The Taikang Sanya, a Tribute Portfolio Resort

The staff were all very kind, professional, and nice. The hotel puts on a show every day at 8:20pm. It’s a large, beautiful, well-maintained Marriott property in Haytang Bay, Sanya, around 40-60 minutes by taxi from Sanya airport. There are adult and children’s pools, including a kids’ pool with a slide. In November the adult pool was usually empty, apart from people coming for photoshoots around the hotel. Those shoots were also my main complaint: photographers shouted to people from a distance, and the noise felt excessive for a resort where you come to relax. There are four or five restaurants serving different foods, and a bar called Pink Salt on the sixth floor. We went for a drink each evening and rarely saw anyone there, though maybe November is just quiet or our habits differed from other guests. Breakfast is huge and mostly Asian with some Western dishes. It gets very busy after 9:00am, so for a quieter meal go between 7:00 and 9:00am. The gym is also on level 6 and is tiny for the number of rooms, but we rarely saw anyone using it. There’s a small supermarket in the hotel open until midnight. They sell fruit and will cut it for you, which was very nice and tasty. Prices are by weight: mango was 25 yuan per kilo, and passion fruit 25 yuan for 500 gr. We had an « aqua room » on the second floor. All rooms on that floor have a balcony bathtub, nice for a relaxing day. Our room was nicely decorated, with a big television and easy access to the hdmi port. The bathroom was huge, with a bathtub and shower, and the bed was comfortable enough to sleep like a baby. Most staff don’t speak English, so we used Translate on our phone, which is totally fine in China. We met one receptionist who spoke really good English, and it was nice to chat without a phone. Since Sanya attracts more international tourists, it would be good to train more staff in English. A few staff members speak Russian. The free laundry room has four washing machines and two dryers, but several times we found cycles that had finished hours earlier and guests hadn’t collected their clothes. That kept others from doing laundry and understandably frustrated people. The hotel could use room cards to start cycles, so it knows which room to contact about removing clothes. There are kids’ playgrounds around the hotel, including a kids’ garden where people look after your children. Restrooms are clearly marked no smoking, but I often smelled cigarette smoke in the toilets and sometimes in the lift. That disrespect should be investigated, and the hotel has plenty of cameras to find people, report them, and exclude them from the resort. Another practical point is cost. I tried booking through Marriot, where four days in an aqua room was close to 850 euros. Hotels aggregator Booking.com had the best deal at 460€. If you speak Chinese, I’m sure WeChat or influencers’ streams may have even better deals, as Asian influencers and content creators livestream from the hotel for hours to promote it.

A lovely new, modern boutique hotel. The breakfast buffet was beautiful and tasty, with local and Western food. There’s a good mix of pools for kids and adults. 😀

I love the garden around this amazing hotel, along with its central patio and pond. We’ve stayed twice, in June 2023 and February 2025, and I’d happily keep coming back if it weren’t for the cost. The South China Sea is very close, with impressive waves. Breakfast is a favorite, and I also love dinner at the Chinese restaurant, though I was disappointed they didn’t have the green baobun on our second visit. The café’s tiramisu and coffee are great. The gym is good but a little small, and it’s in high demand even when the hotel isn’t full. On our last visit they offered a "free" photoshoot, meaning five digital pictures were included. The photographer was really good and made it memorable, but buying all the digital photos and one album cost about 3000 yuan. I didn’t meet a single unfriendly staff member on either visit. Compared with other hotels on Hainan, there’s a decent selection of Western food, though more at breakfast than dinner.

Highly recommended if you’re on Hainan Island.