Sonesta Ocean Point Resort

I had the most amazing time at Ocean Point! Everything was excellent! The food, the drinks, the pools, the staff, the entertainment, and the WEATHER were all AMAZING! I am looking forward to returning!

I had a deeply frustrating and disappointing experience with Sonesta Ocean Point Resort. I had a confirmed stay booked, but due to a major snowstorm in the Northeast, my flight was canceled. This was completely outside of my control. When I contacted the hotel, I was explicitly told to cancel my reservation to avoid being charged a no show fee. I followed their instructions in good faith. After canceling, the hotel refused to issue any refund, credit, or even offer the option to rebook for a later date. This is unacceptable. I did exactly what their staff advised me to do, and instead of working with me under clearly unavoidable circumstances, they kept my money and provided no solution. This is not how a reputable hotel treats its guests. Weather-related travel disruptions are common, and most hotels show at least some level of flexibility or basic customer service. Here, there was none. Just rigid policies and zero accountability, even after giving me incorrect guidance. I would strongly caution anyone booking here to think twice, especially if your travel plans could be impacted by factors outside your control. If something goes wrong, do not expect understanding or support. You may be told one thing and then left with no recourse. Extremely disappointing experience and not what you expect from a resort of this level.

The rooms were very clean and the views were spectacular. The common areas were maintained to near perfection. I can't remember being in a lobby and seeing someone sanitize every arm chair with a new sanitizong towel for each seat/couch. But the servers were the best, especially at Azul and Blue Fin. , were a fabulous team of servers no matter which of them were there that day. And Supervisor Dianica was making sure everything was perfect. The special things like remembering that I liked the grapefruit mimosas for breakfast and the special rum in my wife's piña colada's took us over the top. And my wife rarely drinks, but not at oceanpoint. I do wish the bournon and cognac selections were a little better especially for a great old fashioned with luxardo cherries and mulleted orange. There always seemed to be spots at the pool when we didn't walk to airplane watch beach. Taking the taxi and finding Ben to get us to Phillipsburg to shop; to the highest zip line ever was the best. Ben got our group of 17 (about 30 in our entire group) over to the ferry to get to Anguilla and met us for the return. When we wanted to dine as a group, they made it happen each time and the food seemed endless. I tried to eat everything. I have never had so much tuna salad and smoked salmon for breakfast before. Let's not forget bartender Jay and Server Jeremy (or is that backwards). One of them is the reason my wife likes Piña Coladas again! A great time and place for a destination wedding like ours.

We have just returned from a 14 day stay at SOP, and we will miss it, especially the staff, who are outstanding. My list for well-deserved tips went to Mairin, the always cheerful greeter; Janeel, Remy, Rihanna, and Rumerne, the highly efficient and fun servers at the amazing Azul hotel restaurant who made all of our meals memorable. Alisha was the chef who handled our allergies with aplomb and created culinary masterpieces. Carol, our housekeeper, was the best we have seen in any hotel, and Dane Fevrier, our fantastic Butler, made our life there a breeze - that's why he got the big tip!! Always book a Sunset Butler Suite - it is well worth while. There is a new hotel manager, Bernard, who is a recent arrival, but with his years of experience, will make the hotel even better than it is now. We had many chats and he is a true asset for Sonesta. He has the rare gift of asking questions, listening to responses, and acting on them to make improvements. We had a rather bumpy arrival thanks to the ever deplorable Air Canada, who made us arrive 6 1/2 hours late, to a grumpy airport cabbie, and then to a hotel well past check in time. Dane arrived early the next day and from then on everything was wonderful until sadly our two weeks ended and we had to leave.

