Amaryllis Beach Resort Hotel

We travelled to Barbados for the prime reason of watching England play the West Indies in the recent test match series. Our holiday was somewhat disturbed by Virgin Holidays contacting me 48 hrs prior to my departure to inform me that I could not stay at the Amaryliss hotel due to overbooking- my holiday had been booked some 9 months earlier. The hotel and holiday companies had recieved my money and they now could not fullfill the booking- as you can imagine I along with my party of 7 were very angry. Now I won't go into to much detail about our holiday only to say that once we eventually checked into the Amaryliss on day 8 of our holiday (we were placed in a Club Rockley which was closed, then moved after two days to a comparable hotel) we found the Amaryliss hotel to have a mixture of good and bad points. The bad points- the check in - four rooms supposed to be ready at 2-30pm, 2 rooms checked in at 3-30 the other two 6-30pm- not exceptable- no apology. The general service around the hotel is slow (I am aware from previous visits that bajan style service is leisurely) in actually fact snail like - the beach bar can take an age (an hr for a toasted sandwich) to get served and as some people have commented in previous reviews the staff are generally quite unfriendly, not rude just not warm and welcoming like in previous hotels I have stayed in Barbados. The good points - great beach, great sea, setting is quiet and relaxing, the facilities are generally good such as beach towels, sun lougers, supermarket and the 39 steps restaurant etc. The rooms are well equipped and are serviced daily. Overall the hotel was okay, you can see why it has been given a 4 star rating but the management do need to look at the service levels of staff and the way clients are treated if they wish to get repeat custom. My party of 7 had a great trip to Barbados but due to the events with Virgin and the hotel management overbooking, I would not stay at this hotel again and will certainly not be booking with Virgin holidays again.

I have never written an on-line review before. However, a friend of mine directed me to this site when I returned from my holiday in Barbados this past January. I have watched the pro-con debate here with interest. I think I can shed some light to the lack of consistency at the Amaryllis. The hotel has the foundation to be top notch. A great beach, good location and a very pretty facade. The inconsistency comes to light after check-in. Some rooms have been fully remodelled and some not. Some of the staff is helpful, many are not. The breakfast is good; the other meals are average. The management addresses the "low hanging fruit issues" and ignores many other requests from guests. Some guests have the run of the hotel with personal service from the management (a European tour group during my visit) and other guests are ignored entirely. Some of the amenities are as advertized, many are not. For example, the advertized Kids Club was (sometimes) open for 2 hours a day during our visit...not really a kids club but a 2 hour babysitting service from 10.00-12.00...watersport activity center with a total of 3 kayaks-no pedal boats as advertized...the beach bar open sporadically but not in the evening for an after dinner drink...There was an issue of too few towels for the guests but this was resolved after our first week. Many of these situations are not problematic for some travellers but are significant inconveniences for others. Hence the pro-con situation on this site. If the traveller wants to be at a gorgeous beach near the airport and close to shopping and decent Barbados restaurants, the Amaryllis fits the bill. However, if a couple or family is looking for a vacation that provides the expected creature comforts of a well run and well appointed resort, they will most likely be disappointed. We fell into the latter category as we were hoping for much more from the resort to compliment the natural beauty the location provides.

I recently stayed at the Amaryllis Beach Resort. It was the most disappointing hotel I have visited. I have stayed in many 4 star establishments (including in the Caribbean). This hotel is not 4 stars. My room was minimally acceptable. It was furrnished with old broken items, had no amenities (unless you count the holes in the walls and hanging wires) and the bathroom was in dire need of cleaning and modernization. Maybe the money spent on a splashy new hotel entrance that all can see from the main road would have been better spent on updating the rooms/bathrooms. The hotel only has one restaurant and a beach bar. The food at both was mediocre, uninventive and extremely overpriced. There is no where in the evening to sit and enjoy a drink and relax. Hotel services, i.e. water sports activities, kids club, entertainment were practically non existent. Staying here was a waste of my hard earned money. I will never return. I will also never trust a holiday company (nor book anything thru them) that classifies the Amaryllis as a 4 star resort.

