Bahia Principe Luxury Runaway Bay

My wife and I have stayed at Bahia Principe Luxury Runaway Bay from Saturday March 7th to Wednesday March 11th. Our experience and stay at this resort was rather lacklustre to say the least. I would like to prefix this post with letting you know that we are well travelled, have stayed in many resorts in the Caribbean and are Silver level Bahia members as well as members of other similar resorts. In fact, this was our 3rd stay in Jamaica but first with Bahia chain in Jamaica. The problems started prior to our trip when we tried to do early check-in online and select our ala carte restaurants. The website would not allow us to book the restaurants with a message about it being adults only and no underage visitors permitted. We are both adults, travelling without kids, staying at Luxury Runaway Bay which is adults only. We also couldn’t pick our room and this was important to us because my wife has troubles sleeping and we needed something quiet. I called Bahia customer service line 1-844-674-2175 and was informed that prior callers were experiencing similar messages on the website and that I should email my resort directly outlining what restaurants we’d like to try out and our dinner times. The lady on the phone provided me with the address customerservicebpjam@ to which I’ve sent the email, requesting my ala carte preferences, dinner times as well as requesting a room on top floor. We have not received a response at all. Day of the trip, our flight was 4 hours delayed to Jamaica, therefore we arrived late to the resort and were the only ones being transported by the mini-bus. We were the only people at the front desk checking in. Unfortunately the process took over 30 minutes even though we did early check-in online. Why it took so long is because front desk would not give us the keys to our room and instead made us wait for an escort to the room. This process is ridiculous and quite frankly seems like a method of forcing an early tip from new arrivals. During that wait period, we saw the customer service representative sitting in the lobby regarding our ala carte booking. She tried her best to get what we wanted and within our dinner time window. This is where we were also informed that the email was never received because it went to Bahia Principe Grand Jamaica next door but was never forwarded to customerservicebplux@. Why wasn’t this forwarded if our booking # would indicate we emailed the wrong hotel? Why weren’t we responded to stating that and been provided proper email address? At this point we are very tired, very hungry and we finally got fed up on waiting on the room escort and said we can take ourselves to the room. The front desk lady handed us the keys and decided she will take us there herself. She said we are on the 5th floor out of 7 floors and assured us it was a nice room. After a quick change of clothes, we headed out to the buffet where we felt let down again. There was a line of people in the restaurant lobby waiting to be seated. Mind you, this is after 7pm, way past peak time. We were told some tables had to be cleared off but visibly we could see lots of tables set and clean. Again this felt like a method to get tips but instead it angered the hungry waiting guests. Resorts like R*u or Ib***st**r do not escort guests in the buffet to the table and we never experienced these wait times at those resorts (Jamaica inclusive). After dinner we went back to the room and quickly learned our stay will not be what we dreamed of. For starters, the hallway to our room was facing the lobby area which was loud because that is where the bar is as well where the “shows” took place. The balcony was facing the pool area but that side proved to be quieter given the weather was bad. The hallways aren’t carpeted and you hear every luggage rolling, the cleaning staff carts and an echo with every conversation. Our bathroom had a smell of mold, mildew and sewage although it appeared to be clean. Over the days I noticed water seeping through the tiles between the wall and floor by the toilet, so I suspect the damage is behind the wall and in the pipes and the smell is coming through the drain holes. We kept the doors to the bathroom closed as it would stink up the whole room. On one of the mornings, our safe would not open. We called front desk and it took 1.5 hours for someone to get to our room to resolve the issue but in that time frame, we had roughly 5 calls from the front desk and security office to confirm the request was made from our room. That is 1.5 hours I had to stay in my room and wait, and nearly missing out on breakfast. It took the person 2 minutes to actually resolve the problem. Because we were staying for such a short period of time, we called on room service only once. I don’t believe in wasting resources if we don’t need to after all, we are adults and can use a tower more than once. The cleaning person did tidy up our room, but it is when we went to take a shower we noticed the used towels were removed and never replenished with fresh ones. Bahia has a policy (at least in Jamaica) that dinner reservations will be kept for 5 minutes, and here we are calling front desk and waiting on towels to be brought in so we can get ready for dinner. Later that night when we went to bed we realized that our bed sheet has been removed but not replaced so we had to sleep on a mattress cover, this is not acceptable. As I mentioned earlier, we have travelled quite a bit and in the years of my travels this is the first time I feel obligated to voice my experience and concerns. No resort is perfect and no resort can please 100% of its guests and we understand that. We also aren’t difficult guests, in fact we usually befriend the staff, and speak with the resort managers to praise them on job well done. The kicker is, we couldn’t even find the Luxury Runaway Bay manager be it at the restaurants or on the grounds. There was a young man who took a quality survey by the pool one day, but we weren’t contacted during our stay regarding the issues we raised to him so I assume it didn’t go anywhere. I do want to finish saying this, the resort has beautiful grounds and the staff is friendly but services need improvement and I will do more extensive research before staying at a Bahia resort again and so should you dear reader.

