St. James's Club & Villas

Obviously a fabulous location & accomodation. We have been coming to St James since 2002. We are pleased to say that the food and service is back to its best. Well done Milton for a great job. Thoroughly enjoyable week & we look forward to being with you again in Nov.

This is definitely not a 4* resort. The resort is tired and needs some TLC. The staff are lovely and friendly but the food leaves a lot to be desired and ranges from mediocre to inedible. Meal times also take forever - an hour for food to arrive at lunch and a couple of hours at dinner time. The beaches are not like they are in the pictures with the coastal beach being covered in smelly seaweed making it unusable.

We made a late booking to go here for some sunshine. We saw that reviews are generally good but some are negative so we weren't sure what to expect. As it happens we needn't have worried. We had a beach front room which was large and certainly not in need of refurbishment. There was plenty of variety between restaurants and branded drinks. All the staff were pleasant and smiled a lot, not one person failed to say hello or smile. Food was generally good but the 11-11 restaurant was slow and provided only 2 spare ribs as a portion! Their pizzas were large and this was the only time we felt the food wasn't plentiful. There was a lot of seaweed on one of the beaches, but that's nature rather than a fault of the hotel. they sent a team out to remove as much seaweed as possible every morning and they did a good job of it. The only other negative is that the main pool (near reception) is quite small, but plenty of people used it to join in the daily Aqua Aerobics sessions and it never got too busy. We really enjoyed the vacation and plan to return to the same hotel.

We last visited 20 years ago and had fond memories. Certainly lived up to our expectations with a few niggles! Beachfront room was excellent - spacious, clean and great views however we had no hot water all week in shower - lucky if it was luke warm no matter what time we tried to shower. Beaches still lovely although Mamora Bay water was murky, Cocos was lovely but very windy - obviously not the hotels fault and they work tirelessly to clear the seaweed. Always beds available on both beaches and hotel was full so no early morning towel dash!!! Just early morning restaurant booking dash! Bars on the whole great especially Cocos and great range of drinks and house wine was good. Docksiders fun in the evening with live entertainment but 10.00 pm bit early finish even for seniors like us! Food - breakfast was exeptional - lunch a bit hit and miss Docksiders ok but service so slow - buffet was uninspiring - Cocos best for lunch great salads and great views. Evening - overall food was good - Rainbow Restraurant a la carte food was good and menu rotated. Docksiders buffet we ate there twice and it was ok - but buffets are not our thing so tried to avoid. Beach party was a great evening with so much choice. We managed to get a table at Cocos thanks to the lovely head of house lady (apologies I did not get your name) and it was a great meal. It is just such a shame it is only open 3 evenings and getting a table is a marathon task. My biggest complaint is the restaurant booking system - 24 hours in advance - so you try phoning at 6.30 a,m in the morning nobody answers - I went to guest services one morning at 6.30 am I was 5th in a queue and the first person was told Cocos was already fully booked! How - well guests in the Royal Suite can prebook for the whole week - very frustrating and I think the hotel should review this to make it fairer or just tell guests restaurant is unavailable . We were lucky the lovely lady managed to secure us a table. We were glad we returned.

There was no hot water in our room tha whole week we were there. I reported this twice to no avail. I spoke to others in the same accommodation block and they had the same issue. I think they turned the water heater off due to rising fuel costs. Other than that, it's a great place to holiday