Royalton St Lucia

Overall me and my wife were impressed with the hotel we stayed at the normal Royalton areas (not hideaway or Diamond Club) facilities are good and placed around in the right place for guests convenience i.e bars plentiful and in the right spots. Good selection of restaurants and the buffet (largest in St Lucia apparently) has a huge selection for everyone, food is of good quality IMO. Rooms are fabulous. Views are amazing, beach is very nice, pools are great, daytime entertainment or activities are good, the coffee shop/ice cream parlour/cake shop is a nice touch as is the snack van, you are never short of accessibility to food or drink at any time of day or night. Free towels. The let downs (can be seen as minor but its the small things you remember) Our main issue (which seem to have been mentioned quite regularly on here) is that there are not enough umbrellas vs lounges in all areas of the hotel inc the beach area. I do not want to get up at 7am on holiday to reserve lounges or beds!! There are not many people who can sit out in direct sunlight all day so everyone wants one and why not its a simple thing to fix yet they do not seem to be listening to guests here. Cmon Royalton listen to your customer feedback you are supposed to be a luxury hotel!! We had to sit somewhere we don't really want to sit to get some sort of shade somewhere. People in the hideaway were down in the other areas sometimes because they could not get shade. I also agree with other observations that staff are very hit and miss - some cannot do enough and will enhance your stay but others (particularly at the pool bars) make you feel like its a chore for them to get you a drink that you have already paid for or ignore you for long periods. The decent drinks regularly ran out! They have not really they just couldn't be bothered to get more from the main building or they are on some sort of limit about how many bottles they will get through at particular bars before telling you its run out - its an all inclusive for pity sake!! They should know the demand by now. Site security was not great or visible enough, that maybe intentional which I can understand but this hotel is highly populated by Brits (like us) and Americans, there were a few occasions where there were individuels who clearly had to much to drink and were swaying round causing unwanted hassle/annoyance to other guests. I am not saying someone cannot have a good time but not at the cost of other people's enjoyment. There was no one around to spot this and clear the situation up and bar staff did not seem interested. I hope the management look at the minor issues here because it is a very good hotel in a great spot, it could be amazing.

We chose this hotel to elope to and we enjoyed almost every aspect of the 2 weeks. The hotel itself is beautiful with well maintained gardens and pools, split into 3 areas (hideaway for adults, main royalton and diamond club) at times it can appear that 3 levels of service is given. We stayed in diamond club so had no issues but did hear of a few grumbles from other holidaymakers. The beach is small and shallow quite far out with a calm bay to swim in. Our room was in the presidential building with our own private swim up pool where we spent most of the two weeks relaxing. Restaurants were good, we tried them all our favourties were Hunters steakhouse and Armadillo texmex, the Zen teppanyaki was strange a kind of forced organised fun with ok ish food. 24 hour room service was a great addition to the all inclusive. The diamond club grill was good for afternoon burgers with hot sauce and all the staff there were friendly and patient with some very unreasonable demanding customers! Food at the buffet was not as hot as I like my food so rarely ate there as I had concern about food safety in there. Drinks were good brands and plentiful, martini bar service was slow at times and staff can make themselves look busy to avoid serving you, the bar upstairs in the main lobby was excellent the staff there very friendly and helpful that was our favourtie bar to go to in the evening. Our Butlers Ronald and Earl were always on hand and checked on us regularly throughout the day keeping our beer and coffee stocked up and bringing us food and drinks from the diamond grill to our swim up pool. They made our evening meal bookings and Ronald was one of our witnesses at our wedding. Weddings team we had little contact before arrival apart from booking the wedding but we had a meeting the day after arrival and Yasmine and Alcena had everything sorted for us in no time at all, we had a fabulous day and are so thankful for the team for the day going smoothly and ensuring above all our day was fun!