It is difficult to express just how disappointed we were with this supposedly “exquisite” accommodation (we booked the 1 bedroom apartment). In four decades of travelling the globe I don’t think we’ve ever found accommodation that fell so far short of our reasonable expectations – we’ve never been in a position where we had to up sticks and move elsewhere.
Given our dissatisfaction it would be easy to fall into the trap of giving a lot of overly subjective views, so I will try to guard against this and keep to the point and aim to be as objective as possible.
POSITIVES:-
Firstly the good points:
1. Nice quiet setting in pleasant gardens overlooking the golf course.
2. Fairly spacious accommodation.
3. Swimming pool (although we did not use it)
4. Two friendly dogs.
NEGATIVES:-
Now for the negatives. It is worth describing the overall layout of the apartment first. The house is on a slope with the ground level at the front of the house being higher than the ground level at the rear. When viewed from the front of the house the apartment is actually in the basement level (without any windows to the front of the house). The entrance to the apartment is down quite a number of steps at the back of the house. One enters into the sitting / dining area which receives adequate daylight. The kitchen area is one side of the hallway that leads to the bedroom, bathroom and utility room. The kitchen receives a certain amount of daylight spilling across from the sitting / dining area. The bathroom and utility room have no natural light. The bedroom has a row of narrow windows (I guess about 1 foot or so high) at ceiling level which equates to leg level on the outside (along the side of the swimming pool).
1. Bedroom
The bedroom was worst of all. The furniture consisted of two single beds pushed together to make a sort of king-sized bed, a bedside unit (with a bedside lamp), a small coffee table and a built-in wardrobe. Taking each of these in turn:-
- The bed had a mattress topper covered with sheets that were way too small. As a consequence the bedding moved around all over the place making things very uncomfortable indeed. The pillows were foam chip type and clearly old & lumpy – consequently these were also very uncomfortable. The sheets seemed to be poly/cotton (much more poly than cotton) and were so worn that they had “bobbles” all over them (again adding to the discomfort).
- The bedside unit had long since seen better days. One drawer was missing, one drawer had its handle broken away. The shade of the bedside lamp had several dents and stains.
- The small coffee table looked tired but was of little use anyhow.
- The wardrobe doors needed a good shove / yank to close / open them. Again this unit looked very tired and had clearly seen better days.
The small ceiling level bedroom windows half-opened and had mozzie screens. There was also a one speed (slow) ceiling fan. Overall the ventilation was very poor and we resorted to standing the floor fan from the sitting / dining area in the doorway to improve circulation (but this was quite noisy and so we resorted to ear-plugs - which didn’t help that much).
2. Sitting / Dining area.
Whilst being quite spacious the furniture was all quite old and tired. The sofa and armchairs had faded & stained cushions. The small bookcase had lumps missing out of it. The TV worked after a fashion, but the picture was so out of focus as to make it unusable. Lighting consisted of two small wall lights (one of which did not work) and a standard lamp.
3. Kitchen
One instantly got a feeling that things weren’t clean (e.g. greasy / sticky surfaces). As we started out with the intention of making a go of things (don’t ask me why, but that was before we’d had such a dreadful night’s sleep), we bought some cleaning materials and spent an hour or more cleaning utensils and surfaces. Of particular note was the cooker. Apart from the fact that the oven did not work, the whole of the top surface and the controls had a horrible greasy tacky feel to them. Lighting was provided by a grubby looking strip light.
4. Bathroom
Again the lighting was from a strip light. The bathroom was extremely spartan. Apart from the permanent fixtures (i.e. the basin, the shower unit and the toilet unit) the only additional items were a shower rail / curtain, a small towel rail, a soap dish (with a bar of soap) and a toothbrush holder (which was originally chrome but had become significantly pitted with rust). I’d liken the bathroom to the sort of facilities one might expect to find at a down market camp-site.
We also spoke with the occupiers of the cottage (in the grounds just outside the apartment). They had booked and paid in advance (for two weeks). They were clearly not happy with their accommodation, but having paid in advance they felt they were in quite a weak position.
Fortunately for us, we had not paid any monies in advance and left after the first night. We paid just for the one night. The owner wanted us to pay more but we stuck to our guns. With hindsight I feel that we shouldn’t have paid for the one night even, as, in our opinion, the accommodation has been seriously misrepresented on the owner’s website.
On telling the owner that we weren’t happy with the accommodation (we only described the issues with the bedroom as we did not wish to enter into protracted discussions – we just wanted out) and that we were leaving, she showed no interest in recognising our legitimate issues, but simply claimed that nobody else had complained. It is not possible to verify the veracity of her statement, but I would say that I find it stretches credibility.
Now, the owner may respond and say that if one had pointed out the problems things could have been addressed. That might have been fine if it was only one or two minor items. But given the extensive list of issues and general poor quality of the accommodation, this would have been completely unrealistic. This then begs the question as to how could the accommodation have been in such poor condition? Had it not been let out for a long time? Why hadn’t the owner taken the trouble to thoroughly inspect the unit beforehand? Or does the owner not realise what is required (or just doesn’t care)?
It is interesting to note (with hindsight) that the most recent of the guest comments on the owners website is from 2006. It is probably fair to say that this accommodation is way past its sell by date.
By way of trying to put the above comments in context, I would point out that we stayed in 3 other reasonably priced good quality accommodations on Grenada (all positively reviewed by me on TripAdvisor). It was only Caribbean Breeze that let the side down. We generally stay in small accommodations (B&Bs, studios, apartments etc.) all around the world and know what it is reasonable to expect. If anyone has any doubts, please see the other reviews that I’ve posted before.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
