Absolutely loved this experience. The penthouse suite was sooo beautiful, The view was breathtaking, I spent a lot of time on the patio recharging from life, we booked the butler suite (only 2nd time we did so) I’ll explain this later. Our butlers Launcia (Lala) Kenisha and Geoffrey were the BEST, we didn’t need much, we are not that needy, but what we did ask was provided with smiles and kindness. very professional and very easy to spend time with. It was our anniversary and they took time to toast champagne with us. Everyone/everything was so perfect the grounds are beyond words, it’s so green and beautiful you won’t believe the amount of attention and clearly passion put into the landscaping. The beach is stunning, and so much peace.
The resort entertainers and the activities were wonderful, the pool games were really fun. Len, Nia and Champagne and DJ Sky were so much fun and so happy, you can tell they enjoy their jobs very much. JT and Davian (sp?) photographers were great, we almost couldn’t choose which photos, they were all perfect. It’s clear all the staff enjoy being at “work” lol, and go out of their way to make every guest feel completely relaxed.
The food was good, I am super picky so it was hard for me, but my husband loved almost everything he had.
Here is where I am mixed on my 1 thing only. The tipping of the butlers.
This is our 3rd Sandals, the 1st we did have butlers, in my opinion they were not great, it almost felt they were aggravated most of the time. At the end of that trip we discussed should we tip then ( not knowing this was an option) considering these are NO TIP resorts, which is why we assumed it’s costly for the butler suites and the pricing of the room levels. We still tipped what we could knowing we only have limited cash as everything goes onto a card like excursions and photos or trinkets.
2nd Sandals , no butlers because of the cost, airfare and all the things that go into a big trip. Then realizing you can not get a pool chair unless you get up and 5 am and throw towels out or the beach if you are lucky to get a towel after all the pool towels were taken for the pool chairs you would have to leave a book or sunscreen to even get a seat. Then we get there at 9 am and these chairs taken already, either were never occupied or the guest showed up at 2 pm. So frustrating. We went to dinners and made our own reservations this is not a big deal for us, we were able to try every restaurant on that property. The biggest rub was the beach and pool for us. So we booked the butler suite this time for that reason alone mostly. Loving all the extras of course that come with the butler service. So again , limited cash because as we all know vacations are every expensive, this room was not cheap, the flights were very expensive and the other stuff like boarding animals and parking at the airport , we all know what goes into vacations. So we saved every penny all year to make it all work. And it did! Back to the tipping , again we had cash so we gave it all, and split between 3 butlers 2 the night before we left cause they would be off and the 3rd the morning before we left. Then it got all of a sudden very strange , like we didn’t matter anymore ( now with tipping you always feel the internal struggle of is it enough) I felt as of it was , until it wasn’t.
We discussed how weird it became on the way to the airport, so we decided to google this tipping of butlers. Apparently you are expected to tip per day/ per butler $30-50 .
So the math here is 3x$50 x 8 is $1200.00 over and above the let’s say the $12,000 vacation with all the aforementioned things you have to pay for to get to that vacation to an all inclusive resort. So needless to say, we are not sure what is right or wrong but we did what we could and it felt as though it wasn’t good enough which makes us very sad.
So keeping that in mind when you travel to a Sandals and get the butler suites. Any insight anyone has would be great for the next Sandals we have already book before we even left property and also put down the mandatory deposit ( another expense) still not knowing the tipping was an expectation.
Loved our experience but saddened by this tipping situation or lack of knowledge on the whole thing!
