This hotel has to win both the most ugly AND most stunningly beautiful award. if you don't like modern architecture, then close your eyes until you are in the room and just stay in the room!! The view of the pitons is everything that it is cracked up to be, and the rooms are vast. I hadn't been sure whether it would be worth paying for anything other than the jacuzzi suites, but it definitely is, partly because the jacuzzi suites are on the lowest levels of the building, which feels quite oppressive ( it's a bit like a multi storey carpark) , also because part of the joy here is just staying in your room and lazing in the pool looking at the view. be aware that the layout is unique in each room - in ours the pool extended right across the open side of the room so you couldn't be in the sun unless you were in the pool. Other rooms had loungers at the edge of the room in the sun, with the pool only taking up part of the outside edge. In some rooms the access to the bathroom area was inconvenient.You either need to ask to choose your room when you arrive or be specific about what you want when you book. I'm not convinced it's worth paying more for the top rooms- it's the room layout and position within the building which makes the most difference.All the rooms are huge.
I'd echo what previous reviewers have said about the bathroom privacy- there is no acoustic privacy in the room at all! You need to turn up the music when one of you goes to the loo! ( and they are a bit tricky about letting you play music- there are no ipod docks, tvs or radios in the rooms so you need to take your own.)
Most guests when we were there were Americans and Canadians- it seems to be less well known by Brits. Perhaps that's why the butler service is so well rated here, but we just found it an unnecessary complication, having to wait for our butler to come and see us or for him to ring someone else.
The food is excellent- Michelin star standard- but service can be excrutiatingly slow. Taking half an hour to serve bread is pushing it a bit!!
Final point- the road access to the hotel is really bad,( rough, narrow and pitted) which means that you feel reluctant to go out of the resort any more than you have to, even in a taxi, as it takes ages. They run a boat taxi into Soufriere which is worth doing instead of by car. They have an excellent guy who takes guests on local walks- well worth doing. We also loved the visit we did to the Hotel Chocolate plantation nearby.
It's a shame that more tourists don't spend time and money in Soufriere as the locals desperately need it- we were quite shocked by the level of poverty locally given the number of upmarket resorts in the area.
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