Sandals Resorts
reviews and complaints

I am writing this letter to let you know that this was my first and last vacation to any Sandals Resort. We arrived Saturday December 5, 2009 and returned on Saturday 12, 2009. My Sandals experience left a very sour unforgettable taste in my mouth. To this day, I’m as upset as I was the day I arrived. I have posted my review of Sandals Negril on the trip advisor website and Inc., contacted the Department of Community Affairs, Inc., submitted a letter to Arnold Diaz on my fox news and I will continue to do whatever I can to let others know what you see is NOT what you get.

We have been to a number of islands and resorts and without a doubt this was the worst place we've ever stayed. We were disappointed from the moment we pulled up. Sandals does a great job advertizing only their luxury accommodations. The so called deluxe / premium rooms don’t even exist in the catalog. Unless you stay in the suites, you may as well save your money and stay at a Hotel/Motel. You misinform the public with deceptive advertisements. We were totally disappointed with the grounds, the pool, the very narrow beach, the small rooms, and most restaurants. I would not recommend Sandals Negril to anybody. I thought we were pulling off the road due to car problems. I had no idea the hotel was only a few feet from the road we were travelling on and we were being dropped off - YUCK. The resort is built right off of a noisy highway and you are reminded of it daily by the noise the traffic made, which was clearly audible on the resort grounds.

Some sections of the beach were only wide enough to accommodate the length of the beach chairs themselves. The water was not the enticing clear aqua color you see in the adds, due to all the sea grass growing at the bottom. Our first room (2303) was the size of a closet, when you opened the door you could fall onto the bed. I've stayed at places that had bigger Jacuzzis then this room. Every time I walked to my side of the bed, I hit my head on the entertainment/TV hutch. Our view was of the red roof top of the lower levels of the hotel. Water always collected at the base of the stairs. As cautious as I was, I always slipped. After we complained they moved us to a new section with an ocean view. The view was definitely better and the room a bit larger (this room had a desk and chair) neither rooms/beds were comfortable because they only contain one mattress supported on a wood slats. (No box spring) I woke up each morning with bug bites I did not have when I went to bed and though I did not see any bedbugs, I’m relatively certain that’s what caused the bites (that was in our second room, 5234).

You needed to wake up at 5:30 in the morning if you wanted a good spot on the beach, in the shade or under an umbrella, or if you wanted to get a raft. The concierges saved all the good chairs and floats for the folks in the more expensive rooms. What a waste, most of the reserved chairs/floats were never even use. There were ants everywhere, on the beach and in the rooms. The best selection of breakfast and lunch of course was when they first brought everything out. Waking up at 5:30 to reserve my spot and eating breakfast at 7 am was not our idea of an ideal/relaxing vacation. Breakfast lunch and dinner had limited hours. Lunch was from 12:30 - 2:15?!?! We ate at the Sundowner and Barefoot restaurant, once which was more than enough as the food was less than adequate. We were lucky enough to reserve Kimonos twice, where the food was quite good.
The day before we left, I was in the shower adjusting the water. As I lifted the leaver to turn on the shower, the tub spout catapulted out from the wall and hit me in the leg. Water was now spraying out from a hole in the wall.
The few days I went to the gym, there were never any towels nor did they have any bottled water. Worst of all, there was no disinfectant to spray down the equipment with and there were no paper towels to wipe down the equipment either.

I would also not recommend booking through the sandals.com website. When I did this, multiple parties became involved, so when you have a problem with your reservation, everyone points their finger to the other person and no one takes ownership or the responsibility to help resolve the problem. I finally had to go to a travel agent for help.
I would rate this as a two star resort, and that rating would be generous. It was nowhere near the luxury vacation advertised and definitely not worth the money. I've stayed at far nicer places for a lot less money. I will never recommend or stay at another Sandals.
My daughter also went to Sandals in St Lucia. She stayed at the Regency (she said it was just ok) and was glad that she didn't stay at the Halcyon which she saw and said was a poor facility.

Here is the letter that I send to Sandals customer service - I emailed them and recieved no response, so I maiiled in a letter as well. I never recieved any type of response from Sandals in response to my issues. I would not recommend these resorts to anyone.

To others my issues may seem dumb, but they were a big deal to me and I don't feel as though they should have happened for as luxurious of a place as they claim to be. I've read other complaints from those who had concierge level rooms as well, and I agree, do not waste your money on them. You do not get an increased level of service. Those that were in our group had booked low level rooms and had a better experience with service than we did.

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My husband and I were recently married (March 17, 2009) at the Sandals Montego Bay location. In total, we had booked 11 rooms (22 people). We spent $2, 950 on hair and makeup, pictures, flowers, and a three hour private dinner with a DJ, IN ADDITIOIN TO the money we spent to stay eight days in a concierge room and spa services ($3, 483.04). I must say for bringing 20 other people to your resort, and the amount of money we spent, we were extremely disappointed with the service experience we had at your resort.

