not be as cold as some would like, but given it was dehumidified air and the outside temp never dropped below 30 degrees during the day, relatively speaking, it felt quite cool enough and we didn’t get colds!
The toilet in the bathroom is not separate but is at least on the opposite side of the bathroom to the shower, with a partial dividing wall.
The shower recess is not big, but it is adequate. The hot water was always hot and the water pressure varied depending on the time of day (just before dinner it was pretty poor). This may have had something to do with us being almost the last room in a long line of rooms. (Our preferred room happens to be first in a line of rooms and hence we have never experienced this problem before). Fresh towels were provided every day if you wished and bed linen was changed every three days. The room was serviced every day by very friendly staff and despite leaving valuables on display (lap top, video camera, loose change etc) nothing was touched.
The blocks of rooms in Club Med Bali are all located in
The Sumba block is quiet. There is absolutely no noise at night time from the ‘entertainment’ and it is close to the spa, golf course, squash, archery, putting green and the new Zen pool (more about this fantastic new pool later). It is
THE RESTAURANTS/DINING ROOMS
During our stay, there were two restaurants in Club Med Bali. The main restaurant (Agung) is a buffet style restaurant and it has 3 air-conditioned dining areas. This is where the majority of the guests eat and is by far the better option if you are looking for variety in your dining experience. All the dining rooms were part of the major renovation that took place when the Club was totally closed for 3 months over Xmas 2008. If you have been to Club Med Bali prior to that date and you go back now, you will not recognise any of the old eating areas. They have been
For the last eleven
His replacement is Zachary and although he has a background in fine dining restaurants in some very prestigious hotels, Zachary will have his work cut out matching Pratama’s effort.
As mentioned earlier, it was Australian school holidays and the Club was full. As you would expect, there were a lot of children….and we mean a LOT of children. Surprisingly, this was a good thing for us adults without children, as most parents chose to eat with their offspring in the two ‘
Although ‘late lunch’ doesn’t finish until 5.30pm each day, in a Club Med first the Chef de Village Jean
About 6.45pm every night there are a number of appetisers set up near the bar for those who might want a nibble before going to dinner a little later. In the past, the aforementioned cherubs have descended on this food like a plague of locusts, consuming everything in their path. The earlier opening time of the main restaurant completely solved this problem. Well done Club Med!
The second restaurant is called the ‘Batur’ and is used for late breakfast, morning tea, late lunch, afternoon snacking and dinner. For
Ravin was the executive Chef at Club Med Bali at the time we were there and had been for a number of years. He is a softly spoken, gentle man for whom nothing is too much trouble. Last year he invited us and friends who were holidaying with us, to dine in the Batur restaurant as his guests. In addition to the normal menu, he prepared a seafood platter for us which was absolutely delicious. This year he again asked us if he could prepare a special meal and suggested a beef dish cooked
We didn’t need convincing and he booked us into the Batur restaurant the next night. We arrived on time only to be shown out the door which was a little confusing. Imagine our surprise when we were shown to
During our
But let’s have a look at what we ate for the other meals……
THE FOOD
All right I confess, the food is one of the main reasons I go to Club Med and have been doing so since first going to Club Med Noumea in 1988. I was always amazed at the sheer variety and quantity of food available. In the 9 trips we did there, the food was simply fantastic and I was devastated when it closed in December 2001.
Fast forward to 2014 and how things have changed! For the last few
We once said in a review “If you have never been to a Club Med, then when you first set eyes on the lunch or dinner buffet, trust us, you will be impressed.” (Club Med UK head office even wrote to us and requested copyright permission to use it on their web site.)
We can assure you that like us, after a few Club Med holidays or even as the days go by on your first Club Med holiday you will reach a point by about day five when you start to think “this is the same as yesterday”. There are only so many ways you can present fruit and vegetables and cook, fish, poultry and meat. The buffet theme nights repeat every 7 nights so if you stay longer, yes, you will see the same food.
So why does there appear to be less food? The answer is that Club
Looking at the logistics, Ravin, Executive Chef ‘Extraordinaire’, supervises the preparation of the equivalent of nearly 2,850 meals a DAY!) In the week we were there he had fed guests and staff the equivalent of nearly 20,000 meals. Previous visits have proved that Ravin knows his stuff so it is with great regret that we have to say that with the exception of the wonderful private meal we enjoyed, the food and service in the main restaurant this time round was of a considerably lesser standard than we have ever experienced in Club Med Bali (but still not as bad as Club Med Phuket a year earlier).
