Guest User
July 7, 2023
The Tradewinds Hotel is the nicest hotel on the island of American Samoa. If we were to translate that into a hotel on the mainland, it would be a mid-grade Best Western. The lobby and pool area were lovely, and the fresh flowers were a nice touch. There are also some things that bear improvement: -The rooms are very tired and dated. The bathrooms need remodeling - get the grime and mold out of the grout, redo the bathtubs, have adequate water pressure. The bed was so soft, that we just sank into it and had no support. Very difficult to sleep. And also the room was so musty smelling, that us and all of our clothes just smelled like mold at the end of our stay. I'm still trying to get the smell out of my hair. -We killed 2 cockroaches during our stay -There is music constantly playing in the hallways. Yes, at 3am you can still hear it. -The fitness center equipment was falling apart, and the room was so moldy smelling that you couldn't exercise there -The Equator restaurant had similar food quality to the rest of the island. That is, highly processed, ultra-high salt content, smothered in gravy, etc. All we wanted after that was to detox on vegetables. -We had a massage at the spa and it was probably the most unusual massage we've ever had. The room had no ventilation, for starters. There were 4 women crammed in that room for 12hrs/day with horrific nail polish fumes. I don't know how they didn't pass out. The massage is in the adjacent room with an open door. The weird part about the massage is, they washed our hair as part of it.... THREE TIMES. The girl scrubbed my scalp raw with her nails each time, and it was so painful. Completely bizarre. Ok, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the island itself, since it was so hard to find info about this beforehand. -Be prepared to not swim in the ocean the entire time. There is one public beach on the whole island, and I can tell you that you will not want to swim there. For every other beach, you need to ask permission from the landowner to park there and go to the beach. As in, you need to approach one of the shacks where the locals live in squalor, hope to not get attacked by one of the thousands of aggressive, stray dogs on the island, and hope the person is home and will speak to you. I'm not joking. -You also need to ask permission to take pictures on the island. Same deal as above. Wth? -There is zero concept of hospitality or customer service on this island. They do not cater to tourists, they do not like tourists. If you ask "can we do...xyz?" the answer is usually "we don't do that here." There is no concept of how to accommodate a guest's request - even if they're paying. Be prepared for everyone to be as unhelpful as possible. -Want to try to visit the Manu'a Islands? Sorry, good luck getting them to sell you a ticket unless you're a local. -Much of the islanders live in complete squalor. They do not take care of the island at all, and there is abundant trash around the be