My wife an I spent a splendid,joyful week at the Amaryllis Beach Club from Feb. 2 2004 to Feb.9 2004.After we made arrangements with our travel agent, I stumbled upon this review page. Many of the comments written were of a negative nature and believe me, I totally disagree.The beach was beautiful, nice and calm and beach towels were plentiful as were the lounges.We had the All Inclusive package and it was terrifc. The food was excellent not a thing to complain about what so ever. The breakfasts were varied and delicious as were the lunches and dinners.My wife and I had no desire to experience other reataurants on the island as we found the amaryllis excellent. Some dinners were ala carte and other nights were theme nights. Terrific. They had varied entertainment during dinner time and it was quite good.The staff was very friendly and courteous.We had a Superior Gardem View room which was perfect. We had a mini-fridge, microwave and stove supplied with cutlery and dinnerware. We had a nice quiet patio and even fed the two wondering cats on the property.Believe me we have stayed at some of the finest hotels around the world. The Amaryllis is definitely a 4 star hotel and with a few improvements in service during dinner time ( although service wasn't that bad) and a few finer touches this could easily be a 5 star hotel.My wife and I are thinking of returning to the amaryllis next year and are hopefully going to stay for a month if we can work out a special price with the management.Here is our rating of this property.Beach 9food 10room 9staff 9variety 9service 7weather 10

Just returned from a four day stay at this resort. It was much nicer than the website pictures depict it. We had a one bedroom suite - an upgrade from the studio that was ordered. It was called a garden view but had a beautiful view of the ocean. The room was large and clean, although the a/c in living room needs to be a bit cooler. The staff was very nice and helpful. The beach is gorgeous and the grounds very well kept. Our flight back to US was delayed by 5 hours which we only found out when we got to the airport, but even though we checked out, they were more than happy to allow us to return from the Airport and come back to our room for a few hours instead of languishing there. This was especially helpful since we were travelling with our one-year-old. Can't comment on the food since we keep kosher and brought our own. But they gave us complimentary pots of coffee, and did not charge my wife for the gin and tonic she enjoyed at the party they had for their official re-opening. I too was concerned about the renovation recontruction going on, but it was done by the time we arrived, with just some slight touch up remaining. Kitchen and appliances were new, as was the furniture. Beds nice and firm. Overall a great experience.

Just returned from one week's holiday at Amaryllis. The main problem with this hotel is complete disorganisation which the management desperately needs to sort out. If you're thinking about booking - do yourself a favour and don't!!

An unfinished disaster. Advertised as 4star, hardly 2star.

We have recently returned form our 2 week "once in a lifetime" Christmas holiday in Barbados. A well know UK holiday company and carrier, beginning with a V sold us this holiday. Beware, their 2004 brochure misrepresents the Amarayllis beach resort. Our room was horrible. The only upgrades had been new bedspread, some new drapes (mixture of old and new in the room), an air con unit and new windows - one already broken. There were bare wires throughout, a very old hair dryer next to the sink that did not stay in it's holder but sat in the sink, old, broken rattan furniture that is not worthy of University housing, broken tiles and worst of all, a filthy, old, moldy bathroom. The smell penetrated the whole room. Additionally, the "garden view" was a bulldozer and boiler room view with a constant sewage smell. Therefore, the balcony was not useable. There were no fire exit directions in our room or fire exit signs anywhere in our wing. We were told by both the hotel management and the holiday rep that there was nothing to be done because the hotel was full. However, we sat in the lobby daily, and watched room after room being changed for similar reasons. 5 restaurants? At the hotel is one restaurant and a beach bar. There are 2 restaurants at the top of the property that are run by people other than the hotel. The "voucher system" will not buy you a complete meal at one of them. The 5th one is at a golf course, which involves a taxi ride. Our teenage daughters felt their UK school lunches far surpassed the quality of food given us at the Amaryllis. We have been to 5 other all inclusive resorts.....this one is a joke. Water sports? kayaks arrived our second week - pedal boats (which was our request) not usable. Kids Club? Non exisient until 31 December. Then, it was pathetic. A small room with some board games and 2 TV's with video games. A sign written in crayon indicates it is open from 10-12 Mon. - Sat. The second day of it's exisitence, it never opened due to lack of staff. A lift? Not that we found. You get to carry your luggage up and down a myriad of stairs. Our family's opinion...if you have booked this resort, try to cancel. If you have not yet booked - stay away.

