Sandals Royal Bahamian Spa Resort Offshore Island-Luxury Included Vacation, Nassau

We went for our 30th anniversary. This was our first trip to the Bahamas. We were at our hotel within an hour of landing. We booked a concierge Ocean front room in the Balmoral tower, which has been newly remodeled. We were escorted to our room, and this was our only complaint, it was an ocean view room. We went back down to the desk, and were told we would be moved the next day, which we were. We were given our correct room, but I wonder if we had not complained if we would have got what we paid for. This happened to other couples we met also, and they were moved also. Let the vacation begin! We had a great time, and went to all the restaurants. The food was very good even in the buffets. The reservation restaurants were backed up about 3 days when we got there, so make reservations early in your trip. Our favorite was the island restaurant, we ate there twice. Everyone was very polite and friendly. We will write a special accomondation for 2 amazing employees, Arizona, and Latoysa. These ladies love what they do, and it shows. They truly made our trip extra special. The employees move around so you will see the same people in different places. Our room was very clean, and was stocked and cleaned daily. If we went off property, advice was freely given, and was helpful. We had the best anniversary ever! Don't let their website throw you, couples of every age go there, not just younger couples. We are in our 50's and there were quite a few in our age bracket.

We spent our honeymoon at the Sandals Royal Bahamian in July 2011. We had a very negative experience there...to name a few of our issues we were given a room below that which we paid for, the room had a terrible mold smell, a moldy hole in the bathroom, bed bugs or sand fleas..we think it was the fleas but another couple was sure it was bedbugs. There were many other problems too. We emailed Sandals upon returning and they got back to us with a voucher for a 7-night stay at a Sandals of our choice. We thought this would be a great way to visit a different location and see how great Sandals really is. I emailed our voucher in to book our trip and received an invoice saying that I owed money. When inquiring about that, I was told that the voucher was actually for 2 days. It clearly states 7 nights on it, and says that the voucher is good for the equivalent of what we previously paid for (which was 7 nights). After going back and forth with Unique Vacations we were told to contact Sandals directly. (Unique Vacations is the exclusive agency that books for Sandals. If you book on their website this is who you go through. Check them out on the BBB webiste, they have an "F" rating.) We have since requested a full refund from Sandals for our honeymoon. They said we would receive a response in 3-5 days...it's been 6 days. If we don't hear back soon, we will take further action. We don't recommend Sandals resorts or Unique Vacations.

The reservation was screwed up, the food not good, and I thought the price we paid was way too much compared to places we have been to, where the service and food was much better. I WOULD SAY, SAVE YOUR MONEY AND GO ELSE WHERE!!! LUXURY, MY FOOT!!!

everything was awesome--no complaints everyone who is complaining on here are really stupid and need to shut their face. :)

My wife and I stayed at the Royal Bahamian for 4 nights and wish we had booked for twice the long. The resort, and especially the staff, exceeded our expectations in every respect. We stayed at a butler suite, which I highly recommend. Contrary to a popular image of ‘stuffy’ or ‘stiff’ demeanor, our butlers, Gemayel, Vincent and Melekah were very professional and accommodating yet exceptionally personable and friendly. I definitely recommend the butler service. Our sixth floor Windsor Suite had a spectacular view of the beach and beautiful water, the resort itself displayed an old world sense of elegance, the food was uniformly good and the service quick and friendly. We went to the offshore island twice and found that to be even more relaxing and quieter than the main resort. My wife enjoyed the spa twice and, having been to spas in other resorts in the Caribbean and in the States, including upscale casino spas, ranked it among the tops. Both the spa and the fitness center were in temporary quarters, and though the fitness center was only partially equipped it was still adequate and the trainer/attendant, Paul, was quite knowledgeable and, like everyone else we met on the staff, very friendly. As noted in other reviews, the resort is undergoing construction/updating stemming from a hurricane but the work in progress was done as quietly as could be expected, no very early or nighttime work, and no doubt the finished product will be spectacular. If there was any negative it was that the music played from speakers around the pool was a bit loud at night. A suggestion would be to mute the music about eleven or so, certainly by midnight. All in all, we give the Royal Bahamian an A+ and we look forward to our next visit.