Some will say we are being a bit
Only 11 weeks earlier in Club Med
It is established protocol in any Club Med that the daily menu is modified to accommodate the largest nationality present in the village at the time, whilst still catering for the others. During our recent stay, the prominent nationality was Australians (
Also gone in recent years are the linen table cloths and serviettes that used to be used in the main restaurant. Environmental pressure from washing and cost savings is the reason. However, as a result of this action
BREAKFAST (7.00am – 10.00am) Late breakfast (10.00am – 11.00am)
We have to admit the breakfast was pretty much the same every day. Thankfully though, it was not limited to the European gluten fest that we experienced in Club Med Phuket. With a predominantly western clientele, there were eggs poached, fried, scrambled or made into the omelette of your choice. In
Something we noticed this year (and I accept this probably won’t make or break your holiday) was the total absence of saucers for the cups and about half as many teaspoons as were needed. We asked why and were told the saucers broke and the spoons are either lost of stolen and both are expensive to replace. Club Med Bali opened 27 years ago, you cannot tell me that this problem has only just surfaced? We suspect serious budget issues might be the cause. More about that later.
LUNCH (12.15pm – 2.15pm)
Well presented, covering all nationalities but no prawns (2 tinned shrimp on a bed of lettuce does not count) Last year there were some very nice purees in ‘shot’ glasses, one I remember in particular was a beetroot puree with walnuts on top.
If any leftover dishes from the previous evening were served for lunch, they were so altered or cleverly disguised, you could not tell. There was plenty of different desserts and multiple flavours of very nice ice cream.
DINNER (6. 30pm – 9.15pm) – For 3 weeks of Australian School holidays only)
This is where we felt there had been the biggest reduction in variety. Unlike last year, there was no steak, no fresh prawns, no mussels, no smoked salmon and no crab claws. There was however fish, beef wellington, fish, chicken, fish, escargot (snails) which were particularly nice, fish, garlic clams (which were tougher than car tyre retreads) Oh and did I mention there was fish?
The reality was that though there has been (in our opinion) a reduction in the variety, what was presented was certainly delicious and we are not suggesting for one moment that you will go hungry!! The best part of all was it did not matter when you chose to eat, ALL the dishes were still available throughout the entire meal time. Occasionally there might be a few minutes wait (especially before 8.00pm during the children’s ‘feeding frenzy’) whilst a particular item was replenished, but overall it was expertly managed and nothing like the debacle that was Club Med Phuket at Easter in 2013.
DESSERT
As we always say, nobody does dessert like the French and Club Med Bali did not disappoint. This is where you can really stack on the kilos if you are not careful. We will not bore you with details about the extensive selection that was available for lunch and dinner but we can say with confidence, if you have a sweet tooth you will not be disappointed with the desserts in any Club
THE NEW SEAFOOD RESTAURANT and TAPIS BAR.
Scheduled to open in
Our concern is, will the bean counters at Club Med provide a large enough food budget to make this restaurant as good as it promises to be? We can only assume the reduction in the upmarket dining options in the main dining room is a
THE BAR/DRINKS
The main Bar in Club Med Bali is an interesting structure in that it resembles a flying saucer! (Anyone who watched the 1960’s TV series ‘Lost in Space’ will immediately recognise the roof as the Robinson family’s space ship). Under that is a circular bar with completely open sides with
Children have their own serving area at this bar and even have steps provided for them so they can reach the bar and be at the same level as adults when ordering. A nice touch!
In Club Med Bali you can get unlimited alcoholic drinks from 9.00am until well after midnight. It is worth remembering some of
Even though the club was at full capacity, we never had to wait more than a minute at most to be served. The bar staff were very friendly, even remembering our drinks of choice and more often than not, our names. They also insisted on bringing our drinks to wherever we were sitting in the bar area. Their service was impeccable.
If you like your coffee, then we suggest having an espresso or short black at the bar. It just seems to taste better than the ones you have to make yourself in the dining room using the automatic coffee machines.
We have, over the years, described the wine served in Club Med at lunch and dinner as ‘similar to paint stripper’. (In Club Med Phuket they were at least trialling some Californian wines which were actually quite nice). However, whilst the table wines in Club Med Bali are definitely still an ‘acquired taste’, once your palette has adjusted, you can usually find one or two that will be drinkable during your stay. As well as offering the traditional, Red, Rose and White wines, this year you could choose between local or French versions of each, making a total of 6 choices. We went for the local versions but that is a matter of taste (or lack of!). There are also premium imported wines that you may purchase at ridiculous prices if you feel the need to.
There is a beach Bar open from 10.00am – 6.00pm, a very nice spot to sit in the late afternoon, overlooking the beach and ocean. We note the space and chairs around this bar has been expanded since our last visit thus confirming the popularity of the bar’s location.
