Seriously overpriced with poor food and chaotic management
Nov 27, 2023 nobleman1058 Norwich, United Kingdom
Review of Cobblers Cove, Barbados, based on a one week stay in November 2023.
The property is pleasantly located on a beach near Speightstown in Barbados and is seriously expensive at over £600 for one day of bed and breakfast with the need to budget at least another £150 for lunch and dinner and drinks each day. With that in mind, one might…
Read more
Review of Cobblers Cove, Barbados, based on a one week stay in November 2023.
The property is pleasantly located on a beach near Speightstown in Barbados and is seriously expensive at over £600 for one day of bed and breakfast with the need to budget at least another £150 for lunch and dinner and drinks each day. With that in mind, one might reasonably expect somewhere quite good.
On our 1st morning we sat for breakfast at 0730, the first in the restaurant, and ordered toast and coffee. Half an hour later and with about a dozen other couples all now seated and served, I had to go to the restaurant front desk and ask where our coffee was. Much flapping and blaming of the i-pads they were using to take orders and they “re-ordered” it. Then came the time to order a hot breakfast and I ordered huevos habaneros – the image below shows what arrived 10 minutes later.
Basically boiled potatoes and tomatoes with a deformed egg on top. Crucially no habanero peppers at all. I asked the waiter if I had the correct dish as it had no habaneros in it and he apologised and said I could order something else.
I played safe and ordered the “full English”. This was a dried out sausage and bacon with a poached egg and one tomato. No beans, no mushrooms, no potato of any sort, no ketchup - anyway, I cut into the tomato and it was rotten (see next image). It was our first morning and we didn’t want to complain so we went and sat by the pool and hoped for better.
Day two and we again got forgotten at breakfast. Again we decided not to complain and retired to the pool. There are too few loungers around the pool for guests and if the hotel is fully booked one is banished to the edges of a patio away from the pool. We discovered that folk were getting up before 0630 to reserve the loungers round the pool!!
Anyway, lunch on day two and I ordered an “Curried egg plant roti” It is illustrated below and was inedible with mushy aubergine and potato that must have been reheated half a dozen times and the aubergine had turned to a pulp. I showed it to the waiter and he struck from our bill and I went hungry!
At this stage I decided I should contact the manager (there seem to be several layers of manager in the hotel which is owned by a couple of London based entrepreneurs). Eventually a senior manager called Joanna listened to my account and looked at the images attached here and offered my wife and I complimentary dinner which we did accept.
Fort 48 hours over the weekend we seemed to be “on the radar of the staff” and received exemplary service. By the Monday however things reverted to type. I had grit in my omelette at breakfast and just left it. Service was erratic and then the funniest event of all:-
There were two loungers in the pool which my wife had enjoyed using every day. We arrived at the pool to find them both missing on the 6th day of our stay. At 0830 we asked the head waiter where they were and he said he’d find them. By 1030 he hadn‘t reappeared so I sought him out and he said he had no idea where they had gone. We went to the gym and on returning to the main hotel, asked a manager in a dark blue blouse, on the front desk about the loungers. She said she’d look into it and came to find us by the pool at 1300 to say they were coming back having been cleaned. By 1500 nothing happened so I gave in and asked to see the duty manager who was a young lad about 25 years old who explained the loungers had been removed because there had been complaints that two small children were making a noise using them and monopolising them!! I asked exactly how removing them helped the problem of two children monopolising them because now nobody could use them?? He did a good imitation of a fish swallowing air!!
In summary this is an extremely expensive hotel costing a minimum of £600 per night for B&B. The food is very poor, the management is chaotic and we will never return and feel quite seriously ripped off.
Read less
