We stayed at Sandals Antigua many years ago and my memories are of good food and very pleasant (Beringer) wine. We had often thought of returning to a Sandals resort and finally booked a visit to Royal Plantation based mainly on the excellent reviews, the beautiful resort, amazing Staff and the best food in the Sandals chain we read. We now realise that the majority of those reviews are from returning guests, some on their 10/20/30th visit often several times a year, they want to keep it just how it is and 5* reviews help that cause.
RP is a boutique resort where every room faces the ocean, beautiful views and the sound of waves lapping on the shore, every part of the hotel faces the ocean and I loved that element of it. There can be a lot of noise from the road, incredibly loud motorbikes and what sounds like cars with no silencer on the exhaust, at times there is also loud music from Ochi next door, but that does finish not much later than 10pm.
The rooms are dated with dark furniture and the bathroom has a tub with shower, again dated. Sunbeds on the beach are old plastic ones, I have a back problem and found them very uncomfortable, no beach chairs anywhere. However everywhere was spotless and tidy, staff do a great job.
The staff across the resort are amazing, everyone stops to have a chat, so friendly and obviously enjoy their jobs. The beach and pool bar staff are the unsung heroes of the resort, they are constantly on the go, remembering what you drink, they are top quality. Two members of staff I must mention, Tresall and Aean, they always made us feel special and their smiles when greeting us helped a lot when things weren’t going so well.
The butler experience didn’t work for us, too much attention, we preferred the concierge service on our previous visit.
Wine is abysmal, I love a glass of red wine with dinner, it wasn’t good. The sparkling wine, what they refer to as champagne, at 5% proof and sweet despite the Brut label, is manageable with lots of orange juice, on its own is fit only to pour down the sink and we did.
Food, breakfast was good, best meal of the day, lunch we only ate at the grill where we both found a couple of dishes we enjoyed, nothing at the terrace appealed. Dinner was the worst time, if you like lots of seafood, its average at best my husband does not and really struggled at times to put a meal together. With so many repeat guests who think the food is great, I have no idea why, changes are unlikely to be made.
We visited Ochi and it was as bad there but without the attentive service of RP.
The greatest strength of RP is its greatest weakness, very high rate of returning guests. Strength as there are lots of very obviously happy guests who come back time after time, great stats for the management team. Weakness? Big groups of people who arrange to meet there who form cliques, they take over the beach, the pool, the hot tub and new guests feel uncomfortable and with the odd exception are rarely spoken to. The other weakness is that there is no incentive for change, we were told 80% repeat guests, why change anything?
We have stayed in 5* resorts in other parts of the world, Royal Plantation does not compare. The food is bland and repetitive, the wine is appalling, the only 5* about this resort is the staff. Are we likely to be a returning guest? Highly unlikely, there is a big world out there, lots of exploring to do and genuine 5* resorts to visit.