It is worth noting that despite the almost constant availability of alcohol, in all the years we have been going to Club Med, we have never seen anyone so intoxicated that they had to be asked to leave the Bar or Restaurant area.
PHONE & INTERNET
Free Wi-Fi is available in all rooms and in the bar area. The speed of the connection throughout the village has been improved considerably since our last visit and was fast enough for me to conduct video calls on my Galaxy 10.5 tablet with almost television quality. For those of you who are geeks, I measured it at 1.89mbs. Not blistering speed by any standard but just over twice the speed of last year and certainly fast enough to check your emails, check Face book, upload the odd photo and to make Skype video calls. At one point we had two phones, my Galaxy tablet, a laptop and an
Mobile phones work well throughout the resort. We had 5 bar signal strength even in the room. There is a new tower (badly disguised as a very tall palm tree) just outside the fence near the beach and there are several carriers to choose from. Just remember to turn off ‘mobile data’ as you get on the plane or you will be faced with an incredible bill when you get home. Instead, use the room
THE NEW ADULT ZEN POOL
A new feature of Club Med’s in the Asia
The brand new Zen pool in Club Med Bali is quite simply the best piece of capital infrastructure that has been built since the major restaurant and bar renovations of Xmas 2008. Without a doubt, this space is the closest that I (and possibly many others) will ever get to heaven. Words can’t do it justice, you just have to try it! This pool is about as far removed from the main pool area as is possible. It is located at the far end of the resort where the old soccer fields used to be, close to the putting green, spa, steam rooms and
It is worth noting the main pool has been reduced to a depth where it only comes up to the chest of a normal adult so it is now basically a children’s pool and half of it has been covered by sun shade cloth. On 5 out of the 7 days of our stay “a number 2” alert was sounded which resulted in the main pool having to be cleared of people for a couple of hours and having to be chemically treated.
Accordingly, you can appreciate why we liked the idea of an
WATER SPORTS
There is a snorkelling boat that goes twice daily (weather permitting). There is also windsurfing and kayaking and because CM has direct access to the beach, there are also beachside BBQ’s and beach volley ball at 4.00pm.
HYGEINE AND HEALTH
Getting gastroenteritis in Bali (colloquially known as Bali Belly) is not unusual, especially if you eat out side of hotel restaurants. Whilst we accept this can happen, one of the main causes of upset tummies in Club Med is ‘over eating’. If your stomach is used to a certain diet and then all of a sudden it is digesting food from numerous other countries, sometimes several different cuisines in the one meal, you have to expect your stomach at some point to say ‘enough is enough’ and start to rebel. Similarly, if you stick to your normal cuisine but have that second entree and perhaps 2 helpings of the ‘special of the day’ followed by perhaps 3 different desserts, again, you have to expect that what goes in must eventually come out, sometimes when you least want it to!
Despite reassurances, we still have an issue with the same plastic place mats being used 3 times a day, 7 days a week. When most people finish one course, they place their food covered knife and fork on the place mat and go and get another helping. On specific questioning about this, we were assured every mat is regularly submerged in a bath of antiseptic /disinfectant. However prior to that happening, the possibility of micro-organisms breeding, especially in
Not-withstanding the above, when your children complain of sore tummies and have
The almost compulsory squirt of hand gel
The water in all Club Med’s is said to be safe to drink but everybody has a different capacity to adapt to the water in a foreign country. To address this, all Club Med’s provide unlimited bottled water, both in your room and around the resort. We suggest you use it exclusively and do not drink the water provided in jugs on the tables (even though it is allegedly also from bottles). No matter where we are in the world, we always only drink the bottled water that we have opened ourselves and we even clean our teeth with it.
MEDICAL HELP
Club Med is the largest ‘sports club’ in the world. Despite the extensive precautions taken, with the numerous activities offered, there is always going to be the chance of suffering an injury. Ironically, in our experience, more people suffer minor injuries like falling over, upset tummies and heat exhaustion, rather than injuries from doing the organised and extremely well supervised sports activities. There is an infirmary on site with a nurse, but no doctor. Expert medical help is available from numerous private medical centres/hospitals located throughout Bali. Three minutes drive from Club Med Bali (opposite the Bali Collection Shopping centre) there is a state of the art medical centre/day surgery. As you would expect, these places are not cheap. It is absolutely essential you have travel insurance if you feel you might need these services. Do not rely on the very minimal health insurance that is included with your Club Med membership when you purchase your holiday.
