The Sands Barbados All Inclusive

On arrival at the hotel, we had to wait 3-4 hours for our room to be made ready. This definitely wasn't a good start. The hotel had already booked us all in the restaurant for lunch, which eased some of the tension from the arriving guests. Around 16:00, Ricardo came for us to take us to our room. When he opened the door and we walked into the room, our hearts sank, and our demeanour changed from excitement to disbelief. We walked into what seemed like a cupboard. There was no natural light coming into the room. The bed was on the right. The dresser, chair, and fridge were on the left. They were all within touching distance of each other without having to move. And the bathroom was just at the rear. There was no room for us to move around and nowhere to sit apart from sitting on the bed. The room and bathroom were clean and tidy, but not where we wanted to spend the next 10 days of our second honeymoon. This was one of Virgin super saver rooms, which we had on our first honeymoon, which was a lot better as it still had a veranda with plenty of natural light. The room on this holiday had a window with privacy glass that faced an outside wall, so even during the day, you would have had to keep a light on in the room. When we went for dinner that evening, I put a complaint in with the reception which happened to be Emerson, and asked if we could be moved to another room. Nothing else was available that evening, so we had no choice but to sleep in that room. We were so upset to think that we would have to spend our entire second honeymoon in that room, and if that was the case, we thought about forgoing our honeymoon and going home. Luckily, the next day Emerson told us a different room would be coming available, but it would cost us nearly an extra £700. This was the only option, we had no choice but to pay it even though this took a lot of our holiday money that we had budgeted for. When we went to see the new room, we were absolutely astounded. The room wasn't just a room, it was more like an apartment. It was so spacious, bright, airy and modern. We loved it and knew we would enjoy staying there. There were certain members of staff that couldn't do enough for you to make sure our stay was as enjoyable as possible. These staff included Emerson and assistant manager Rebecca, who were wonderful. Mark and Ricardo could never do enough for us. Mark was part of the hospitality team. He always greeted you with smile and making sure all was OK. Ricardo (a very handsome young man according to my wife) would also check in with us daily to make sure we were happy with everything. On the day of our anniversary Emerson arranged for some flowers to be delivered via an outside floris. And the hotel gave us a bottle of champagne. All setup nicely in the living room with flower petals. My wife could not hold her emotions. Brilliant absolutely fantastic anniversary. The food in the restaurant was ok nothing special and not much to choose from lunch

The hotel was amazing. Good food, lovely music and wonderful facilities. Will definitely visit again and highly recommend. Managed to propose to my Fiancé on the beach and the staff helped with organising. Massive shout out to Kemar!!!

Everything was perfect from the minute we landed! The food, the view, staff were all outstanding!!! We could not fault anything