I travelled to the Mariott, Sanya to attend a conference.

The hotel is around an hour transfer from the hotel and it is an easy trip.

Check in /out was painless, they bring you a welcome drink, towels, and a necklace made of shells.

The accomodation is spacious, with an excellent bathroom with separate shower and bath. Lovely large comfortable bed, sofa, desk and TV.
There is a mini bar in your room and coffe making facilities. My balcony offered lovely views across the grounds to the ocean.

The grounds are beautiful and well maintained, the pool has lots of different areas, that offer privacy, and there are bars and service areas that are easy to find and convenient.

The beach was lovely, plenty of sunbeds and a nice cooling breeze. The weather was a little cloudy during our stay and with the breeze might make you think it was not going to burn you. Be warned, it will.
There is a beach service offering food and drinks and if you want to move sunbeds around there are attendants to help you (Don't try lifting them on your own, they are solid wood and very heavy).
There are ladies on the beach selling jewellery. They are not easily dissuaded, a polite no thanks, dosent work and you have to ignore them completely. But if you are interested, it gets quite entertaining, more of them will come and join in and good deals are available if you are prepared to take the time.

The conference facitilties were good, the staff very attentive and keen to please and provide what we needed. We did have a problem getting wifi in the Conference room.

Eating and Drinking, the lobby offered a good selection of drinks but could be slow, particularly if there was a few of you ordering. Their English was not so good, and would recommend taking the notepad and pen out with you if you need to order a large round. However, in spite of this it was impossible to complain, the staff were extremely poilite and helpful everywhere that you went in the hotel and you really did feel looked after.

The buffet restaurant offered a good selection, and I don't usually do desserts, but had a selection that was too good to miss. The vietnamese a la carte was good, and the Chinese. The Beach Bar offered a good menu that covered various tastes, the lobby also offered snacks.

Would I go back, I'm not sure - if I were going for a quiet week with my husband, probably. If I were travelling with my lively nine year old, then probably not. I don't think I would stay here for longer than a week, but in fairness did not have time to check out the activities and excursions that were available.

We spent 4 days during December at the Marriott; wife, myself and children aged 3 and 1. To put our review into context, we live in Asia and travel frequently always staying in 5-star resorts so we have a bit of experience. This resort stacked up extremely well. Beautiful grounds, nice room, good pool and beach: despite hotel being sold out we never had a problem getting chairs and neither beach nor pool ever seemed crowded. The service was extremely good, all the staff very friendly and eager to cater to all our needs - in particular they were excellent with our children, always making over them, etc. We ate at all the restaurants and found the food quite good, including at the Chinese restaurant where we did not experience issues with bones, etc. as others have described. We ventured to the Sheraton and Hilton next door and were pleased with our choice from an overall standpoint although the Chinese restaurant at the Hilton was better than that at the Marriott.
Only drawback I could see is that the resort area is, as others have noted, very isolated so not much to do in the surrounding area. Not a problem for us though.

Just got back from 4 days at the Marriott in Sanya. The grounds are beautiful, the beach was perfect, and pools were nice. Rooms were clean- we were upgraded to ocean front view which was great but my parents had mountain view which was also nice.
Staff was very friendly and most had some english. Agree with previous review- a ton of russians for some reason. Anyway, the reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that although they tried hard, the service was VERY SLOW. Especially in restaraunts and at the outside bars. We ate at the vietnamese restaraunt "Indochine" one night- food was very good but as usual in China, came out of the kitchen in no particular order (i.e. main course 1st than appetizers).
One other thing to note for families with kids- the children's pool is located in a completely isolated area of the resort away from the main pool and beach- we thought this was really strange as we had to make a special trip to go there and couldn't run back and forth between beach/kiddie pool. Also, the pools are not heated (other than the hot tub of course) and seemed quite chilly for kids.
Also agree with previous reviews that this area of the island is isolated- it's good if you just want to hang out at pool and beach. But you can wander between resorts (Hilton and Sheraton on either side of the Marriott) so there are quite a few restaraunt options between all the hotels.
Overall though, we would recommend and would stay there again.

I just completed a 5 night stay at the Marriott Resort on the island of Hainan. For those of you unfamiliar with the region, it's basically turning into the "Hawaii" of China.

The hotel grounds are well maintained with lots of friendly staff and service most have a passable knowledge of English. The hotel has a number of great looking pools, however the main attraction would have to be the beach.

The beach is pristine, with staff constantly picking up trash and tending to the beach chairs. The sand quality is great, nice and soft, not a lot of rocks. The water was pretty clear too, and the perfect temperature to cool off after laying in the sun all afternoon. While it's considered a public beach, I can see no real means of access to it other than through the hotel grounds, so it is pretty private. There were some locals selling merchandise, but they're not very pushy and will easily go away.

Hotel rooms are well adorned and have some nice amenities like beach sandals, bathrobes, and room slippers (pretty common Asian thing). Toiletries, mattresses, pillows, turn down service, were all great too.

For those Platinum elite level members, free buffet style breakfast is included (~$25 in today's exchange rate). Lots of both Asian and Western style food to eat here, however don't look for a ton of day-to-day variety. It's only a minor quibble from me, but more variety would've been nice. The rest of the restaurants were ok, nothing to really write home about. Prices were a little on the high side, but normal for a resort hotel.

The hotel is pretty far away from any other attractions, so you'll spend most of your time in it. If you're looking to go sight seeing, the hotel can arrange for you to hire a taxi for a day or half-day, just realize that you're about 1 hr from most sites.