Sandals ResortsReviews of sandals.com

Disclaimer: This review is for Sandals Grande Antigua. I have not been to any other sandals. _______________ Pros : 1. Huge resort 2. Big and many pools 3. Nice staff 4. Good beach 5. Multiple options to eat 6. The airport pick up and drop off were very well coordinated. 7. Housekeeping kept the room clean very well. 8. The resort is well maintained Cons : 1. Even though they say 11 restaurants, not all are open daily. So, in reality, you will have fewer options than 11 2. The service in restaurants can be slow. 3. The staff in the restaurant was not in a hurry to fulfill our requests 4. I had requested a special meal, for which I needed to talk to Chef Andrew. I dialed the front desk to talk to him. They transferred me to his cell number, which went to voice mail. The resort charged me for that call. Even though it was only one dollar, I don't think it is appropriate to charge the guest when the hotel staff transfers the phone to someone's cell number. It was daytime, so I expected the chef to be in-house only. 5. The quality of the entertainment with below average. 6. The quality and skills of the photographers are subpar. We had more than 250 pics taken by different photographers on site, and we could find only ten pics worth purchasing. I went with the desire to buy the 100 pics package but bought only ten pics. Photographers were not very creative. The only thing they all kept insisting the couples do was to kiss as if that was the only way to get great shots. They all need to upgrade their camera also. The quality of the pic was also horrible. When I downloaded it from their website (EPIX), the pictures were at very low resolutions. 7. There are not that many vegetarian or vegan options. Cafe De Paris makes Vegan dessert every day, but if you go in the late evening, they will run out of it. This happened every day we were there. 8. Mario restaurants can have almost 2 hours of waiting 9. The environment can be noisy around the main lobby. You may not get peaceful sleep, depending on where your room is. 10. The cheapest room was $ 1000 per night for a couple. It is not worth that much money- even for the cheapest room.

You don’t come to Sandals for the food…It’s hit or miss and pretty good but it will never win any culinary awards…What you DO come for is the incredible locations, incredible people and the Sandals culture, which means : Friendly Staff, cleanliness, good food and reasonable prices for mostly superior accommodations…Almost EVERYTHING is included, including snorkeling and diving … I am writing this from my Swim up room here in Curacao , and it is beautiful, but if you are looking for a Ritz Carlton type experience, you will surely be disappointed… Service is spotty at times but the vibe surely makes up for any shortcomings …

My husband and I stayed at the Royal Barbados Sandals resort from 12/2/2022 to 12/9/2022. This was our third rodeo with the Sandals resort, this by far was the worst butler service resort of the three have experienced. As always, we reserved a package that include the butler service. We quickly found out upon arrival we were not going to get the services we thought we paid for, at least, not the services we previously received in our other butler service packages. Also, we were not informed of the lounge that was specifically for guest with butler services until the next day. We were informed by one of our butlers we should been escorted to the butler lounge to wait on our butler to collect us, however we were instructed to be seated in the lobby area until our butler came to escort us to our room. While others were escorted into the members lounge and treated as if they had the butler services and greater with a pleasant welcome song. We were assigned 3 butlers, whom were also assigned to several other guests. We didn't receive our tour of the property until the next day, which was very brief, due to the butler needing to leave to service other assigned guest. Other sandals properties we stayed at we were able call our butler to pick us up and take us to dinner or anywhere else we needed to go. This property did not provide that particular service. We had to figure out where the resturants were on our own. Also, the resturants we originally chose were all booked up and we often had to be placed on a wait list or be sqeezed in. Our first morning we were supposed to have reserved space at the pool, our butler was so busy with the other customers we were forgotten about. The day of our 38th anniversary, nothing special was placed in our room to finish the night with a boom. At previous Sandals Resorts we've spent anniversary at, we would come back to our room and find a romantic evening set up for us, done by the butler services. The butlers we had were sweet young ladies, however, they were too stretched out with too many guest to service that they were not able to provide the services we paid for. They too expressed their concern of not being able to provide expert services due to their heavy load of dealing with the other In a nutshell, we did not receive any of the outlined VIP butler services we thought we paid for. We truly felt there was a breach in We paid over 13k to recieve services that doesn't come close to what one would expect to come from a VIP package. If Sandals continue with this type of butler services they are going to lose many customers, especially us.

