Great Property, not so great everything else!
Nov 27, 2025 Rachieh35 Stafford, United Kingdom
Firstly, I really wanted to love this resort, we had booked this 3 years ago to celebrate our 10th anniversary!
We were greeted at the airport by lovely Sandals staff, directed to a lorry to transport our luggage and got on a small bus to transfer us to the resort, around 30 minutes later we arrived and we ushered into a comfortable lounge for…
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Firstly, I really wanted to love this resort, we had booked this 3 years ago to celebrate our 10th anniversary!
We were greeted at the airport by lovely Sandals staff, directed to a lorry to transport our luggage and got on a small bus to transfer us to the resort, around 30 minutes later we arrived and we ushered into a comfortable lounge for check in. We had checked in online so waited no time at all, we were quickly shown to our room. The room was a good size and nicely decorated. The outdoor soaking tub was a lovely addition. This is when we started to notice that there were a few minor issues, a cupboard door hanging off, the safe only had 4 numbers that actually worked and the rainfall shower didn’t rainfall, it dribbled. The hot water took around 15 minutes to actually come through. All of these things I could probably live with, not 5 star standard but liveable.
The real fun started the following day with sun bed drama. I arrived at the pool around 7.15am and not one sun bed was available at any pool. Mostly booked by Butlers and other early risers. We went to breakfast and arrived back at 9am, still no one on any beds just all blocked! We found a sign that said no booking beds before 7am and if they are not used by 10am belonging will be removed……this doesn’t happen!
Day 2, I got up especially early to try to find two sun beds, I arrived at the pool at 6.10am to find beds all booked, I enquired with some Butlers who said they are allowed to book these beds! I did eventually find two beds which were fine at 6.25am! This was the day that I discovered that Butlers were booking beds in different locations for one set of guests. Two at the bottom area of the infinity pool, two at the top of the infinity and two in the beach! This doesn’t seem correct at all!
The sunbed drama continued…..
The next issue was the room was serviced somedays and not other days, or they would try to come and service your room at 6pm! On the days you did get the service, there was always something wrong, first issues the toilet became blocked after the service person placed large amounts of paper down the loo (6 hours for anyone to resolve this issue), no hairdryer for the first 3 days (asked around 5 times for this), then the towel issue began, room serviced and no towels left, called House Keeping and they assured someone would bring some, 2 hours passed, tried to call Guest Services from the telephone in the room and no one answers, went to Guest Services to
request towels and was assured they would be delivered and advised the telephone in the room doesn’t connect to them, they advised using the chat option from the QR code (no one ever responded to that), another 90 minutes passed and we went back to Guest Services about the missing towels, the lady there went off to get some, I waited in excess of 20 minutes and she never returned so I asked for them to be delivered to our room, about 45 minutes passed and she called saying our towels were in her office, we asked if she could bring them to the room and were told “she doesn’t work in housekeeping!”
This was the point we asked to speak to a Manager, they are never available and always in meetings! They are always calling you back and that never happens. After the selection of issues we decided to check out as it was never a true 5 star hotel! We were informed that a Manager was coming to see us! Never happened!
We then emailed the General Manager who again never responded, contacted Sandals via X who assured us they were getting him to see us, never happened. Only upon reaching out to the Chairman were we actually starting to be listened to.
We did meet with the General Manager and the Resort Manager of Sandals Barbados, although we were staying at Sandals Royal Barbados, who was actually very nice.
He listened to our concerns and repeatedly asked how they can make it better, all we asked for was them to do what we paid for! However, they did try and resolve some of the issues and provided us with a rum tour which was very pleasant!
The plus sides of Sandals, the food is exceptional! The drinks are very free flowing at some bars and restaurants. 75% of the staff are excellent, 25% probably shouldn’t be working in that environment.
This resort is aimed at the American tourists, although some were very nice the majority were very loud and over the top, spent a lot of time in large groups using pool floats as mobile bars in the pool……concerning they never seemed to get out to pee!
Overall, the resort is very beautiful but the service levels let this place down significantly. Personally, I would not return here and probably it not to a Sandals resort again as this experience ruined what was supposed to be a relaxing holiday.
This was the first holiday I have been on where I actually looked forward to going home.
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