The Sands at Grace Bay

Just back from two weeks at the sands. First time in the Turks and Caicos, and as I normally do, I like to separate out the good, and the not so good within my reviews. So let’s start with the good. We had a one bedroom suite, although the word suite is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We had a bathroom (which included a washing machine and dryer) a butler station equipped with fridge, microwave and toaster (a call to reception and a kettle was duly delivered), dry comfortable bed and a lounge are with TV, and a good sized balcony with sea view. Our bed was enormous and I have to say, the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. Furniture in the room seemed fairly new and was comfortable. Air-conditioning was spot on, and plenty of lighting. The room was close to reception and also a nice pool, although the beach is the star of the show here. The beach is wonderful, very clean, with good amenities and crystal clear water. The grounds of the hotel are also immaculate. They also make clever use of pathways and bushes, lawns and shrubs, with a couple of smaller pools which create intimate, quite zones. There is of course a larger main pool nearer to the beach, again, very clean with plenty of Sun loungers. We arrived a bit early, so our room wasn’t ready. Having left London at 8am UK time with precious little sleep, a nine hour flight we enjoyed a couple of well deserved beers in Hemingways while we waited for our room to be ready. We dined in Hemingways that night and the portions were good, and quality even better. While we usually had breakfast in our room, we did have breakfast in the restaurant a few times, and it was always good. Lunchtime, we usually had a small meal which we shared as a snack, again very good. Dinner again was always very good. They have a fantastic head chef there, The hotel operates a shuttle to its sister resorts - The Shore club and the Palms. We used this to look at and eat at the other resorts, and preferred the Sands. Having two weeks to explore, I honestly feel that the Sands occupies the best part of grace bay. While we had green flags at the beach, other resorts had yellow. We dined at the ritz Carlton one night and had a look at their part of the beach, we also visited the beach by the Wymara (both arguably the more exclusive resorts) and both agreed the the Sands was the best. The hotel offers bikes for guests to use, free of charge, but not having ridden a bike for about thirty years, I declined this opportunity and preferred to walk to the shopping area - about a ten minute walk, to a number of restaurants, cafes and some unique gift shops. There is a decent sized supermarket, but this is about a mile away, and you can only carry so much, especially when it’s so hot, so probably worth a taxi or hiring a car to stock up. I was a bit concerned about only having one restaurant on site, but I needn’t have been. Hemingway’s is great, and manages to act as a bar, breakfast and lunch diner and evening restaurant and manages to deliver on each. Check out is at 11am, but front desk staff were able to extend our checkout until midday which was much appreciated. A couple of issues that were disappointing though: 1. Front desk/Charges. We’d paid paid up front for our holiday via our travel agent, we also like to pay cash for drinks, meals etc as this not only helps us to budget, but avoids any issues at checkout. Naturally we were asked to give our credit card details for incidentals. Imagine our concern when our credit card company alerted us to some unusual activity. We were seeing “pending” charges of $500 a day, soon racking up a few thousand dollars of charges. Naturally we complained, front desk were a little dismissive so we spoke to a manager who advised that their accounts department had made a mistake and promised to remove them. (There was also a restaurant charge added which wasn’t us). Couple of days later the charges were still there, I spoke to the manager again, and advised her that we had alerted our credit card company to freeze our card and that my next call was to the police. This was now spoiling our holiday. My wife also alerted our travel agent. Following their intervention, the next morning the manager advised me that she’d arranged for the charges to be removed a bottle of wine to be sent to us by way of an apology, but I told her it hadn’t arrived. I think she’d arranged it for a different room, she apologised again and made a note to send another one. This didn’t arrive either at which point I just gave up. We witnessed other guests having similar issues, so my advise is to check your credit card activity and scrutinise every check that you’re asked to settle when you check out. Day before we left, front desk rang me to ask if we wanted a taxi to the airport, to which I said thank you, 5pm please. Of course, 5pm came and went - no taxi. Thankfully there was another one waiting for fares in the car park that they flagged down. At check out, we were presented with three restaurant bills for our room, none of which had our signatures on, which to be fair were cancelled without argument. But surely, restaurant staff shouldn’t just accept a room number without cross referencing the name of the person in the room? 2. Plumbing. Water pressure in our in-room toilet was poor. 3. More storage in the room would’ve been ideal, and a bigger safe, but these are minor points. There is currently a large construction project happening next door, but while the activity/noise didn’t affect us at all, I hope it doesn’t end up overshadowing the Sands. Overall, it’s a nice hotel. Staff are mostly very pleasant, but bizarrely the most pleasant ones are the ones who aren’t meant to be customer facing - gardeners and housekeeping. Front desk staff could be a bit more welcoming. There is an on-site shop, which would be better if it stocked more groceries and stayed open a little later. Overall though, the litmus test is “Would I go back?” Yes I would. Read less

