The Verandah Resort & Spa

We just got back from our trip! We had three rooms for 10 days for our family. The rooms are just ok, not over the top and basic. We had no lock for any of the safes and had to get them from the front desk the next day. Housekeeping is every other day. No blanket on the beds, a very thin waffle like blanket so pack something warm for bed! Nicole’s is not with the up change. Sails and tails you will wait an hour for your food at both lunch and dinner. We tried it twice and both times with reservations it was way too long of a wait….. Pizza is hit or miss, took 45 min for two pizzas one day, they had no plates or a chef. You can only book restaurants two days out so book early there at guest services. Lunch at the beach grille is just as long of a wait as sails and tails. We left and asked them to cancel our lunch, don’t get the salad bar at the beach grille either. Buffett breakfast was great! Italian restaurant was great too! Pool was just ok, not much going on. Grounds were very clean. Staff works hard and long hours! Our rooms were close to the pool and restaurant areas or you would have a lot of walking! Drinks are ok! Nothing over the top. Cafe was nice to have.

We just came back from our week stay at The Verandah Resort & Spa. Had an amazing stayed. The resort view and beaches are gorgeous. Rooms are spacious with beautiful views. The entire staff if very friendly and welcoming! Excellent services such as bar tenders Shaloam and LaSandra, restaurant services: Deshanti, Rashad, Judith, Keisha and Maria (making us delicious omelets every morning); pastry chefs team and Michelle from the Guest service. The employee that stand out was Theodore a.k.a. THEO!!! With very good reasons, as he remembered our names and by far the FRIENDLIEST/KINDNESST staff at the resort. We especially appreciate the hard working staff who spend hours preparing for a very lovely exciting New Year’s Eve party for us. Great time and highly recommend to all!

Good location 25 minutes from the airport. The hotel is big with bedrooms spread around the resort in one storey buildings that each house 2 bedrooms. The rooms are large and the balconies are big and our Waterfront 2 Queen Suite had a lovely view of the cove. However, the rooms are very old fashioned, dated, shabby and in desperate need of renovation. The bathroom was also dated with ants crawling around the shower and sink basins. The resort is quite hilly but there are golf buggies that ferry people around although they are very few and far between and when you phone for one they rarely arrive. The games room has a dart board (only 2 darts), tabletennis (bats but no ball), snooker table and shuffle board. There are a few pools all clean with plenty of sunbeds and towels. The gym is a good size for a hotel resort and the equipment well maintained. The on-resort shop stocks a variety of drinks, snacks, t-shirts, suncream and souvernirs but it is very expensive. The jewellery shop is also very expensive. We organised the Pink Panther island safari with the hotel and it was easy to book and the half-day tour was fun. There are also several restaurants at the resort with very different standards of service (more about this later) and quality of food. Seabreeze is the buffet serving a large selection of food and they also have themed nights. The food is good. Nicoles is a restaurant charging a supplement but we didn't eat there. Portofino is the Italian restaurant and the food was awful. Pappa Rico's is the pizza place open for lunch - the pizza was good but the service was extremely slow taking almost an hour to cook 3 pizzas. Sails and Tails is the other restaurant and the food there was mainly good although the menu is the same every night. The hotel must also cater more for non-drinkers. Other than three cocktails and the usual soft drinks, the hotel doesn't offer any zero alcohol wine or beer. The shop stocked 8 bottles of Heineken 0% which we bought but they weren't getting any more stock. Now to the service around the resort. It's appalling. The staff, especially the female staff, are miserable and rude. They ignore guests and when they serve it's with an attitude of reluctance and everything seems to be so much trouble for them. This is the same across the resort, in the shops and restaurants. Of particular note are the bar staff at the Lovers Beach bar (miserable and rude), the main pool bar (there are a couple of nice barmen but the rest are miserable), Seabreeze restaurant (all miserable except Theodore who is fantastic. In fact, Theo should be promoted to Customer Services Director and should train all his staff in customer service and any who don't meet his standard should not be working at the resort), the tour desk woman (doesn't speak unless she needs to), cleaners (our cleaner was rude to us when she arrived at 4pm when we were getting changed and she told us that she finished work at 5pm so unless she could clean our room wouldn't be serviced at all). The appalling service ruined our stay at the Verandah and would prevent us from ever staying there again. I've travelled the world on business and on holiday and this hotel is by far the worst I've ever stayed in for customer service. They don't give you the warm welcoming Carribean happy vibe that visitors expect from this part of the world. To improve the guest experience, the resort should train all staff in customer services, improve the quality of the food and refurbish the very tired and shabby guest rooms.

I’m not going to ramble on too much as I think the same has been said before. The hotel is very spacious and clean but let down entirely by its disinterested and damn right rude staff. Not all, Theo is an absolute legend but 90% of the staff really don’t want to be there. There’s laid back and then there’s lazy. The latter unfortunately. Rooms not being cleaned when they are supposed to, poor service in the buffet restaurant, bar staff who have to finish their own conversations before serving you or even taking your order then deciding to let you wait while they serve another customer with no other reason than ‘ I have served him before’. And please don’t expect any smiles from the female bar staff at Lovers beach. This totally spoilt my holiday, but did give us something to laugh (eventually) about for all the wrong reasons. It just wouldn’t happen in Britain nor any other country I have visited. Lovely grounds, kayaking,and beaches but I wouldn’t go back again.

We stayed 10nts at the beginning of December Overall had a lovely relaxing time but it could have been better Room was lovely and modern and a nice walk in shower Beaches and Rasta pool never crowded and always found a bed and towels until the last two days when towels were sparse and at one point had ran out Unfortunately the buffet restaurant wasn’t open at lunchtimes for our stay beginning of December so struggled for light bites at lunch. You pay a resort tax of $24 USD to cover cleaning and WiFi etc! Housekeeping comes every other day, which we knew, but went 4 days without seeing a cleaner - so no clean towels and overflowing bins and when questioned if they were cleaning today got told she finishes at 5pm so no! We had a cleaner 3 times in 10days! It’s disappointing as what were we actually paying the resort fee for? Our rep spoke to the assistant manager and put a complaint in but it shouldn’t have got to that (a cleaner then came twice in two days - which is included in the 3 times they actually came) The staff can be hit and miss! A lot of the women restaurant staff give the impression they don’t want to be there On more than one occasion we got ignored at breakfast for coffee and again for bar service in the buffet in the evenings! We politely grabbed the attention of the waiting staff and said they’d be back but never were We always said good morning, afternoon, evening etc, please, thank you and always asked how the staff were What a breath of fresh air Theo was though! The resort is spread out and you can get a fold buggy to take you around but we liked the walk Visited the coffee shop every day and had a white chocolate frappe (sooo nice) in the morning and lemonade of the day with a cake in the afternoon A must try is a BBC cocktail! The best one being made at Rasta beach bar Overall we did enjoy our stay and would consider coming here again as we loved it was adults only, just some of the staff and housekeeping let it down and the reason why I didn’t give 5*