My wife and I were married there earlier this year. It was awesome. I never really thought that all inclusive really meant all inclusive. Well it does ! You don't even have to tip at dinner. The restaraunts were great and drinks were everywhere. We loved scuba diving. The staff was great also. The workers are so nice. It's almost surreal. I mean they all say goodmorning....good afternoon....whatever ! We would totally go back again.

We booked in March for a wedding and the Beachfront Walk-Out Patio Room in the Manor Building. When we checked in, we were advised that we were upgraded to a Butler Suite because the Manor Building was closed for repairs due to damage from a hurricane in September. We had no idea the building had been closed. At first, I was excited because the butler suite was the best room you could get and dining at Gordon's Pier was included. However, it was on the first floor with no ocean view. I was disappointed as I had purposely booked an ocean front room. Also, this was an added expense for us as tipping the butler was permitted and of course expected. However, the room was very nice and spacious, we had a butler, dinner at Gordon's Pier, and we were right by the pool so we decided to not ask to be moved. Dinner reservations had already been made for us each night during our stay. We asked that two people be added to the reservation for Monday night at Casanova's as another couple had come with us and were also staying there. We also told them that because we were expecting more guests during the week on day passes, we would need more sodas and beer, and also we needed robes. Angeline, the butler, wrote all of this down. When we came back later from dinner, we had robes but no additional drinks. We called about the drinks and asked her if we could get some more chairs for the patio as we would be having more guests. They brought us lounge chairs from the beach with a bunch of sand in them! We had them remove the chairs and they left a bunch of sand on the patio. We had the General Manager come and he had the sand swept up and brought us more drinks. We called Angeline the next morning and asked if she made the extra two reservations for Casanova's. She said that we had not told her, although we saw her write it down, but that she would call them. She called back a little later and said that Casanova's was closed! We didn't understand how the reservations could have been made in the first place if the restaurant was closed. We spoke with the butler manger and also the guest services director and asked that Angela be removed as our butler, and for reservations for Casanova on Thursday night. They said they would take care of it all. Angeline was replaced with Everette, who was very good, and then Ekron. They were both great. They went out of their way with extra touches to our room and called often to see if we needed anything. Angeline did none of this, plus didn't bring what we asked for. The wedding on Wednesday went great, although we didn't get to dine at Gordon's because it was too windy. Instead, we ate Gordon's food in the Crystal Room. On Thursday, we called to make sure they had made our reservations for four at Casanova's and were told that they were closed AGAIN! We were very upset as this was the second time we were told we had reservations there, and it was our last night there. So, we ended up eating burgers at the pub. Although we had five guests pay for their day passes on Wednesday, it was still on our bill when we went to check out on Friday! We had them look through their records and they removed it. On top of all this, when Ekron left for the day on Thursday, Angeline was our butler again! We asked the butler manager about this and were told that they were giving her another chance although we had asked not to have her. From this point on, she did an ok job. I was very disappointed with Sandals. Other people we talked to staying in butler and concierge rooms got much better treatment - maybe it was because we were not paying for the butler room but this was not our doing and we did tip the butlers. I felt bad because this was our wedding and honeymoon and the first trip to the Bahamas for my husband, sister, and her husband, and I had chosen this place. We were supposed to be getting an upgrade and it turned out to be a lot of problems. We will not be returning to Sandals. We paid way too much for poor service.

