Gaya Island Resort - Small Luxury Hotels of the World Reviews

Environment is nice, staffs are welcoming and helpful. Room is spacious and clean, but food is just so so and overpriced. The private beach area is small, and not that clean if you walk a bit far from the beach chair area.

Gorgeous and friendly staff who are able to serve and cater special trip arrangements. Water sport center arrange great boat snorkeling! Must join and be early bird as quota is limited with boat capacity! Their house reef is beautiful with well-preserved coral garden, though not very big area, do have a great variety of fishes you can see. The only drawback is, food variety of buffet can be more enhanced or to be more specify in local Malaysian food.

Great place to stay that is in convenient reach of KK. Enjoyed all of the various activities such as yoga, canoeing, snorkelling and the trek to see Probiscous monkeys. Only negative is the view of from beach contains many ships as it is obviously a shipping lane for freight into and out of KK.

+ private beach, nice rooms, nature, local reef, amazing food at fisherman’s cave, nice pool, staff friendliness - extra charge for boat transfer (339.2MYR for 2 people), no supermarket/small kiosk on-site for snacks

awesome trip great place facilities nice views also the food so delicious.. u can do more activities and nice staffs

The whole resort is small and there are only limited facilities. The sea view is full of ships (logistics or working ships) When you ask the staff to introduce the activities, they are not familiarised. The most ridiculous charge is on the transport on sea, between resort and the port, it charges RM345(including tax) for two person which are additional out of the room fee.

We enjoyed the trip with the kids. It was lovely hospitality from the resort.

nice hotel with excellent service

Very nice hotel and island. Snorkeling has been very convenient. Yoga class and mindfulness classes are provided. The spa is very comfortable. I will be back once arriving Kota Kinabalu.

We had a pleasant stay at Gaya Island Resort. Not only that it has very nice view and facilities, the service is also excellent. They serve vegetarian meals in the menu .The F&B manager is very friendly and helpful in recommending us the vegetarian meals. The countdown to welcome 2024 was very amazing with Fireworks display

This is the best snorkeling area I ever seen! They have all-you-can-see coral reefs and a variety of marine life. We saw a baby Stingray in the shallow sea. It was priceless!! All kinds of activities you can do, of course with extra charge. To be honest, the first-day check-in was not smooth. We waited so long for Check-in in Jesselton Point, and till we made it to the boat almost take 2 hours. First of all, all the staffs are great. But after we get to the island, their lack of staff makes us wait for our room till 5 pm, is ridiculous. It's two hours after the room should be ready. But their customer service is good though. They are all so nice and we got to eat something at the pool bar and was all complementary and have extension for our check-out time for like an hour and a half. When we get to the lobby, there pack with tourists waiting to get their rooms, and some of them are already angry and aggressive. We were able to book the 2 pm snorkeling with a coach. To have our best of time and avoid the long waiting. We are not mad. And we really get to enjoy the beauty of the sea, marine life and nature of the forest. You can feel and experience that they are really involved in protecting the habitat of marine life and mangrove ecosystems. We will definitely come back again!

Firstly, we were surprised by an undisclosed RM320 boat fee during check-in. This lack of transparency was disappointing and detracted from the overall experience. Guests should be informed of all potential charges beforehand. Secondly, the communication process needs improvement. Guests cannot directly reach the island, and the calls through KL proved inconvenient. There were errors such as getting guests' names wrong, which impacted the overall service quality. Email address doesn’t work too. I urge the management to address these issue asap. Despite the issues, I want to highlight the exceptional service from the resort manager Terrence. His professionalism and assistance were noteworthy, contributing positively to our overall experience.

Everything was perfect! Definitely revisit the place again.

Very good service and nice food