Grafton Beach Resort - Review Page 2
Accommodation
The hotel has 104 Standard and 4 Executive Suites. The suites are fundamentally inter-connected standard rooms with the second room furnished as a lounge and dining area. The standard rooms come in two flavours – Ocean View and Garden View. As the names imply, the only difference between them is the outlook. Both smoking and non-smoking rooms are available and you have a choice of rooms with twin double beds or a single king-size bed.
Our Ocean View room (#125) was located in the single-storey accommodation block at the front of the property. The room offered 25sq.m. of net floor area, including the bathroom. Wide French windows led onto a 3.6x1.7m covered patio furnished with a plastic table and two chairs and which provided lovely views of the beach and bay. All rooms have similarly-sized patios or balconies.
The room was furnished with a pair of double beds, two bedside tables, reading lamps, a circular table and chair, a dressing table with built-in refrigerator, suitcase rack and a wardrobe offering 1.4m of full-length hanging space with lots of hangers. Additional facilities included cable TV, direct dial telephone and a small digital security safe. Many rooms have interconnecting doors, so are ideal for family use. Complimentary cots are available on request and baby-sitting can be arranged.
We missed not having coffee or tea making facilities in the room, but a Tea Station is available throughout the day and evening in the main lounge area. Ice and drinking water are available from the bars and can be stored in the room refrigerator for overnight consumption.
The room was pleasantly decorated with polished terracotta floor tiles. The pale green walls complimented the teak furniture. Interesting prints of old Trinidadian Colonial houses gave some local character to the room and minimised the criticism that the décor was that of an archetypical medium-grade hotel room anywhere in the world.
The bathroom was rather small at 1.8m x 2.1m, but adequately furnished with a wash basin, toilet and bath/shower. A nice feature was a shower gel and shampoo dispenser (the contents of both dispensers seemed to be identical) in the combined bath-shower. There was a useful basket of bathroom essentials, tissue dispenser and a hairdryer. The bathroom was tiled throughout and all fittings were clean, corrosion-free and in reasonable maintenance order, although a missing cover from the bathroom extractor fan left something of a blemish on the maintenance front.
The room was fitted with a large ceiling fan and an old split-unit air-conditioner from a local manufacturer. Most of the other rooms in our block had been replaced with newer units. We experienced problems with the air-con and, disappointingly, it was several days before it was repaired. If nothing else, it proved that the hotel hadn’t given us special treatment.
The current refurbishment is an ongoing exercise and is being conducted at a slow and steady pace to minimise disruption to guests. We were almost unaware of the work and it certainly didn’t affect our stay in any way whatsoever. We were shown an upgraded room and really liked the look and feel of the new soft furnishings, which made the rooms seem larger and cosier than the original rather heavier style.
Rooms are serviced daily and the housekeeping ladies were polite, friendly and efficient. Fresh towels are issued each day, but problems in the laundry did mean that towels were sometimes not available until very late afternoon. This ceased to be a problem once we had persuaded our maid not to take the old towels until fresh ones were available.
Beach towels are provided and a laundry service is available at reasonable cost by hotel standards.
All in all, our room was very comfortable, well up to standard and served its purpose well.
Dining
Buffet-style breakfast is served in the hotel’s main Oceanview Restaurant. Eggs are cooked to order. Nothing puts me off breakfast (or any other meal) more than seeing dried-looking food in buffet food containers. I am delighted to say that everything at the Grafton looked fresh and inviting and there was always adequate choice. In fact the only dissapointment was that the hotel continues to serve the truly atrocious Trinidadian apology for coffee.
Lunch is available in either the Buccaneer’s Beach Bar or the Oceanview Restaurant. The beach bar offers a small selection of burger-and-chips type meals, plus a daily special. It is ideal for guests who want to make the most of the beach because they can simply cover up with a t-shirt or beach wrap. The Oceanview Restaurant serves a wider range of buffet dishes, ranging from fruit to full meals, but guests are quite rightly expected to adhere to higher standards of attire.
The hotel offers two choices of venue for dinner; the main Oceanview Restaurant and the smaller Neptune’s Restaurant.
The spacious Oceanview Restaurant is open to the elements on three sides and provides wonderful views over the bay. There is adequate space between the tables, so diners are not in the least cramped. Reservations for dinner are required and normally made at breakfast. The restaurant is supposed to be non-smoking, but we were disappointed that no obvious attempts were made to restrain a large and somewhat noisy group of visitors who clearly had little respect for the no-smoking and dress code policies. I guess you get this type of visitor in every hotel from time to time.
All meals in the Oceanview Restaurant are buffet-style. During our previous visit, four years previously, dining was à la carte on alternate nights. I have to say that this change is undoubtedly our single biggest (and only significant) criticism of the hotel.
Buffet dining was once a very popular form of catering. Without doubt, it has fallen from favour over recent years. I’m not surprised. A good buffet can be a work of art, but too many all-inclusive resorts have cut corners and costs, ruining public perception of this dining mode.
In fairness to the Grafton, their buffet displays were always well-presented and inviting. A different roast meat was featured each night. All storage containers were promptly refilled when empty. The food was well-cooked, well-presented and very, very tasty. The only problem was that it 
was never more than lukewarm. This was such a shame and a drop in standard since our last visit.
For a change of environment, guests can opt for Neptune’s Restaurant, which specialises in seafood. This small restaurant is housed on the upper floor of a small building that sits astride one end of the swimming pool. Open on four sides, it offers a wonderful ‘outdoor’ feeling. The restaurant only has eight or nine tables, so it is essential to make a table reservation well in advance. The hotel was far from fully occupancy during our visit. Despite that, we were only able to get one reservation at Neptune’s. I’m not surprised. The à la carte menu was brief but the meal hot, tasty and the chef created a lovely ambience through her friendly and humorous interaction with diners. We had a lovely evening. It was a pity we couldn't get a second booking.
In fact, in general we really enjoyed the catering at the Grafton. The only substantive negatives were the less-than-hot food, already mentioned, and truly awful house wine. Turning to more positive impressions, regardless of the restaurant used we found service to be good and the staff friendly and attentive. There has been a huge improvement since our previous visit. In our last 
review we reported that staff attitude and efficiency was variable – as typical on Tobago. Due to inherent resistance from Tobagonians to work in the service industry, hotels are increasingly being forced to supplement their best local staff with contract workers from other countries. The Grafton and Le Grand Courlan now have a substantial percentage of contract staff from the Philippines. It is just very sad for Tobago that this has been necessary. However, it has made a huge difference to the hotels, which is benefiting from the positive attitude and diligence of these immigrant workers.
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