Pros: - Great for families with kids, with fun pool layout, casual restaurant on site, all rooms open to the outside, and full kitchens in the rooms (upgrade option) - We found the staff to be friendly and accomodating. No issues whatsoever. But in the islands you're not going to get the same fawning, deferential level of personal interaction we're accustomed to in the states. - The grounds are beautifully landscaped and very well maintained and clean. - The beach is also beautiful and better maintained than some others we experienced on the island. Lots of available chairs and cabanas with attendants to provide umbrellas upon request - The hotel provides bikes that can be checked out for an easy 5 min ride into town - Great location close to but not in town, so beach had fewer folks wandering in Cons: - Room maintenance and quality, with an impression of a remodel done on the cheap. Big black mold patch on bathroom ceiling, hot and cold on taps reversed, toilet runs constantly, kitchen tap handle blocked by bar countertop overhang so didn't work properly, coffee maker broken, very old pots and pans with non stick coating nearly scratched off, no outlets at all on one side of king bed in master bedroom, rickety kitchen cabinets, older appliances - Fitness center very outdated and poorly cleaned and maintained. Both treads were broken and all of the equipment was very old and covered in old sweat. Pretty gross. Often ran out of towels. A/C was broken and holding at 79 degrees. Notified the front desk manager, but none of the issues were addressed during our 9 days there. Worst fitness room I've experienced in decades. - Hotel not located near a reef reachable from the beach. If snorkeling is a priority, there is plenty of crystal clear water, but not much else to see but a sandy bottom. - Very sporadic drink service on the beach. You need to plan to walk to the restaurant to get a drink, or discretely BYO in a container. - Not a problem for us, but the hotel is a 5 min bike or 20 min walk from all restaurants and shops. Something to be aware of. Read less

I have traveled to over 30 countries and I stayed in hundreds of hotels, I have never had a worse travel experience than at the Sands. I have never wrote a poor review in my life, but I felt like it was my duty to post on here to tell you, DO NOT GO!! There are SO many better alternative options on the island. Long story short, we booked one of the lowest level room because we figured we would be outside most of the day anyways. The photos online made the room look bright and spacious, have nice amenities, and it seemed perfect. We weren't expecting 5 star luxury, but we were expecting a room that looked like the photos on the website!!!! I put photos below so you can see a side by side of what was advertised vs what we got, as you can see, our room looked NOTHING like what was advertised. We brought the issue up politely to the hotel management, more out of confusion for why our room looked nothing like the photos, they dismissed us and basically said "too bad". We shared our concerns with the false advertisement and their excuse was the rooms were "renovated" and their website hadn't been updated yet. I didn't think you could renovate something to look worse, but okay! The management at this hotel is just straight up terrible, and majority of the staff is horribly rude too. They tried to undermine our concerns by saying the photos were taken on the third floor, not the first (where our room was), and thats why the view was different. You would think a room that feels like your in a dungeon would cost less and would be prefaced beforehand, but apparently not here!!! I seriously could go on and on with the complaints. The freaking bathroom didn't even have a hook to hang our towels or bathing suits, and the only mirror was the one over the sink in the bathroom. We had to ASK the for a hook and a mirror, and they came and installed a dinky hook and mirror probably just to save their butts. Oh and the door to the room opened OUTWARDS, talk about unsafe. Im trying to keep this as concise as possible, but seriously I have never hated a resort more in my life. They offered us a $75 voucher or to PAY for a room change after we threatened to post a review detailing our experiences, funny. Long story short, this place sucks. Do not come here it will ruin your trip. Read less

