Yes I stayed at angel isle, 4 days beginning of august.
Warning : This is my straightforward opinion which I have also informed Mrs.Mitchinson, the owner, on a "stormy" discussion on the last night of my stay. I am not sure though the points I mention will be adressed.
Accomodation :
Reefseekers welcomes you at the airport when you stay with them, the transfer is included. You are first asked to settle some paperworks at their office before being transfered on the island. I was though surprized being asked to pay for the dives beforehand, when it is customary to pay at the end. Nothing really scandalous but it says a bit about customer relationship management.
The island is nice, although the nicest is the public beach (Bidadari white beach) you can access daily from Labuan Bajo (hence it can also get populated).
The bungalows are VERY nice and comfortable, nothing to say about that, this is the postive point of this reefseekers operation.
The management is totally absent, although you could expect for a 6 bungalows operation that you would see and speak to the manager sometimes... but no, Mrs. Mitchinson told me she had better things to do than to "
sit and discuss with her clients" (working as a consultant in tourism, I wonder which things are more important for a manager? Maybe the management could learn from upmarket accoms). Sometimes the DMs are solving issues which are totally out of their duty because there is a blatant lack of management and no one else in charge.
Food : Their menu is one of the longest and less imaginative documents I have read, not surprizingly the food is not up and not varied at all. The problem is that you can't go to LBJ to change that, you're stuck on the island.
The indonesian staff is doing their best with a smile, but they tend to focus on procedures they have been given, like being three people to bring your breakfast and take 10 minutes to put the fork in the correct position on your table... but the most important is often forgotten like bringing the breakfast 20 minutes late while your diving early that day, half of the order missing while they never forget to bring ketchup and soja sauce with your honey pancake
D ) . etc. I see in this again the lack of the management, who, rather than supporting a continuous staff training, have them focus on silly procedures.
Diving wise :
I don't understand why a dive operation doesn't invest in a good and comfortable boat while operating on a location where the sites are 2 hours boatride away.
The boat we've been proposed was slow, uncomfortable and -most of all- unreliable.
For a 10 hours day trip I would expect : a sun deck (they had one but too small to lodge all 12 divers), a shady rest area (absent, you had to sit in the tank and equipement area).
As a photographer I would expect on the boat : a rinse tank (absent) a dry space where to clean my camera or change lenses (absent) a dry shady space (a joke, everybody comes in wearing a wetsuit or their wet bathingsuit, no space at all).
For a leisure diver in a current prone area like Komodo, I would expect : easy entries but you had to jump from the boat deck, 1,5m above water... ok for me, but one of the lady guest had to kit in the water because she couldn't jump with her equipment on.
Easy and fast ways to come up on board : the crew had for each dive to tie a vertical wooden ladder, 1,5m high which was impossible to climb with the equipment on, therefore we had to unkit everything in the water before stepping up the vertical ladder, which I reckon is not the best way to come aboard in currents and surge.
Dive guides : we had two young english DMs guiding 12 divers. IMO the ratio is too high on indonesian standards, and moreover they only had 1,5 months experience on Komodo while we were already at peak season. They did the best they could do, I have to thank them, but for macro they simply didn't know the sites enough and couldn't find things they weren't aware of.
I asked whether housereef or night dives were possible, to the answer, I understood the guides didn't have the time to explore their own reef. Hence I and everybody else skipped the shore dives.
I really don't understand the staff managing policy of this operation. When told to Mrs.Mitchinson she replied that she had enough guides because she had one more more instructor (Who didn't show up for my whole stay "
because she was ill"... I recently had some news from one of their customers, he told me the ambiance was quite bad a week before my stayn which could explain the instr. "illness"), Mrs Mitchinso also pointed there was a DM-to-be-certified who could be used as a guide too. (For my part, I am not sure a resc.diver -that's how I call a DM not certified yet- should be used to guide customers on waters he doesn't even know) .
When I asked why Mrs.Mitchinson didn't come to guide the divers, she replied that "
she wished she could, but she had more important thngs to do than assist the divers" (I wonder which things are more important for the manager of a dive operation...but again that's me...)
Although the boat is slow and the daytrips might end at nighttime, you cannot do more than 2 dives even though the trip might last 10 hours in a day. I have been told they couldn't bring additional tanks because the boat would be too heavy!
Safety and checking procedures :
On a certain day of my dive trip, after 45 minutes boat ride, the staff discovered that they didn't bring two pair of fins, hence as there is no storage room on the boat and there is no spare equipment, we had to go nback to the dive centre (1h30 navigation more... thanks...)
On another day, we heard noise and coughs in the engine room twice during the boat ride to the dive site, all the divers looked at themselves and got worried. We were told it was nothing but probably a rope that got tucked around the propeller. We dived on Batu Bolong, surfacing one hour afterwards we were surprized that our boat was drifting 400m away, engine broken down. Luckily, two other boats came to pick us up and tow our boat back to the dive center. When asked to Mrs.Mitchinson she replied that "engine problems could happen to an dive operation". On my side I am surprized 1- there is no second engine on boats that are navigating 3 hours away from their home 2- a new boat was still getting built on Reefseekers beach while peak season had started (once again : how about anticipating a new boat ready for the peak season, it only needs a calendar ... ) 3- a customer that was diving with them 10 days before told me they experienced so much engine problems on their boats thet they had to dive on another operation's boat... Wasn't that engine fixed then?
As a conclusion :
Angel isle has beautiful bungalows, but there is a lot to do on the service and management sides until they can justify the upmarket qualification Mrs.Mitchinson pretends to aim for. She also told me prices would increase drastically in the future (it's currently around 150USD per night+bkfst, not given for Indonesia).
I do not recommend diving with Reefseekers currently.
Their boat is not satisfactory, it doesn't meet my comfort and safety requirements for long daytrips. Also the guides should be more experienced to enjoy the complete Komodo diving experience, again I don't blame them but it looks the operation has had quite some turnover in the past.
Despite my experience, Komodo diving is really awesome, but our boat couldn't manage going further while I think it needs going eberywhere North and South.
Either you find a daytrip comany in LBJ with a GOOD boat (I think Divine Diving and Komodo Dive have better boats) or you dive on a LOB, which should be optimal.
