We are writing this email to describe our experiences (good and bad) at Sandals Regency La Toc resort and explain our disappointment.
My husband and I arrived in St. Lucia for our honeymoon on Monday, March 29, 2010. Upon our arrival, we were ushered to a Sandals van for our transportation to the resort. It was a very hot and humid day and the van's air-conditioning was not running enough to keep us comfortable. The ride to the resort took an hour and a half on winding roads in a van that did not have a great suspension and it was not a comfortable ride. We arrived at the resort both feeling carsick. Had we know what to expect, we could have taken Dramamine. I recommend telling your guests beforehand what to expect and telling them about the option to purchase a luxury ride.
We arrived at the Sandals Regency La Toc resort hot and carsick and were immediately ushered past the beautiful lobby and into a conference room with about 30 other guests. We were offered champagne, but at that point all we wanted was some water and to be left alone in our room to relax as we had been traveling since 5:00am that morning. Instead, we had to listen to a group presentation about the resort, fill out paperwork and wait 20 minutes for our room key. When we finally were given our room key and taken to our room, our luggage never arrived. After waiting for 30 minutes, we called the front desk and they put us on hold to check on the luggage. The person on the phone never picked back up and after about 4 minutes there was a knock at the door and our bags were brought in. This is the worst first impression at a hotel/resort that we have ever had during our extensive travels across the country and around the world.
Our room had a beautiful breathtaking view (Room 356) and the d cor was fine. We did discover later that our room had tiny ants everywhere, but primarily in the bathroom. We appreciated the fridge filled with water and juice. However, one day the concierge came by to ask us what we needed. We told him we were out of water and juice. He asked us which kind of juice we would like. We requested the guava juice. He came in and brought bottles of water and every other kind of juice except guava. He left without saying a word. On the second evening, we drank our bottle of champagne. It was never refilled in the fridge by the concierge. On the fifth day we had to make a phone call to request another bottle from the concierge. The bottle was brought up a half an hour later and was warm. We feel that this is something that should have been automatically refilled in the refrigerator the way we were told it would be when we were initially taken to our room.
The first morning we requested room service for breakfast. The food arrived 30 minutes after we requested and it was cold and missing half of what we requested. The resort never put another breakfast room service form in our room for us to utilize the service again, though I don't think we would have regardless.
The food at The Pitons, Armandos, Neptunes, La Toc, the Pavillion and Kimono's was superb. We absolutely enjoyed the dining experience. Unfortunately we were very disappointed that our water glasses were never refilled at any restaurant unless we asked. Several times when we asked for them to be refilled, the server acted annoyed and put out by our request. We had spent many hours outside every day and needed to stay hydrated. It should always be something that your employees do without being asked.
Our experience at the spa was fantastic! We loved our package, the rub-a-dub (massage, exfoliation and bath). Our technicians were absolutely wonderful and we felt totally pampered. Our room came with a $250 credit for the spa, but we spent $350.
We had a wonderful time on the Land and Sea adventure and an even better time on the zip lining adventure that we did. Our guide on the zip lining was Greg and he was fun, helpful and very informative. We LOVED our tours/excursions.
We enjoyed our daily time at the pool and beach. We also loved riding on the water "bikes" that we were able to use for free. Unfortunately, the last three days we were at the Regency the pool was disgusting. It was cloudy in color and there was a film of sunscreen covering the top. It looked so bad that we did not even get in the pool those days.
On our last full day (April 4th) in St. Lucia, we decided to go to the tour desk and reserve a private car for our ride back to the airport. We were told that there was a problem because there wasn't enough credit on our account to reserve the car. We were never told that there was a credit limit of what we could charge to our room and we had charged about $900 worth of activities from the spa, gift shops and tours. When we got our invoice from the front desk, they had not applied our $250 credit from the spa. Had they applied the credit, we would not have had any problems reserving a private car. However, when we asked about the credit, the front desk employee gave us a dirty look and acted like we were ridiculous for asking for it to be applied towards our bill. After paying our balance, we had to go back to the tour desk to then ask them to reserve the car. It was inconvenient and we had plenty of money to spend but were never told that there was a limit on our room credit. It was very embarrassing to us and we should have been accommodated without having to go back and forth between the desks.
The private car ride back to the airport was wonderful. The car was comfortable, the driver was pleasant and we enjoyed our ride back.
Overall our honeymoon was amazing, but the Sandals experience was unbelievably disappointing. We never expect that everything will go perfectly during our travels and are able to accept and forget bad circumstances. However, we were expecting a total wow factor based on what we had been led to believe from the Sandals website and marketing material and there were just too many bad circumstances that occurred for us to forget. We were not made to feel special and welcome except for by a small number of employees. The landscape was spectacular, but the service was terrible. After spending a total of about $6,000 on our honeymoon we should have been wowed and pampered. We will not be returning to any Sandals resorts and will tell our friends, family and acquaintances about our experiences at Sandals.