TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

My stay in October was wonderful. The resort wasn’t crowded. The Breakfast buffet had a nice variety of food. The staff were all pleasant. We stayed in the two bedroom suite in building 20. Landon Gordon greeted us with a nice smile and was very courteous upon check in and check out. I appreciated that the resort offers a free airport shuttle service.

The good: The resort is relatively modern and is very well maintained. They are building phase 3 now. You may run into the owner/builder and his dog, nice guy. It is beautiful. The rooms are spacious - our room had a couple of bedrooms, a balcony, a full kitchen, a living room, dining area, and two balconies. I booked through an airline and received more than I was expecting for an attractive price. The front desk staff was friendly and attentive. The meh: The beach is beautiful, is not rocky, but there isn’t a lot of it - somewhere between 5 and 17 feet from the resort depending on the tides which don’t seem to make a huge amount of difference. Caribbean rules apply - the resort is the resort but the beach belongs to everyone - it is absolutely infested with beach vendors who will hassle and hustle and scam you to no end. Note that this isn’t exclusive to this resort, it is all of west bay more or less, but this is at the end and it seems to be particularly bad here. In addition, the tour desk was OK but doing it again I would book here or through another website and save some bucks. The bad: I personally found the bar and wait staff to be particularly inattentive, somewhat rude, and tip hungry - even though there is some automatic gratuity/propina added here. The US in general is suffering from tip fatigue and don’t expect respite here at all (although it’s kind of typical). I didn’t hear it only here but the line is that the propina is for everyone but they want tips for themselves. It’s about 50/50 for the places I visited here, and the bad ones seemed to have automatic propina the good ones did not. Luckily, the Thirsty Turtle is only a short walk away and they received the bulk of my business (and tips). Finally, and this applies to the security staff as well, we are gringos that travel constantly - but we speak Spanish as well.

1st experience this year was horrible. Didn't tell us what the armband was for (we went several days before someone told us), and we had to wait over 3 1/2 hours to get a room. When we did, there were roaches on the counter when we walked in; the freezer was broken, and an open ice bag was left in the freezer - ewww! The entire check-in process was the most broken process I've ever seen. Noise level was very high due to the service walkway and storage. Our second trip here in June was much better, but still not even close to what I'd consider a luxury experience. No one to take our bags to the room, but the check-in process was night and day different (better) than the first trip in January. I'd note that I only tried this room again because the resort seemed to get good reviews and appeared to have what we were looking for. To me, it's a toss-up whether we'll try again.

Overall, we had a very good stay. The food was good, our room was excellent, and the service throughout most of the hotel was wonderful. Unfortunately, our experience with the front desk was disappointing. We noticed what appeared to be inconsistent treatment of guests. For example, some guests were warned that the ice was unfiltered/not recommended, while others were not given that important information. We also observed some guests receiving complimentary drink tickets while others did not. What was especially concerning to us was that, based on what we personally observed, white guests appeared to be receiving these perks and information more consistently than guests of color. This left us with a troubling impression of unequal treatment and possible bias/colorism at the front desk. We otherwise really enjoyed the hotel, which is why I hope management takes this concern seriously and ensures that all guests receive the same information, courtesy, and benefits regardless of race or skin color.

We had a great day experience here. Frank, very nice young man from the hotel, picked us up from the port and took us to this beautiful hotel and beach. We went snorkeling right there, was beautiful. We had a fantastic lunch and drinks served to us by the friendliest, efficient man named Darrell. Then when we were ready Frank drove us safely back to our ship. We highly recommend this place.