Anchorage Beach Resort

Disclaimer: This review is my personal opinion, and is based on what I saw during a recent visit to the property (July 2019). While the review is negative, I have no agenda for giving either good or bad reviews… I write about what I see and my own personal experiences.

This review almost didn’t get written. After all, if I have nothing good to say about a resort (and I use the word resort very loosely), then perhaps it's better to just say nothing? But on reflection, the fact is I did visit the property, I did see what it's like, and it's only fair that I let readers like you know what the place is like.

Otherwise you might visit their website, believe the innaccurate, outdated and highly photoshopped pictures, and think you have found the perfect holiday destination. Once you have paid in advance and arrived, it's too late to ask for a refund. Well, you can ask but chances of getting one are pretty slim.

That is the whole point of this website. To try and give you unbiased and accurate information so you can make an informed decision when planning your Fiji holiday.

So… where to start? At the beginning, with the road into the property.

The Road Into Anchorage

You have perhaps 2km of appallingly bad road to navigate before reaching Anchorage. It was sealed at one point, but over the years the seal has degraded badly, and is now nothing more than a narrow strip down the centre. You will probably have to drive with one wheel on the center, and the other in the gravel and dirt.

You need to drive slowly, and pick your line very carefully, there can be potholes that will belly your vehicle if you put a wheel in the wrong place.

While you won't want to take your eyes off the road, if you did, then you would possibly spy large piles of household rubbish lining the edge of the road. It seems the locals use this area as a dump site. While roads in Fiji are pretty bad in general, this particular road is one of the worst you will come across. Low clearance vehicles are NOT recommended. Not a great introduction to Anchorage, although as this is a public road I doubt that they are responsible for the (lack of) maintenance.

Arriving At Anchorage

Once you have navigated what passes for an access road, then you arrive at a fairly dismal looking reception. This is located at the top of a steep hill, the actual main resort area is down the bottom on the flat area between the hill and the coast.

What their website does NOT tell you, is that there is a sugarcane rail track passing right through the middle of the resort, and during cutting season (June to Dec) there are multiple trains passing through each day. These are noisy, and disruptive… be prepared to be woken up in the small hours by passing trains.

The Restaurant and Toilet Block

Imagine this. You are sitting outside the restaurant, and you are wondering why there is a pervasive smell of raw sewage filling the air.

So you go to investigate, and find there are two outside toilets attached to the restaurant. The doors are open and you look inside.

What you see are toilets that are half full of human excrement… literally half full. There is no water in the bowls and goodness knows what is smeared on the walls. Now you know where that stink is coming from, but what is more concerning, is that this is in the same area that food is prepared.

The stench is overpowering, and you ask yourself – is there faecal contamination on the food they serve here? How do they allow those toilets to get in such a state without cleaning it up, do the owners and staff not care? Are there no health department inspections? I will point out that this is not a "one off" thing, as people have complained about it more than once on T.A reviews. So management is aware of the problem, but don't seem to care enough to do something about it.

Do not eat here. Just don't. It doesn't matter how hungry you are, go elsewhere. In my opinion, the health risks are just too great. Anchorage have a daily meal plan for around FJ$100 a day per person. If you decide to stay here, then do yourself a favour and at least skip the meal plan. Provide your own food, or eat out at the nearby Marina.

The Accommodation

I did not enter any of the rooms, although I did look through the ranch slider doors of a couple of empty units. So I'm not in a poisition to give an opinion of the condition of these, other than to say they did not look the same as the Anchorage website pictures. I will leave it at that.

They have what they refer to as "Mountain View" rooms, and according to their website… "Mountain view Spa Rooms are located on a gentle rise 150 meters away from the beach."

A gentle rise? You need to be rather fit to tackle the walk up and down this "gentle rise". If you're not, then you will be by the time you leave. It is a very steep hill, and if you stay here, then you will have to walk up and down this several times per day to get to the restaurant or pool.

But perhaps that is better than staying down below at the bottom of the hill, in the "Ocean View" rooms. At least you are not so close to the railroad tracks, so it might be a little less noisy when a train goes past.

Prices, And Deceptive Advertising

The Anchorage website has to be one of the more deceptive I have come across. I get it… a resort will always try to show their property in a good light, glossing over or hiding the faults. That's their job, to sell rooms.

But when they take it to the extremes that Anchorage does, then you have to ask … is this misleading and outright dishonest representation of the property? IMO, yes it is.

This place doesn't even have the saving grace of being cheap… they market themselves as high class, with prices that reflect that. The truth is very different.

Beach Resort? Well, this place is not a resort, and they don’t have much of a beach. Unless you count the little bit of sand with flotsam, rubbish, and an old boat that you see in the picture below. However, their website would have you believe otherwise.

The same is true of everything else that I saw. Pool looks marvellous on their website. But the truth is, it doesn't appear particularly clean, there are multiple missing and broken tiles, and the so called swim up bar that is advertised to be open all day until late, doesn't seem to be operating. In fact, I didn't manage to speak to anyone that can recall seeing it operating.

So you have been warned. The Anchorage website is misleading and inaccurate at best, the prices are what you would expect from a high end establishment, and their restaurant/toilet block is perhaps the most disgusting I have seen in Fiji (and I have seen some pretty bad places over the past 12 years).

It's up to you whether you decide to book accommodation here. But not through us, and please do your due diligence first. Do not make your decision based solely on what you see on the Anchorage website. If you do, then you will almost certainly be disappointed. Personally, I would stay elsewhere.

Any Good Points About Anchorage?

Anchorage has very mixed reviews at Trip Advisor with an extremely generous 3.5 star rating. But the same can be said of anywhere, including 5 star resorts. So forget the glowing reviews, as well as the ones that complain about every single thing, and instead look for recurring patterns. What do the majority of reviews say, is there a pattern to the complaints? I suggest that you read review sites such as T.A before committing to staying here.

One good thing I can find to say about Anchorage, is that they run very reasonably priced daytrips out to some of the Mamanuca islands. If you want to spend a day out at Beachcomber, you probably won't find a cheaper price than this… FJ$119 pp.

The location midway between Nadi and Lautoka is also good, if you want to spend some time in town. Other than that, it's hard to be positive about this place.

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