Coco Reef Resort - Review Page 2
Accommodation
The hotel has a total of 150 rooms – 105 of which have sea views. In addition to 110 Superior and Deluxe rooms, the hotel boasts 37 one and two-bedroom suites and garden villas, plus 3 ‘Royal’ suites, including the stunning Sunset Villa which sits on a private promontory overlooking the sea and makes the most wonderful setting for wedding ceremonies. It’s not surprising that the Coco Reef Resort has proved popular with celebrities like Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Luciano Pavarotti. Just a week or two after our stay, both Sting and Stevie Wonder stayed at the hotel.
Because of the wide variety of room grades and the hotel’s 100% occupancy, it was impossible to visit and photograph every different room or even to provide measurements and details. We can therefore only provide a detailed description of our room – a Deluxe Sea View. We believe this room was reasonably typical of all the standard rooms. I do understand, however, that some of the Deluxe Sea View rooms on the upper southern wing of the hotel, whilst providing the best sea views, are marginally smaller than the room we enjoyed. Similarly, some rooms have two large double beds rather than the one double bed in our room.
Offering 40.4 sq.m. (435sq.ft.) of total floor space, including the bathroom and 10m2 balcony, our room was spacious and served our purposes admirably. The peachy-pink walls with attractive stencils and limed wooden ceilings, doors and wardrobe blend beautifully with the cane furniture and colourful bedspread and lampshades and highly polished terracotta floor tiles. It is so nice to visit a holiday hotel where the décor has some local character rather than simply being anonymous ‘standard international’.
Our bed was a 6ft 3inch king. On arrival, the bedspread had been turned down and colourful flower petals and palm leaf segments used to spell out the message “Special Welcome”. Each day the message would change. Best of all, however, were the cute little animals made out of folded hand towels with palm leaf fragments marking the facial features. Elephants, swans, sting rays, rabbits and rats (who would ever have thought that a rat could be cute?). They were all a works of art, produced by the room maid. We were loath to move them for fear of spoiling the display. The maids do this for all guests; normally on arrival and on any special occasions. However, it is done at the discretion of the maid so may be done more often. Our lovely maid, Leonora, treated us royally and our room was decorated every day. We were loath to ‘destroy’ the towel creatures so stored them around the room every day. On our final day Leonora decorated the bed with a huge heart and two kissing swans and reassembled the entire menagerie around the bed. Little touches like this – and the lovely fruit bowls that she regularly left – are the things that make a stay at the Coco Reef Resort special and lift it above many other hotels.
The bed was flanked
by attractive bedside table and lamps. Other furnishing included
a pair of padded armchairs and coffee table and a large chest
of drawers which also hid the mini-bar and served as a base
for the cable TV which provides a dozen local and American
satellite channels of extremely variable (i.e. poor) quality.
Since our visit, we have been informed that all 135 rooms now
have 55 cable channels, including the BBC World Service. One
out of 55 can't be all bad.
A direct-dial telephone system allows you to keep in contact with the world, but the hotel’s PBX switchboard prevents direct Internet connection from the rooms. The one thing missing was coffee and tea-making facilities, but these were made instantly available within minutes of it being mentioned to a member of staff.
The built-in wardrobe provided two metres of full-length hanging space with a good stock of hangers, additional shelf storage and enough recessed storage to get your suitcases out of site and mind.
The half-tiled bathroom
was reasonably spacious. I have read some criticisms of the
bathrooms at the Coco Reef,
but plumbing gets regular criticism at nearly every establishment
on Tobago. Our bathroom was attractive and totally functional.
In fairness, I have to admit that the shower head was in desperate
need of de-scaling, but not to the degree that we could not
enjoy showers. In fact there was more pressure than could sensibly
be used and we experienced no shortages of hot water, even
when showering at peak times of the day. The bathroom vanity
unit offered enough space for our bits and pieces, despite
a beautiful flower display and basket of complimentary toiletries
which took up a large chunk of space. Shaver sockets and a
hairdryer were provided, as were a pair of soft towelling bath
robes. Naturally all linen is of the highest quality and changed
daily when necessary. As you would expect with this level of
accommodation, beach towels are provided.
Our room enjoyed a reasonably quiet remotely controlled split-unit air-conditioner and a remotely-controlled ceiling fan. Sliding glass doors some 2.5 metres wide led from our room onto the balcony and kept the room light and breezy throughout the day, if the air-conditioning was switched off. Our balcony was furnished with two comfortable armchairs and a table, plus a padded recliner, although I noticed that this last item was missing from most terraces during my many exploratory walks around the hotel.
The view from the room balconies or terraces varies enormously. Mind you, it’s all a matter of degree and I doubt whether any room has a bad view. It is understandable that everyone wants a sea view, but what constitutes a sea view? Our view was lovely, but in fairness it wasn’t 100% sea-view because the palms along the beach have an obvious effect on the panorama. Which is more important – the balcony view or shade on the beach? All I can say is that without trees, a beach can look exceptionally stark and uninviting, so you certainly won’t hear any complaints from us. Given the lovely gardens, we would have been just as happy on the ground floor where you see more garden than sea.
One way and another, we slept like logs at the Coco Reef. The heavy drapes totally blocked the early morning light and the room was so quiet and the bed so comfortable that we invariably slept well past our normal 6:30hrs waking. This is a normal occurrence for me, but Jill loves her early morning swims and stroll along the beach, so in truth we were seldom down for breakfast before 9am – late for us.
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