The Rarotongan Beach Resort & Lagoonarium

The Perfect Family Holiday! We recently stayed at The Rarotongan Beach Resort and Lagoonarium with our five adult children and five grandchildren, and it truly was the best family holiday we’ve ever had! The location is absolutely perfect — right on a stunning beach with incredible snorkelling just steps from our rooms. The rooms themselves were great — comfortable, clean, and perfectly suited to our big family group. What really made the stay unforgettable, though, was the phenomenal staff. Every single person we met was warm, friendly, and went above and beyond to make sure we had a great time. From helping us organise activities to making the little ones feel special, they were amazing. We loved relaxing at the bar (bonus points for showing the NRL finals live!), enjoyed delicious meals, and had an absolute blast at the Island Night — such a fun and vibrant experience. The kids (and adults!) couldn’t get enough of the hermit crab hunting and crab races. Everything about this resort made it the perfect choice for our family. We left with full hearts and so many wonderful memories. We can’t wait to come back! 🌴💙

My wife and I recently stayed at the Rarotongan Beach Resort for a week (regretfully). The location of the accommodation was ideal, the accommodation itself really needs to be addressed. The room we stayed in for a week was furnished and fitted out in the 1950's, very dated and not what is expected of a resort such as this. Our room was listed as "beach side", what we got was the employees carpark and dust. We had lighting in the bath area that just flickered constantly, this was reported to site maintenance. The staff had a look, said they would get it repaired, and as far as I'm aware its still flickering now, a week later. ||Showers were another experience, one day my wife and I would enjoy a warm/hot shower, the next, not a warm/hot drop of water to be found: really poor service. The layout and condition of the bathroom/toilet area is something that needs addressing, privacy is also minimal. ||Housekeeping.....non existent. We would put a "please make up our room" sign each morning, hoping something would be done, most times door sign was still there at 5 in the afternoon. The days the room was maintained, the was rubbish left in the room with the wet used towels etc. We went to the resort reception area on one occasion and requested to have our room made up, the receptionist instructed us to go and find room service personnel ourselves.....?? I think we made up our own room one or twice during our stay.||We spoke to a number of guests staying at the resort while we were there, and all had similar experiences to us to talk about. ||The island itself was beautiful, our experience less than adequate for what we paid for and expected and what we received.||Regards|Mick

Good location for snorkeling, moderate distance from airport. Nice lobby with adjacent covered and comfortable "reading room". Facinating assorted landscaping with banana trees, orchids, and palms swaying in the breeze. Fun pool with artificial waterfall. Rooms and public spaces are a little tired and frayed around the edges, but clean. The original construction (or remodels) are a bit clumsy or weird. The rooms are clean, functional, and housekeeping staff work hard to keep guests happy. Generally, a reasonably good value. Noise was not an issue. Good activities provided for kids. Staff were delightful, but the cashless system of charging to the room needs work, as we had several staff based errors that took some doing to resolve. The breakfasts were "average" hotel fare. Dinner and lunch from the restaurant was only tolerable, and when we discovered Kaena restaurant, a short walk away, we ate there instead. Do NOT miss the Passion Fruit Mojito at the Capt Andy's bar, or Daisy's free cooking class for Ika Mata.

We had the best time here! We booked one of the beachfront rooms and the view through coconut trees out to sea was stunning. Sleeping to the sound of the moonlit ocean was a magic experience. |It was my partners 50th birthday during our stay and the team were kind enough to decorate our room with balloons (thanks Sue!) |We booked the Monday night island dinner and the restaurant team kindly sang happy birthday to him with some birthday treats. Such a special fun evening, the MC was great!…make sure you book this dinner in advance as it gets very busy. Lots of laughs and dancing entertainment. |Other highlights of our stay here included happy hour on the sundeck, we were lucky enough to see heaps of whales breaching!! Snorkelling right outside the front of the resort, we saw a turtle and lots of cool fish species. Nice safe bay to snorkel in. |Good location and easy distance to Muri beach and the West side beaches and bars if you have a car or scooter. |Friendly helpful staff and excellent Pina Coladas! (try the chilli one if you are feeling adventurous lol)|For couples they also have the Sanctuary side which is adults only and has a cool swim up bar. |Just loved our stay and already want to go back! Thanks Rarotongan team!!