Over all we were very happy with the accommodation and gardens. Our suite was massive, really too big for our needs. We were a couple who ate out so the kitchen and earring area was really redundant as was the living area. If you are a family eating in, this suite has everything for you, cooker, fridge freezer, washer dryer and dishwasher. We were provided with coffee every day for the machine. The bedroom was smallish, didn’t have any bedside tables or lamps which was annoying as there was nowhere to put you books, and the light was bright once you were in bed. Over the bed was the smoke alarm that flicked red every few minutes, this was quite noticeable once the lights were off. You couldn’t see the tv well from the bed as it was on a stand too low. The were no dressing gowns provided which I missed. Next doors door closure was too tight and when their door closed it made quite a bang. Our patio doors whilst working were very old. Our room wasn’t serviced on our first day, we also got locked out for half an hour. We were comped a bottle of wine but didn’t drink it, perhaps a bar credit would have been more appropriate. I assume the wine went back. We happily used the hotel free bikes and found a supermarket called gourmet that was much more reasonable than the 2 shops we used. Apparently there isn’t a fixed price for goods in T&C, so you can be charged one price and the next day a dollar more for the same item. The. Hotel is very well placed and a 5-10 min walk to bars/shops. There is a great variation in price so be aware. We paid 10 dollars for a bottle of local beer and 6 dollars in another restaurant. The beach is out of this world. We took a boat trip, half day and it was 280 dollars. I did snorkel and see amazing fish. I felt Barbados was more affordable and fun, T&C is a bit posh. Read less

This hotel FALSE ADVERTISES their rooms!! My friends and I were super excited to visit and I have always had an amazing time visiting Turks (this was my sixth visit to the island). However this was our first time at The Sands and I will NEVER stay at this hotel again. Our room looked absolutely nothing like what was pictured online. The room was falsely advertised online to manipulate guests into purchasing a room that is not reflective of the room in reality. When approaching management about this issue they brushed off our concerns and told us that the room pictured online simply does not exist anymore as the rooms had undergone "renovations". Who renovates their hotel rooms to look worse than before? Regardless of renovations, the hotel has manipulated guests into buying a room under the false pretense that the room will look as pictured online. If this room does not exist anymore, do not display it online as the reference photos!!! This is the textbook definition of false advertisement. After fighting for three days with hotel management about either getting compensation or moved for the lack of transparency and receiving a room that looked nothing like what we had purchased, we were told that since we had booked our stay through Expedia we would only be able to receive any sort of refund by reaching out through them after our stay. In addition we were told that our total room incidentals would be covered as compensation for this manipulation. Only to discover that when it came time to check out, we were being lied to AGAIN, as now with a change of heart, the hotel decided to only credit us 75 DOLLARS total towards room incidentals. For reference, this did not even cover the bill of my group of 3 eating lunch at their restaurant just ONCE. A total of 75 dollars credit absolutely does not make up for paying 600 a night for a room that looks dingy, dated, and nothing like what is being advertised online. The manipulation never ends. After checking out, I filed a refund request with evidence of the false advertisement through Expedia, as management told us to do in order to receive compensation. Only for the hotel to then DENY any compensation. Quite convenient for them, since they told us to wait to file a claim after we checked out only so they can deny compensation once we have already left the property to return back home. An all around terrible experience with stubborn and deceptive management. I have never written a review before, but this experience has done it for me. Read less