First off, when we arrived on Thursday we asked the concierge when we would be meeting with our wedding coordinator. They told us that they would let us know. On Friday, we had went to the concierge again and asked the same question, and we received the same answer. On Saturday, my husband and I spent the entire day on the beach and did not return to our room until late in the afternoon. We came back to a message from the wedding coordinator letting us know that we had missed our 9:30 AM appointment, and she had rescheduled us. As a bride I was extremely upset, and my husband and I went back to the concierge to get things figured out. When we told the concierge what had happened, they said it “wasn’t their problem” and “there isn’t anything they can do for us, but the wedding coordinator just walked by if we wanted to chase her down.” So we did indeed chase her down, and she told us she had set up the appointment and left all the information with the concierge who was supposed to give us a packet of information as well as let us know about our appointment. Luckily the wedding coordinator was wonderful and straightened our situation out – I wish I could say the same for the concierge; we never even received an apology from them.

As I stated earlier, I had a large group saying at the resort. We saw in the newsletter that was left on our bed each night that groups of six or more can call for reservations to get a table put together in advance. On Sunday, 14 of the 22 guests wanted to eat dinner together at the Bayside Restaurant. I contacted the concierge for a reservation for 14, and the concierge told me he would check with the restaurant and call me back. He did in fact contact me back and told me he confirmed a reservation for 14 at 6:30 PM. When our group showed up for our 6:30 reservation, we were told they did not have us down and that they could possibly work out getting us two tables. My husband was upset again, so went back to the concierge to try to straighten the situation out. For a second time, he was told (exact words) it “wasn’t their problem”. They made no attempt to contact the restaurant to straighten the situation our, nor did they offer an apology. My husband then went to find the night manager at the front desk; he spoke with her, and she offered no solution (or apology) to our problem either, but after reasoning with her for about five minutes she finally got the restaurant to put a table of 14 together. It was after this point that we no longer went through our concierge (which we had paid for) to book anything.

On Wednesday (the day after the wedding) the wedding coordinator set up an appointment for us to view and pick out our wedding photos. We had paid in advance for 24 5x7 photos, and 12 8x10 photos. We ended up adding on the $200 digital negative CD. Later on in the day, my Mom had gone to the photo shop because she wanted to purchase photos as well. While she was there, they told my Mother that they had forgotten to show us all of our sunset photos since they were stored in a different place than the rest. The photo shop had made NO attempt to contact my husband or myself to let us know they had forgotten to show us photos. The only reason we knew was because my Mother relayed the information. I had gone back the next day to see all the pictures we missed, and again, I received no apology. I then had to spend unbudgeted money to purchase the extra pictures since they were so beautiful. Had I seen them the first time around, I would have picked them originally and wouldn’t have had to spend the extra money.

Wednesday afternoon we had six members of our group leaving to go back home. Their bus was scheduled to leave the resort at 3:00 PM to take them to the airport. Well, about 3:10 PM there was still no bus for them to take, and one would never show up. Finally a bus did show up but the driver told them he was the shuttle [to other resorts] not the airport bus. After begging he finally agreed to drive them to the airport. That should have NEVER been an issue; they had confirmed with the front desk a ride would be there. The bus scheduled to take them to the airport should have been there do to so, and my guests should not had to of begged for a ride.

On Thursday morning, my husband and I had met our breaking point. Ourselves and six other guests (eight total) were scheduled to leave Thursday afternoon. My husband had gone to the front desk (again, we were done with dealing with the concierge) to see if it was possible to have one room until 2 PM so that ourselves and the six other guests would have a place to shower and store our baggage until we left. Nicole had checked all of our rooms and told us it wasn’t possible and there was nothing they could do to help. My husband was extremely upset, and walked away from her. She chased us down, and told us that maybe she could in fact help us out after all (it took a negative reaction from my husband to get her to actually help us). She then noticed that there was something more wrong then just the late checkout situation – we then explained to her all the disappointments we had experienced the time we were there. She said that was sorry and would send Sheldon the guest services manager to our room to speak with us. He did speak with us and apologized, and he took $150 off our bill. $150 off a $6, 433 bill for the amount of business we brought to your resort was insulting – remember we had 10 additional rooms full of wedding guests, who would not have been if it hadn’t been for our wedding.

I wanted to bring these issues to your attention because I wouldn’t wish our experience on anybody else (especially a bride and groom – it caused a lot of stress), and I hope you can take our experiences and use them to better train your employees. All in all, my wedding was beautiful and we did have a good time, but I will NEVER AGAIN visit one of your locations and I would NEVER recommend your resort to a bride or groom looking for a place to host their destination wedding.