The negatives: - We had to wait 30 minutes to be picked-up by the private/dedicated car at the airport (well after the bus came and brought others from our flight to the resort), then when we got there - we had to wait another hour to get our butler (we were dropped off at Spices with little knowledge of what was going on or input, given we'd already had lunch, until after an hour I complained and we got to our Butler finally). At that time it was mid-afternoon, the room should have been ready... in our room we were then just dumped off for an hour until the butler returned with a phone (by now, even though the flight came in at 2, the afternoon was already completely wasted). I saw other butlers touring the place with their guests, ours never did that for us even though it would have been nice. - Internet was non-existent in the room, I asked for help numerous times from my Butler (he actually never helped andnever followed-up with me and I asked for help twice, once via phone message). The front desk told me they didn't know, and to keep trying or try to create a new account even though the site said I could not do that because it had signed me up right before the internet cut out and I was not able to get a log-in or password. Eventually I found a smarter front desk person that was able to help me after 12 hours of trying and not getting help from the Butler. The internet was awful and worked only from close to the pools. - The dedicated Butlers were clearly overworked, they called a few times to check-in, often when I tried to get them they were busy with others and on their phone to help others (once it took 2 hours from request to fill a cooler to the cooler being filled, no exaggeration)... - I had to ask the Butler twice on day 1 about what we got with the honeymoon package and told them I wanted the benefits listed on the site day 1 as I was promised by the site and sales team, I was told they'd get back to me that day (after checking with the sales team)... by 10pm they went home with no word and told me the next day they normally provided that service later in the trip (I had to call back the 7th night, it STILL had not been done and wasn't even planned - Online reviews said your Butler could get you Bud Light and non local beers (sales team said it was possible), I saw many people's Butlers getting them Bud Light over the trip from Butlers, ours said we had to get it off resort and they would not. A different Butler said they would do it for $24/case, other Butlers were providing this service and ours would not (this inconsistency in service is unacceptable). - One morning we woke up at 8am, I was wondering what the loud banging noise would be at that time given we were in the more private villa section that we paid good money for... around 9am when it was continuing I went outside to check and it was people building a wedding set right outside the room - The Sandals Cay Island was open 2 of 8 days, on the first day I went for the 3pm ferry and they had already closed it for the day (so I guess it was open 1.5 of 8 days)... I waited from 2:55p to 3:10p with no sign of the ferry - We asked our Butler about breakfast and what we could get in the morning day 1 and he showed us a card with pretty much drinks, cold cereal and bagels on it. In lieu of the bad room service menu, we only used it once. On day 7 of 8, a different Butler told us we had the wrong list and showed us the one with omelets on it and a better selection... this was way too late and unacceptable, another perk we missed out on because of bad/incomplete Butler service even though we asked about it early in the trip. - When we got to the room and were there for a while, we were asked if all was okay... we informed the team of our windows that were broken mechanically and in the open position. The fix was not to to fix the handles which were very broken and needed repair, but rather to just shut the windows from the outside...

Really low quality place - terrible service, terrible food. they run out of towels at the pools by noon and never replenish. They close restaurants randomly, so getting a reservation before 10:00 pm is almost impossible. Room service breakfast never shows up. They tell you they will pick your bags up when you are leaving, but it will take repeated calls to get them to actually do it (we gave up and carried our own bags out). I've never been to a Sandals before and I will never go to another. This was unbelievably bad all the way around - total waste of money!

This was our 4th visit to a Sandals resort and probably are last. The food and service was very good as was the room. Now the downside. First we complained about our room location. It was on the first floor and overlooked a small garden, fence and parking lot . They moved us to the second floor which then overlooked a small garden, fence, parking lot, run down apartment building and dumpster. Wow, what a view! Couldn't see the ocean with a telescope. Now I realize we selected the room category however, my complaint is that we paid the same for this "view" as someone who was in a room on the other side of the hallway who had a garden and pool view. Doesn't seem equitable. What a way to treat a returning Sandals Select guest! Also, we were suppose to get a $100 spa credit. When I asked about this, they had no record of it. Should have brought my booking documents where it was in writing. When we returned home, I contacted our travel agent to explain our unhappiness with certain aspects of this trip, she said she would contact Sandals. Sandals response was "they did all they could to try and satisfied us." They certainly did, they moved us to a dumpster view and beat us out of $100 spa credit. Just so you know, I have never posted a negative comment on any hotel or resort we have stayed at. So if you are considering this Sandals, make sure you understand the room categories and what views you maybe buying. My suggestion is to consider another Sandals or Majestic Elegance in Punta Cana.