CHILDREN/THE KIDS CLUB
Having been a Dad in a previous life, I know there is nothing worse than being on holidays and having your children constantly asking you to buy them food, drinks and to pay for their entertainment. In any Club
Whilst we didn’t use the Kids Club on this trip (and to be fair, haven’t done so for quite a number of Club Med holidays now), we had a look at what was available. There is a Babies Club (extra charge) Petite Club (extra charge), Mini Club, Kids Club and Teenagers Club. With the kids taken care of for most of the day (and half of the night if you wish), adults can spend quality time together or if preferred, apart, doing activities that they don’t get to do at home.
Watching the Mini Club kids marching around the grounds singing “we are the mini club…better than the kids club”, brought back very fond memories of many years ago when our own children
One thing that parents need to be aware of when placing their children in any Club Med Mini/Kids clubs
Previously in club Med Bali the mini club and the kids club have been in separate locations which
THE SHOWS and the GO’s
Club Med Bali is a big village, accommodating nearly 900 people + staff when
The White sensation night/show was the week’s standout spectacular. There was the beach party night and a new concept called the ‘foam party’, which was a lot of fun for adults and kids alike.
The GO Team in Bali was up there with the best we have seen. Friendly and dedicated to their jobs, we could not fault them (and we have seen a lot of GO teams in our time!)
We make a point of not commenting on specific GO’s in our reviews primarily because by the time you book and go to Club Med Bali, there is every chance they will have moved on to another village. Those whom we did meet, were very engaging and delightful.
However, there is a group of people who don’t move around the various Club Med villages, they don’t appear in the shows and they certainly don’t share the glamour and adulation that many GO’s receive. These are
THE MANAGEMENT
The CEO, MD. or Head Honcho, whatever you like to call ‘The Boss’ of any Club Med Village is referred to as the ‘Chef de Village’. To be ‘Chef de Village’ in the old days you just had to be good at organising parties but how things have changed!
The new breed of Village Chiefs
Chef de Village Jean-
In doing our research for this review we had cause to spend quite a bit of time with these two and we have to thank them for their patience and in particular, their tolerance of my (sometimes) pedantic questions.
In our experience, the successful running of any Club Med is dependent on the Chef de Village and the way in which he/she motivates their staff. When we were in Club Med Phuket, the Chief was a ‘locum’ and only in caretaking mode until a replacement arrived. In our
The GO’s in Bali were positive and motivated and as in any organisation, this had to come from the top. Well done JB!
It is worth noting that after a two year term, Jean
THE DEPARTURE
Check out time is 11.00am but if your room is not booked for another guest, you can stay in it (for a fee) until your transfer to the airport. Nearly all flights from Bali to Sydney or Melbourne do not depart until around midnight, meaning it is desirable to retain your room until at least the time you go to dinner on the evening of your departure. Due to the almost 100% occupancy of the
Even with such notice, we could not remain in our room till 6.00pm but
With the earlier opening time of 6.30 for the main restaurant, we still had plenty of time to enjoy
SUMMARY
We are often asked which club med is the best. Our simple answer is that there is no one Club Med that is the best. Everybody has a different set of expectations as to what constitutes a great holiday. If you’re travelling from Australia with young children, Club Med Bali is the closest and that may well be the deciding factor. Yet, if you live in Kuala Lumpur, Club Med Cherating is only a
We hope that the previous 8,200 words, have given you some insight into what to expect in Club Med Bali. For us, the uninterrupted beach location, proximity to Australia, the OK rooms, the totally rebuilt restaurants, dining areas, bar and ‘zen pool’ make Club Med Bali a favourite of ours. They just need to get the new Seafood restaurant open and fix what we hope was a temporary budget issue in the main restaurant and we will be happy campers.
For the statistically inclined, on Trip Advisor, the percentage of people who think Club Med Bali is ‘Excellent’ or ‘Very good’ at the time of writing, was 89% of all reviews. Those who thought it ‘poor’ or ‘terrible’ were a mere 4.2%
Interestingly, this represents a 1% decrease in the number of people who gave an ‘Excellent or Very Good’ rating since our last visit and an increase of nearly 1% of those who thought it Poor or Terrible. Not a large variation but it does confirm our opinion that there has been a reduction in some aspects of the Club Med Bali experience. In
WOULD WE GO AGAIN?
Next time we go there will be a new Chef de Village, a new Executive Chef, a new second in charge and at least half of the GO team will be different
Club Med Bali celebrate Bastille Day (14th July) with a massive Garden dinner (weather permitting). Would we want to miss that?
Nope!….. So we have already booked for 8 nights from 11th July 2025 (taking advantage of the current 30% discount special). Why don’t you join us and come and say
If you can’t make it, make sure to bookmark this site so you don’t miss our up to the minute review of what has changed in Club Med Bali (both good and bad!)