We stayed for 2 weeks arriving a few days before Christmas 2019. This was our fourth visit to Jamaica but first stay at this hotel. We usually stay in Montego Bay so don’t usually have much of a journey from airport to hotel but we enjoyed the journey. CHECK IN Our transfer was included with TUI (travelled from UK), all went well on journey to hotel. On arrival we received a welcome drink, check in was very quick the reception staff were very friendly and professional. We were then shown to our room. ROOM We were impressed by our room very spacious and clean. Our room looked over the pool with a sea view, balcony was a good size. Bed was very comfortable, lots of storage space, seating area with desk, sofa and table with chairs. TV in room worked well with a wide range of channels we enjoy watching a bit of TV while getting ready. Safe worked well you do need to activate with your room key and create your own code, Bathroom very clean and spacious. MINI BAR: mini bar with red stripe, variety of sodas, water, bottle of Appleton rum and Sky vodka. Banana chips and coffee making facilities. Mini bar was restocked regularly. HOUSEKEEPING: Excellent, housekeeping staff were very friendly and professional. ROOM SERVICE We used room service twice for breakfast and once for dinner. Menu isn’t huge but this wasn’t an issue for us. We enjoyed breakfast on both occasions, we ordered burgers for dinner which were good. Delivery of room service was quick. POOLS I had been concerned before travel as I had read about the poolside being very slippery, thankfully this was not an issue. Pools were clean with poolside entertainment at main pool. Lots of sun beds we never had a problem getting a bed. BEACHES I am usually more a pool person but I really enjoyed the beach areas at this hotel, the water was very calm and not too deep which fir me personally was ideal. We particularly enjoyed the luxury beach as there were lots of tropical fish. Beaches very clean and well staffed by hotel. Sometimes more difficult to get a subbed at beach but staff were on hand to help if needed. ENTERTAINMENT As we were staying on a Luxury Adult only part of hotel we could access entertainment on both sides of hotel. We did enjoy the evening performances we always love the Silver Birds Steel Band when visiting Jamaica, once again fantastic. We also really enjoyed the aqua ballet and had a great view of this show from our balcony. On occasions evening shows did get repetitive during our stay the African Show was on 5 Times!!!!! Thankfully as hotel is so big lots of different things going on. In luxury lobby live pianist each night, live bands at outdoor bar on Grand side. There is also the village based on the Grand side which has a nightclub, casino and live entertainment. Entertainment team provide range of activities during the day and evening. The team did a great job over Christmas events and New Year’s Eve. We also loved the beach parties. RESTRAUNTS JAZMIN BUFFET: On the whole we were impressed by variety of food, breakfast was very good. Sometimes a bit of a wait to get served for a drink. PICASSO: very nice RODIZIO Brazilian Steakhouse: one of our favourites, service excellent. DOLCE VITA: Just okay DON PABLO: fantastic, excellent service, one of our favourites MIKADO: Good food, nice night of entertainment with live cooking KNIFE: This opened during our stay but we didn’t visit. We also enjoyed the poolside restaurant for lunch. We booked our Al Carte restraunts about a week in advance. We enjoyed the gala nights for dinner at Christmas and new year staff worked hard during these events. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great at Christmas Eve and some events were cancelled. BARS Lots of bars throughout both Luxury & Grand sides of hotel. We really enjoyed the luxury lobby bar, luxury beach bar, the sunset bar which is located behind the Italian restraunt, outdoor bar on grand side and sports bar. Bars were well stocked and bar servers very friendly. Loved top selfs spirits on luxury side. HOTEL GROUNDS This is a huge hotel but we have stayed in bigger in Dominican so we enjoy this element of having different areas to explore. Hotel grounds are beautiful very picturesque. We really like that throughout both sides of hotel there are numerous areas to sit and relax both indoors and outdoors. EXCURSIONS During our stay we visited Marth Brae Rafting, always a favourite of ours. Port Antiona this was our first visit to this part of the island, stunning. We did shopping excursion with hotel to Ocho Rios. We love Jamaica and love to explore when we visit. SPECIAL OCCASIONS During our stay it was my birthday and hotel did a great job to make my day special. The night before my birthday we came back to room and it had been decorated. On morning of my birthday staff sang happy birthday and made me a breakfast cocktail. Hotel left a birthday message in room along with a bottle of fizz. TUI REPS Travelling from UK we usually use TUI travel company. Once again our travel reps were fantastic and very helpful, informative. We didn’t have any issues during our stay. We knew one of the reps Keron as he previously worked at a hotel we visited before, it was lovely to see him again. Overall we had a fantastic holiday, we will definitely visit this hotel again.

My friends and I decided to visited the property for a weekend getaway ,we found it to be among the best in the country I would like to make mention of some of the wonderful staffs that we come across while on our vacation the Deputy manager Jodan Bowen ,Daviece from the front desk ,simone the Butler our Housekeeper patricia ,the amazing bar staffs ,restaurant manager Marva they were all amazing while we were there, its truly a great place on earth .