TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

I loved coming to Sandals Ocho. I find the hospitality and accommodations are fantastic. Came here with my parents for their 50th anniversary. Our villa was perfect and best of all the staff. Especially, Patrice the Play Maker from Entertainment, was amazing and a pleasure to meet. She made our stay such an enjoable experience every day! Excellent staff and hotel.

This was our first visit to Ochi and I noticed an immediate difference to the hotels in St Lucia (La Grande) and Grenada. As someone previously mentioned in their review the rooms are now dated in style and reminiscent of motel rooms. We were located in the Riviera building and we had a butler suite. We had originally booked for Montego Bay but due to the storm damage we were offered this as an alternative and an upgrade. I have to mention that Sandals UK customer service/flight ops were absolutely amazing during the changes and I never had to do a thing. Well done Lisa R - you were brilliant. Firstly this is a site of two halves, the individual butler lodges above and the larger building and beach below, this is bisected by a busy road. The site is large at 110 acres but feels small as you are discouraged to walk the whole estate due to the main road and the access roads are busy with the hop bus that connects the two sites. The beach side is a bit of a disappointment in as much as the beach areas are tiny. There are 3 very small stretches and only one that has umbrellas for shade. The remainder either have some trees and/or palm trees. This is all very well but when you need shade (my husband is a ginger with factor 50 needed to ease in a tan) it's an early morning scrabble to reserve the very few beds that had shade. I thought this was appalling tbh. I didn't expect Sandals to allow this, and on our very last day, by 6.30am half of the sunbeds had gone and by 7am the remainder had too. It also happened to be raining that day which made it doubly laughable. If the weather was overcast those reserved beds sat there unused until the 'owner' claimed them. There are a handful of cabana's, for a charge of course, but they are located by the lower pool areas which got incredibly loud. Brilliant music however the speakers are right next to the beds so only so much you can take after a while. The traditional, larger pool area is at the top of the site. Food was hit and miss sadly. The Reef restaurant, Jerk cafe, Tapas bar and Kimonos were excellent. However the others were very same-y, and I have no idea what went on with the beef as it was horrendously chewy. Not good at all. Even the Caribbean restaurant was not as good as the smaller cafe style restaurants. Some of the food was dry and overcooked, the vegetables were often raw. Our room was so-so, we had a great view over looking the beach and Sky/Vista restaurant. We were very comfortable but it really does need a glow up to bring it to more current expectations. I really don't understand why the TV's are not smart tv's. I know I'm on holiday but when getting ready for the evening or just waking up I wouldn't mind watching YouTube etc. The other thing to point out is the wifi offerings that were very poor. Basic and free just about gets you emails and basic browsing. There are a further two offerings that start from 80USD per week - really?!? In this day and age where everything relies on internet - this should be fast and free. Poorly done Sandals. The corridor leading to our room was carpeted and had a really funky smell to it. Why have a carpet? Surely with sand and wet bodies it would have been much easier to maintain if it was tiled. The whirlpool bath didn't whirlpool and was obviously old and well used. The people - this is the best bit and saved for last Sheldon and Demetra were our butlers for the duration and I have to say that they made our holiday for us. We were initially sceptical but the level of attentiveness was unbelievable. You are provided with a phone (would have been handy to also have a phone holder or case as you carry this everywhere if you want to be able to be in contact with them) obviously if lost or damaged you are charged. They were incredibly thoughtful. They never turned up empty handed, it was either cocktails, drinks or snacks. Always with suggestions and even arranged for a particular shrimp dish to be made avail at the restaurant for us in the evening. Sheldon was very softly spoken and calm - nothing was too much trouble. Demetra always smiling and surprised us several times with a bath already run when we returned to the rooms. Also suggestions on Jamaican food and making sure that restaurant bookings were made. I am sure that they do so much more but honestly, they were the right amount of 'being there' for us. This is the only exception to tipping that Sandals has and honestly they are worth it, I just wish we could have given them so much more. They worked extremely hard and long days and I hope they released how much we appreciated them. The remainder of the team working at the hotel were very, very good. Our room was always cleaned to a high standard and everyone was smiling and very friendly. Yes I know they have to but you can tell the difference when someone is happy or not. We loved sitting by the Tapas bar as the guys were either singing or laughing and the vibes were good. Spa was excellent as we have found that all Sandals spa's are. Although everyday we were asked if we had been, that needs to be toned down a bit, as it feels a bit like running the gauntlet. We used the fitness centre, while small was very clean and well equipped. In all honesty we did enjoy our visit. We won't be back to this particular site as it just wasn't for us, however we met many people who were on their 5/6 and more visits. I hope that the issue with food was just a result of the hurricane and it resolves itself. They had a horrendous time and are still trying to complete repairs and some people were still without homes.

We’ve stayed at Ochi four consecutive years, and unfortunately this visit had more issues than usual for what we consider a ‘budget’ Sandals property. Our Garden Cottage room had multiple issues: a malfunctioning toilet, poor sound isolation (I think all of cottages with a common hallway leading to your door will have the same problem), and cockroaches in the room. Bathrooms and fixtures throughout feel dated. I fixed the non-flushing toilet but after the fix the toilet would flush two or three times with every single flush. After the cockroaches, we decided to have our room changed. Power flickers happened a few times, sometimes accompanied by very loud generator backfire noise, interesting but not what you expect at a Sandals. The quiet pool hot tub has apparently been “under repair” for years, it hasn’t worked on any of our visits, so don’t expect it to be operational. We also did a split booking between Ochi and Sandals Dunn’s River, 5 nights at each, and communication between the booking entity and the resorts was poor. Staff arrived to collect our luggage under the assumption we were heading to the airport, not transferring resorts. We always pay for a club level room, but the included service of the evening room clean up and turn down never happened; we didn’t complain about it, but that was also a first as compared to our three other trips here. Ochi still has great staff and beautiful grounds, but the property feels rundown and uneven compared to newer Sandals resorts. Unless there’s clear acknowledgment and execution of meaningful upgrades that is it for Ochi.

This is our honest review and maybe our expectations were set too high. Firstly the staff are mostly amazing and so friendly and helpful. We found the result a bit tired and dated. The food was basic and dressed up to look good. Our biggest disappointment was being rushed in booked restaurants. As soon as we put our cutlery down from the starter the main arrived! In the French restaurant I was still eating my starter when the main arrived. We visited Sandals Dunns River and the food here was another level. So much so came twice and would def look at booking here. Our favourite pool was by the water sports beach - not too loud or quiet. A massive shout out to Suzan, Basil and Chenelle. Suzan made our holiday including an 18 card pick up on UNO!!

What an incredible holiday, we had a butler poolside villa our butlers were peta-gaye and Derrick they looked after us so well. My husband’s 40th they put on a surprise pool party which was really special: I honestly struggle to find fault with our stay but vent very picky the beds are creaky and noisy when you turn over it’s bad . Aside of this the rooms are beautiful. The food in every restaurant was outstanding we didn’t have a bad meal and ate in every place . We went to dunns twice and had Greek there and was incredible . The hop makes it easy to move around resort . We loved the main pool it was lively and bed service was so good . The beach was lovely we went to neptunes side and loved it , snorkling was amazing we saw so much . Really gutted to be leaving but feel very lucky to have the most amazing holiday . We will definitely be back