I would never go to Sandals again. Wedding was fantastic but everything else went wrong including wedding photo prints not received, air conditioning not working. On checking out advised us that there was a problem with bill as we were moved because of the problem. We were never moved . No point in going on. This was in June. Tried to get money back for unfulfilled orders but no one would even acknowledge us. Eventually my credit card company had to go to legal and sort it out with a settlement after over 5 months of stress. From reviews I have read I am not alone and others have even given up Easy answer don't go to Sandals

Sandals Barbados. Really disappointing vacation at this Sandals resort - difficult to book restaurants, long waits for food, apathetic staff and reserving sunbeds is taken to a new extreme level by the Sandals staff themselves making it almost impossible to get a sunbed by the pool. There were some positive aspects in that the food, when it arrived, was excellent and there was a great variety of restaurants within the resort. However, trying to make bookings was really difficult, which was surprising as when we were in the restaurants, we were surrounded by empty tables. I understand the resort has staff shortages, which probably also explains why we also experienced long waits for food (almost an hour for just a starter and on another instance 45 minutes for a sandwich). Perhaps the staff shortages also explains why most of the restaurant and bar staff had quite an apathetic attitude. Naturally, there were exceptions to this, but on the whole, the staff just appeared programmed to greet guests around the resort and the staff attitude in the restaurants and bars was generally quite poor. Although notices around the resort indicated that sunbeds should not be reserved with towels before 7am, we were absolutely amazed at the extreme level of sunbed reservations around the pool and beachfront. We would swim in the pool quite early each morning (~6:30am) and it was almost normal to see every sunbed around the pool, without exception, already reserved with towels and the people doing this were the butlers. Perhaps the rules don't apply to Sandals staff, but then this just means you openly have two tiers of guests in the resort, and this felt wrong. We have stayed at a number of Sandals resorts over the years (Antigua, St. Lucia and Bahamas), but unfortunately we feel this experience in Barbados probably signals our last and we will explore other all-inclusive options in future.

At sandals St Lucia now and find it difficult to believe we have had no toilet paper for the last 2 days. Requested replenishment and was given one role which I hope they think it will not last us the remaining 10 days. Food portions are smaller than we have had before in previous holidays. Tried to book 2 restaurants for 2 nights each but was told they have only one night each. Bearing in mind we are here for 12 nights it would suggest they are only allowing 1 visit per stay which is not as advertised. Bit disappointed so far so will see how we go!!

We went to Regency Le Toc Sandals in St Lucia - amazing people the best I have ever encountered from Brianna, Uri, Auroa, Terry, Virgine, Cuthbert, Dale (at Pitons) Nico and Nicolo (at Armando’s) to Zach (on the beach) who were all extremely passionate, helpful, personal and welcoming they are a credit to the Sandals brand and really enriched our experience thank you. Special mention to: A. Nico whose Italian dishes were some of the best I ever tasted, authentic in flavors and personalized to meet my garlic allergy needs. You felt the love that went into every dish. B. Zach who shared his passion for his beautiful country with us, his extensive knowledge of the ocean and his love of all the wonderful water activities Sandals has to offer The reason I am rating 3 stars are as follows: 1. The accommodation is not what I would classify a 5 star plus experience more like 3 to 4 stars with some areas of the hotel requiring repair (eg ladies toilet handles), furniture that was tatty (eg the sofa in our room), parts of the hotel were the paint was cracked and needed a lock of paint (communal areas) 2. The focus of the hotel to please and accommodate American tourists above others! One of many examples is the day of the two footie parallel matches the hotel went with the 1 American fan vs 20 Brit’s who wanted to watch the game. Music played at the pool was heavily orientated to Americans likes 3. Price doesn’t correlate with quality of accommodation as referenced in point 1.

VIsited sandals grande in Antigua end of Oct 22 Was sold as a premium resort 5*with private transfers premium drinks etc. When we arrived there was no one to meet us and eventually found reps outside in parking bays and waited in the searing heat for 20 mins for a minibus to hotel on arrival we were swiftly taken to room. Very very tired room with carpets badly stained Bath had no shine as so old. Decided to go to barefoot restaurant as by that time we had been on the go for 24 hours and after waiting 2 hours for meal asked if we had been forgotten. We had to ask for coffee and toiletries top up in rooms towels were not cleaned everyday and room not touched till after 4 pm when we wanted to get a rest then shower to go out for evening meal. Disgraceful service. Certainly not 5* We had a further problem when there was a leak above our wardrobe leaving all clothes damp reception was to give us another room at 11 am the following day so we packed all clothes up only to discover room not ready and it took two and a half hour s for a bell boy to deliver our cases. Incidentally sandals knew there was a problem as everything had been stuffed up with towels which were saturated by leak and brought hatch above wardrobe down. Although advertised as premium drinks cola at bars was drought no Bacardi at all and no white rum for a week. It was also noted no Amaretto and they also ran out of saki at Japanese restaurant. On contact with sandals they have offered points for an upgrade to our next holiday. Totally unacceptable as we did t pay in point and won’t be back. You blew it big style sandals the attitude is take it or leave it Well I won’t be leaving it and taking this further. I booked through Hays travel the biggest travel agent in the UK They need to address this with sandals or stop selling their holidays. Apparently sandals think it ok to say a global shortage was the issue. Really. I’d say more like bad planning. I’m perfectly sure other drinks were watered down too. Oh and if you want a rose wine it’s sorry we only serve red or white and the cheapest bottle of rose is 45$ Altogether false advertising poor management and certainly not 5*