We booked our holiday in September through V----n to go to Amaryllis Beach Resort on an all inclusive basis. Our experience was far from happy, although the weather was very good and the beach location was perfect. The Amaryllis Beach Resort is advertised as a 4 star hotel. In our opinion it is struggling to achieve 2 stars. The facilities, quality of service and quality of food were all very poor. The entertainment was practically non existent and there was no kids club. The most popular activity, judging by attendance, was the filling in of complaints forms.To make matters even worse the limited resources offered by the hotel were not shared equally amongst hotel guests. We witnessed that the guests of an Italian tour operator were getting preferential treatment over the other guests. This included the best seating positions in the restaurant, the best service, a separate supply of beach towels and the preferred positions on the beach offering natural shade. There were at least 4 representatives from this tour operator who had effectively taken partial control of this hotel to ensure that their guests were well looked after to the detriment of other guests.We were made to feel so unwelcome that we resolved to leave the all inclusive scheme and distance ourselves from the hotel as far as possible. The all inclusive didn't mean all inclusive for the 39 steps restaurant and the Pizzaz restaurant. It was limited to one use only and up to a value of $42 per person at the 39 steps restaurant. We do however recommend The 39 steps restaurant which although included as part of the hotel complex is independently run and offers good food and live Jazz music on Saturday night. It proved to be our sanctuary from the frustrations of eating at The Almond Tree restaurant.Other things you would not expect to encounter at a proper 4 star hotel included, a noticeable shortage of staff, absence of ceiling fans in the Main (Almond Tree) restaurant, missing fixtures and fittings from rooms, shortage of beach towels and no parasols provided on the beach - hence the importance of finding natural shade.We don t consider ourselves to be natural born complainers and normally we try to enjoy all our holidays even though there may be certain problems or deficiencies. The extent and severity of the problems we encountered at The Amaryllis Beach however made it impossible to enjoy this holiday and the attitude of the hotel toward its non Italian speaking guests was nothing short of disgraceful.

we booked this holiday in April, originally to return to Club Rockley which we loved. Our tour company, begins with V and ends in n told us that Rockley was shut due to renovation work (according to everyone on island, it went into receivership). So looking forward to Christmas 2003 in Barbados we trusted that the upgrade to four star would be lovely and as good. On arrival and having seen our one bedsuite we were quite happy, nice size rooms, tv in each room , good computerised safe and a/c. We checked out the "garden view" it was all mud, manholecovers, diggers bleeping and construction of what we found out later to be the "kids club" going up.We were also on the fourth floor, eight flights of steps with two young children. Our rep said that we could not be moved, the next day at least two couples had been moved to ocean views and others given the option to view up to four alternatives before relocation. We had booked all inclusive, where watersports were free, not for the first 10 days anyway, due to a liability dispute. Even last four days the pedal boats were still not available to us. The first week the hotel had a grand total of 22 beach towels for all. NO CHILDRENS CLUB enforce yet!! Even though mentioned in our brochure and on the hotel website, talking to other staff will not be ready till feb. NO CHILDRENS CHRISTMAS PARTY as promised, however the visit from Santa was very good, and saved our day. There were NO FIRE EXTINGUSHERS on the top three levels only on ground floor and only possible means of escape whould be to jump four floors. Tiles on the stair case had chunks out of them and we found that the main pool tiles were very slippery, wire hanging out in main dining room were celing fans should be. Food and entertainment very poor. Most days food never had covers on, so the flies had first pickings. The choice available was not as great as Club Rockleys and the food was always just warm or cold, we can not recall having a good hot tasty meal. The lunch from the beach bar was okay for the first week but after this, even then the children refused to eat. One day we waited 55mins for a Tuna Sub for our daughter and after an hours wait for her ice-cream, we told the waiteress to cancel the desert order, her reply was "so you don't want it now then " If we had not had paid £6,ooo+ we whould have chosen to eat out more but we felt that a four star hotel should have provided something more decent. It appared that everything was on a budget and they were keeping their costs down to bare minimum. No wonder the Swiss owner who was there for Christmas had a big grin on his face. We used to try and get a table near to him in the resturants , it would guarantee us at least better service, while his staff knew they were being watched !!! Sorry, if this account sounds really whiny, but while we were there there were at least 15 people that were in disbelief and had complaints, each day at the new welcome meetings (held in reception), begins with V and ends in n Rep had people complaining along the same issues. The weather was fantastic, the beaches lovely and the sea great, this is natures doing though, hotel or holiday company having no say in it.