Location - this is Ocean Points ace card, the placement on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, Maho beach and the airport runway is incredible. Watching waves crash into the rocks, searching for big lizards sunning, boat watching and obviously plane spotting makes for relaxing and exciting days. Walking over to the famous Maho Beach to stand under the landing planes or get a free sand-dermabrasion from the jet wash is a wild experience. Of course if you don’t like planes and are annoyed with the regular daily noise of them coming and going (and the exhaust fumes that go with them) then this is not the place for you if you’re looking for peace and quiet. Atmosphere - this is an interesting one, some days it felt chill and relaxing, it was quiet at the edge pool with nice calm music playing on the (very cool) rock speakers, but then other days whoever chose the music wanted it loud with a Miami Beach club vibe. Just wasn’t consistent. Also the potential is there to end up with large groups of drunken convention goers showing up and taking over the pool since OP hosts business events. Rooms - the room was nice if nothing special, not much of an ocean view being on level 2 but it overlooked the beautiful landscaping as well as the swim-up rooms and long narrow pool right below. The beds were comfy, TV was big, a mini fridge with complimentary drinks as well as 4 big bottles of alcohol was a nice touch. However it would have been nice to have some actual furniture in the room to sit and relax on while sipping on all the drinks, there was one tiny circular lounge(?) chair all by itself in one corner, so odd. Also, who designed the shower?! I like single-slab-of-glass walk-in showers but these are done wrong. The rainhead is in the middle of the enclosure (should have been 3/4 of the way in) and the water pressure was strong so with no door its splashing out all over the place, plus the glass was installed incorrectly, in that it was not right on the edge of the tile, so water running down the glass to the small ledge would flow out into the rest of the bathroom and even out into the hallway if you didn’t put a couple towels down to soak everything up. Cleanliness - this was a mixed bag, the room was done well when made-up daily (we even got turndown service one evening for some reason!), the restaurants were nice but the rest of the common areas were a little beat-up, dirty and falling apart. I saw general cleaning happening but it was sparse. I get it, the location next to the ocean makes the hotel more like an ocean-going ship since its constantly pounded by the salty ocean, wind and rain, so staying on top of cleaning, painting and repairs is a constant chore for sure. Speaking of painting, when repaints have been done in the past everything was just painted around… so all the light switches, fan grilles, lighting fixtures etc had paint all over them giving it the feel of a low-rent apartment building. Poor attention to detail for a 5-star resort. On the same subject of attention to detail, who chose the outdoor tiles on pathways/hallways/restaurants? They turn into ice rinks after rain, I nearly wiped out a couple times and saw two employees have slips as well. Service - the employees are OP’s other strong point. We met so many awesome people at the bars and restaurants in the week we were there… Jean (12 kids?!), Jaymari (the stories!) Dawn, Kalia, Jayniah, Sidia, Sofie, Ru, Bernard the GM, Jacque (he kept the drinks coming at Azul!) and of course the sassy Maddy Baddy kept us laughing at Azul and the amazing Azul host Fantacia was the sweetest of them all! We were fortunate to meet her as at the end of the week she told us she had put in her 2 week notice at OP to finish school there and then head off to school in Europe. She’s going places, good luck F and if you ever want to visit Canada let us know! Amenities - Several restaurants and styles to choose from, especially nice having access to the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort while they couldn’t access the OP ones. Three very different pools to explore (and don’t want to deal with children in the big 4th pool), a couple rooftop night lounges and even an unusual zen garden to walk thru (please turn it into zen 9-hole mini-putt!). Food - and finally the food… first off I will say most of the meals were great, only a few misses here and there. Alcohol selection was just ok, not much in the way of beer unfortunately, and nicer wines had to be paid for. But I get it, the Caribbean is rum world. The problem we ran into was gluten. My husband has Celiac disease so we have to be careful with eating out. This is not a fad diet choice, it’s a serious illness. We saw prior to booking that the menu’s at OP always had some GF options on them, so that was encouraging. However once there, it didn’t seem gluten and Celiac disease were truly understood. Some of the menu items marked GF (menu said gluten-free, not gluten-friendly like some restaurants do) were not actually GF, we had to ask almost every time for the servers to confirm with the kitchen what was in various sauces, how things were fried or if anything was prepared on common surfaces. Even with trying to be careful my husband felt unwell 3 days in and had to spend a day in bed. After feeling a little better (being glutened can take days to recover from) we had more meals and he seemed to get glutened again and again. On the last day we were there, he was throwing up only a couple hours before heading for the airport. He was able to make it home on the plane without incident but then once home he became sicker, with regular vomiting and diarrhea. This was not norovirus or food poisoning as no one else in our group got sick in any way (we all ate the same things and spent a lot of time in close quarters). It’s unfortunate our vacation ended like this as it really was a wonderful place and a welcome escape from the rough Canadian winter this year.