Rooms need a lot of care and updating. They actually store brooms and dustpans in the clothes closet in each room. No kidding. They also had a fridge in a clothes closet leaving NO ROOM to hang clothes. Disgusting. Cockroaches in the bathroom and slugs crawl in from under the doors. No screen doors in the patio. The menu has just one or two vegetarian items excluding some salads. The beach is poorly maintained... a half filled wine glass stayed on one of the beach tables for over three days before it was picked! The overall beach is not inviting at all especially if you compare it with the other side on the Sanctuary rooms beachfront. This hotel is dated and needs major refurbishment. Everything seems to be a second thought. One or two reception staff were excellent like Daphne and a couple of chefs Balaram, Thushar were thoughtful in offering us vegetarian dishes not on the menu. Puneet and Jayesh in the dinning hall were very helpful and looked after us nicely. Their twice a week cultural show is decent but the sound system is atrocious. And I do not know why but they allow guests to walk barefoot into the main dinning hall. That is so disgusting and unacceptable. The whole experience at this hotel, for us, was much below expectations. They do have a guest lounge which looks more like a railway station waiting room. At a minimum they should have better decor with a water station and ideally a tea and coffee station as well. The have these most ugly yellow curtains that stretch all across the front and give this room an unsavory taste. They said it was one of the oldest hotels on the island. It sure felt like that in a rough and uninviting way.

Loved our stay, we were lucky to have a room basically on the beach! while the noise from the restaurant on karaoke night was almost unbearable, the drums and ukelele on other nights were a lovely sound to fall asleep to and more than made up for the aspirational rendition of 'rolling in the deep' we tried not to listen to. We stayed with our 5yo who was absolutely chuffed with the lovely compliments and interactions she had with all staff at reception and in the restaurant. She LOVED greeting everyone with a hearty Kia Orana, sometimes several times in a row... sorry about that 😁 Breakfast was lovely, good variety of fresh fruits, pastries, cereals, hot foods and chefs also on site in the dining room cooking to order. Our meals were also delicious at the restaurant, yummy cocktails and the fish cooked well. Our only criticism was that we stayed 6 nights and ate at the restaurant at least once each day - only once were able to order dessert, at lunch time. After finishing our meals each time it was a bit hard to find someone to take our order again as they were all so busy, staff just didn't seem to have time to come back to us even after getting up to go and ask. we offered to order at the bar on 2 different occasions and were told someone would come to our table soon but 20+ minutes later we gave up. That said, our pepe said the banana split we did finally get on day 5 was 'deeeeelicious' and i can confirm the brownie was also excellent. Rich, decadent and just the right serving size after a big lunch. Our room was ok, tidy, uncluttered and included all the standard bits n bobs you'd expect from a hotel. the curtain on the large sliding door did not reach all the way over so i had to use a te vaevae to cover the gap if i wanted to get changed after dark, and to block the sun in the morning so we wouldn't be woken too early. Also the shower floor is very unevenly tiled so the water doesn't drain properly and stepping into tepid foot soup on day 1 was a bit off putting. Overall though, we loved our stay and hope to return again, we've already made a note of which room we think we'd like next time. Special mention for the beautiful dogs that have made the resort their home, particularly Jumper the fisherdog who we watched swim right out to the reef in low tide and splash around catching fish, and lovely Millie who blessed me with her company several times as i sat in the shade. Ka kite anō see you again whanau, Kia orana!

The service was awesome and friendly and happy. Can't fault anything. Perfect. Made our stay very pleasurable. The food was amazing. The best place on the island for eating. The battered fish and chips were cooked to perfection. Thank you sooo much for your hospitality, amazing stay, so happy we stayed there. Will miss you all and everything there. Also got a facial and massage at the RESORT while i was staying there which was sooo amazing. Stayed on the Beachfront. The snorkeling right out front is so neat. Saw so many beautiful colored fish and stingray

We were so excited to stay here. It was an upgrade from our previous accommodation and was in a great location. The beach was incredible and the snorkelling a pleasant surprise. We saw Moray Eels, stunning fish everywhere, the water was exceptionally clear and the water was warm! Our initial room was a disappointment on the top floor by the kids playground which was noisy so we asked to be shifted. We preferred the downstairs room with patio and outside table but it had an interconnecting door that banged around all night in the wind. As it was an internal door, it was sealed shut with a boarded facade so you couldn't fix it. We talked to reception and they sent a maintenance man but nothing came of it. It kept me awake each night and was super irritating. ||Con's |- No smart TV, so can only rely on their limited channels. Can't cast to them with our devices. No Netflix. |- Laundry service is $8 for a wash and $7 to dry. Very expensive. |- Food at the restaurant was average for dinner. |- Dated room||Pro's|- Lovely pool at the Sanctuary Resort that's interconnecting (adults only)|- Breakfast has good selection and stunning views out over the water|- Location was good as in-between Muri beach and the city centre.