As many of you know I love the Topas Ecolodge in Sapa. The views are amazing, the trekking is right out the back door and I like being away from the sometimes craziness of Sapa Town. With that said, on one of the nights I visit there was an electricity outage and we were forced to eat dinner by candlelight and I never could get the shower quite right, so this is still an ecolodge.
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Recently guests have brought to my attention the rather bad reviews on TripAdvisor about Topas and I had one guest tell me that the Western managers had gone home, which might have been the reason for some of the problems.
Since we regularly book this hotel I had Michelle contact and chat with the Manager of Topas. He explained to her what he felt was going on and then wrote a great email addressing some of the TripAdvisor reviews. He took time to do this and I appreciate his service level and am excited that we can continue to send guests to this beautiful property. Please see his answers below and then maybe soon you can judge for yourself!
Dear Michelle,
After reading Trip Advisor I see the following subjects commented in the latest reviews:
Food
I think the food is a subjective matter. as most of my guests contact me personally to tell me about how great the food is.
In my guest book I can read as well that this is one of the subjects a lot of people really enjoy about our place.
Pests
Due to our location in the middle of the rice paddies the pests in the bar is a matter that is hard to get rid of. However we are working on a solution to handle this matter to reduce the problem. We make sure at all times to do a proper cleaning and keep our grosseries in closed boxes etc. to ensure our food storage will not be effected by this problem.
Heating
In the latest period of time it has been pretty cold in the whole Sapa area why the challenge to keep it warm has been great.
We have in this period spend 50 % more on electricity compared to last year to give our guests the best enjoyable stay.
I have as well here had several guests telling me this is a nice and warmer place compared to many other places in Sapa.
Hot water
Our hot water supply is coming from solar power and is boosted by main power to ensure there is hot water all day.
Due to the solar panel system it takes a few minutes from turning on the water until it is hot.
In our deluxe bungalows there is no thermostat but you have to mix the cold and hot water yourself.
In our new executive bungalows we have installed a thermostat regulator which makes it easier for our guests to get the right temperature.
We have made these improvements in our new executive bungalows to improve our product why I can recommend to choose this kind of room.
In general i don’t think Trip Advisor is representative for the general opinion of our place as we have a lot of happy guests here who unfortunately don’t write a review on Trip Advisor.
I have attached a scan of our guest book to show you the latest guest comments and hope you will find it useful.
Fell free to contact us for further explanation.
Peter B. Jensen
Lodge Manager