competition on curacao?

[smokey braden]

has any one heard about this resort?
maybe this resort is giving the others a run for their money.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Re...ulanda_and_Beach_Club-Willemstad_Curacao.html

 

[Damselfish]

Lodge Kura Hulanda - I stayed there in August but haven't had a chance to write a review yet. It's a beautiful place to stay, and a wonderful house reef. Unfortunately the on site op is Ocean Encounters West which had some serious issues. We actually checked out after 5 nights and moved to Habitat for the next week. Big comedown in the quality of the hotel and dining, but it was worth it to have a real diveshop.

 

[RICHinNC]

are you "forced" to use the dive shop at kura??

 

[Damselfish]

are you "forced" to use the dive shop at kura??

no, but it's a long way to anyplace else. A good convienient on-site op is something I strongly prefer.

 

[ronrosa]

Lodge Kura Hulanda - I stayed there in August but haven't had a chance to write a review yet. It's a beautiful place to stay, and a wonderful house reef. Unfortunately the on site op is Ocean Encounters West which had some serious issues. We actually checked out after 5 nights and moved to Habitat for the next week. Big comedown in the quality of the hotel and dining, but it was worth it to have a real diveshop.

I like the shore diving on Curacao, so I'm not sure I would even do any boat diving. The shore diving setup at Habitat was the ultimate in convenience. Not only for the house reef, but also for loading tanks in your car to venture to other sites as well.

Can you provide any details on the issues with Ocean Encounters ? Problems with staff, facilities, boat, tanks ? My non-diving wife would surely appreciate cushier accomodations.

 

[Damselfish]

I like the shore diving on Curacao, so I'm not sure I would even do any boat diving. The shore diving setup at Habitat was the ultimate in convenience. Not only for the house reef, but also for loading tanks in your car to venture to other sites as well.

Can you provide any details on the issues with Ocean Encounters ? Problems with staff, facilities, boat, tanks ? My non-diving wife would surely appreciate cushier accomodations.

PM sent, until I get around to writing up that report...

 

[saildiver]

My husband and I are planning aan 18 day stay at Lodge Kura Hulanda beginning 10-13-06 and would be very interested in any difficulties you "encountered".

 

[JenM]

We are just now wrapping up a lovely 10-day stay at the Lodge Kura Hulanda. We will be leaving on Saturday (sob). Obviously, the Lodge has a high-speed internet connection in each room. I can't say enough good things about this place. We've been to Curacao 4 times before and always stayed at Habitat, but their house reef has gotten a bit beaten up due to the pressure of all the divers there, and we were pretty tired of the food and the service (or lack thereof), so when I heard about the Lodge, we decided to give it a try. The place is beautiful, and the service is wonderful (still Caribbean slow, but at least they actually pour you a glass of water within 5 minutes, unlike Habitat where you can wait 30 min for a glass even when the restaurant is completely empty of other customers). We are staying in an ocean front studio and it is quite large with a beautiful private terrace and a full kitchenette.

As for our experience with the diveshop, Ocean Encounters West, it's true that it's not Habitat. The tankroom is not open 24 hours, and quite honestly, we have missed that convenience. But, the staff has been extremely helpful and accomodating. We've been mainly shorediving here on the house reef along with two days of boat dives (we didn't rent a car) and it has been great. The house reef is gorgeous and the boat goes to really nice sites here on the far northwestern end of the island. The boat is large, well-organized for diving, O2 on board, and a very experienced boat captain. We've gone out with as few as 4 others and as many as 15, and even with 15, it wasn't too bad. They do limit your dive time on the 1st dive to one hour and to 45 minutes on the second, but often they are doing drift dives with live boat entries and pickups so they need the group to stay together as much as possible. We've always just gone off to the side, keeping the main group in sight, and they've had no problem with it. For shore diving, they are very well set-up with a nice new pier that is easy to enter and exit from.

The negatives are that the shop is only open from 8AM to 5PM. For a night dive, you have to get the tanks from the shop before they close and put them in a storage room on the lodge's property (next door to the shop) along with all your gear. Then, later in the evening, you go to the restaurant at the Lodge and ask someone to open the door for you so you can dive. When you get back later, you then have to go back up to the restaurant and have them open it again so you can put everything back. The lodge and the shop are on a public beach (Playa Kalki) and there've been theft problems so that's why they have the setup they do. I'm hoping that if they get more serious divers, the lodge will be willing to issue you the key to the storage room so that at least you don't have to schlep upstairs to restaurant to get someone to open it for you.

As a matter of fact, we are heading off in a half hour to do our final night dive so clearly we weren't bothered too much by all this. The positives far outweigh the negatives IMHO. I'm sorry to hear that the previous poster had a different experience and I'd be curious to compare notes. We've had a great time here!

 

[ronrosa]

Sounds like Habitat and Kura aren't really targeting the same type of customers nor are they the same type of resort.

Dive resort vs. a resort that has diving.

 

[Damselfish]

Sounds like Habitat and Kura aren't really targeting the same type of customers nor are they the same type of resort.

Dive resort vs. a resort that has diving.

From a few chats I had with managers at the Lodge it actually seems they would like to. I think they are still learning but they know what they've got down there. Purely from a business point of view I believe they understand divers could be a good slice of business for them. And their goal is very much to make customers happy. The fact that they did something about the off-hours storage situation, even if it's not the perfect solution, is one sign they are listening to what divers want. (The hotel locker was apparently not original but a later "fix".)