Sugar Bay Barbados

I can???t say enough good things about this hotel, especially in these very difficult times! We stayed for a short break, and I only wish we could have stayed longer! We will be back! Rooms were small but very comfortable, with lovely ???White Company??? products. Had all amenities needed, fabulous shower, great water pressure, kettle, fridge (with bottled water), etc. The hotel was very quiet, and as a result of this and Covid, there was just one restaurant and bar available, and wasn???t the buffet just ???a la carte???. Whilst the menu was smallish, it was varied (included some sushi/sashimi as the Umi restaurant closed, and a delicious ???like butter??? steak), but all tasted great. Loved the Pad Thai. It felt like a lot of effort was put into providing great quality over simply going for lots of choice. We really enjoyed all our meals (and I???m fussy!), and they serve a great rum punch! But overwhelmingly what we enjoyed the most was the wonderful staff. Without fail we did not come across one person that didn???t greet us with a smile, and do all they could to make our stay memorable. I???ve been visiting the island all my life, and love the people here, but the staff at Sugar Bay really are wonderful. They are working under such difficult conditions, and we really appreciated all their friendly efforts! This truly was a special few days thanks to them. Finally a big mention for the Sunday night entertainment by ???Virgo???. They were great and even with the curfew at 5pm start time, made it a great evening. We can???t wait to return! Thank you Sugar Bay!

Booked in here between apartments for a short 5/6 days all inclusive stay. Very nice rooms, food was great. Location right on the beach and great spa and facilities. Only thing stopping 5 stars was the issue at check out. Hotel was less than half full, asked the day before if we could have a late check out and staff said it wouldn???t be a problem as our room was booked out but we had to come down in the morning to ask. No problem. Came down in the morning and they categorically told us no, we had to be out by 11am as someone was going in to that room. We challenged this and said the hotel was half empty and they stated that they were using all the rooms but had booked ours out. Bonkers, anyway, didn???t ruin our stay, just left a little bad taste in our mouths when we left. If all inclusive resorts are your thing then this really is a great place to stay. It suited us for our short stay.

After a long flight, we arrived at the hotel on the 2nd Jan at around 6pm, we were told to go straight to our room to fill out some forms and that we must wait for the bellboy to come and collect our forms. We waited for an hour and no one came, we called reception to tell them we were hungry but we were told that the kitchen closes at 7 pm and there was no food (no apology), they advised us we had water in our fridge to drink and they would send us a croissant up to our room. The second-night things did get better for a short time as we were then able to use the quarantine facility of the small pool but this stopped after 1 day and for the rest of the time we were not allowed to leave our room due to an announcement from the ministry of health. Our first room was dirty and loud and our bedding smelt damp and fusty so after complaining they kindly upgraded us to a sea view room which was really nice and clean and I would recommend choosing a beachfront room if quarantining as you might be there a while. We were lucky and our private tests at the hotel came back after 50 hours but a lot of other people's did not. We had emailed in advance to ask about the private covid test special offer that they were advertising as half price if staying 7 nights or more and we were told we needed to book this at the reception when we arrived at the hotel which of course when we arrived they said we were not eligible and gave some excuse saying that we got the room at a reduced rate, I advised them that we used Tripadvisor comparison tool and booked the best rate and they said that made us not eligible. Everything at this hotel closes at 7 pm. You cannot get drinks or food after 7 pm, they advised this was due to the island curfew of 9 pm. The pool bar is closed, the two speciality restaurants are closed so there is only a very small limited buffet. In quarantine, food was delivered to our room but this was usually cold by the time it arrived. Once we got out of quarantine we did think the food and cocktails were of good quality for an all-inclusive. The beach here is very nice and we liked the look of the resort, we could imagine that it might be a nice resort to visit in different times. The restaurant and bar staff were very nice and friendly as was one of the women on reception who worked the evening shift. On the last day, our flight was not until 7 pm so we asked the resort if they would allow us to keep the room until 5 pm so that we could enjoy our last day on the beach, especially as we did not get dinner on the first evening and we had paid for all inclusive but was only given a croissant and water on the first night. We were told 'no' very firmly, that we would have to pay extra and they would only let us have the room until 3 pm. The hotel was empty so it would have been nice if they would have done this as a gesture given that we had a reduced service the entire holiday so we had to cut our final day short to go back and get showered at 2 pm, we sat by the pool looking up to our room and no one came to clean it so the hotel could have done a nice thing for us but they chose not to and this is what I believe lets them down. I had believed it was a family-run boutique hotel but this is not the case and some of the reception staff do not seem pleased to be working there and would certainly benefit from some customer service training. In all, we did manage to have a nice time even though some of the reception staff were rude and spiteful, the hotel looks very pretty and if it wasn't for the way that we were treated by some of the reception staff then I would have returned again but I think I will choose a friendlier hotel next time.