Hey, all! I just came back three days ago from my honeymoon in Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea. I haven't had a chance to write a full review yet, but wanted to alert you that the Sofitel in Moorea (where we stayed) and the Sofitel in Tahiti (we didn't stay there) each have a high percentage of their workers on strike.
French Polynesian police used (force, sic) against striking hotel workers. Scroll down.
Warning: although the article blurb itself is short and to the point, the source Web site probably isn't very objective. Although I found other Web articles about this, I used the link above because it was brief and was dated (6/2), while some others weren't.
Unlike most couples, we visited Moorea last, after Tahiti and Bora Bora, so we missed the bulk of the protests. There were signs and banners in French and English outside of the entrance declaring the workers' allegations--low pay, racial discrimination in hiring--and protesters quietly manning the banners during the day. We were not harrassed or engaged by the protesters.
The owner of one of the stores we visited corroborated the article. Protesters were actually blocking hotel guests' from entering the property. They would have to park far away and walk to the hotel. That's when the police came in. This store owner has no affiliation that I know of with the hotel.
As far as hotel operations, we did not think it materially impacted service for us. We noticed that the same skeleton crew of staffers were running the hotel. The non-managerial staff did not seemed to be as well-versed in English as the hotels in Tahiti and Bora Bora, although that may be the case even without the strike. (We made do with my crappy tenth-grade French.) One of the two restaurants was closed the entire time, possibly because there weren't enough people to run it.
Other ways the thin staff was apparent was that a woman who had as much arm strength as I do (read: not much) had to help us with our luggage, instead of a bellman, and she also ran the front desk. Another guy ran the dinner shift one night and the breakfast shift the following day. Many employees wore street clothes, not uniforms.
That said, our rooms were freshened every day as scheduled. When we had a problem with the AC unit in our bungalow, a repair man was there within five minutes. When we ate at the hotel restaurant, the service (aside from the language issue) was good. However, we didn't do much else at the hotel, like book excursions.
I hope this was helpful. Does anyone else have experiences they'd like to share?
