Sandy Point Beach Club - Review Page 2
Accommodation
A substantial majority of the apartments at the Sandy Point Beach Club are owned and/or rented by Trinidadians. Without in any way meaning to be offensive, it has to be said that this market is highly demanding. Trinis demand exceptional value for money, often pack more guests into the accommodation than management recommend and subject the furnishings and fittings to the most demanding of consumer tests.
The Beach Club have taken a really positive attitude towards this. Rather than taking the “stripped back” approach of so many Crown Point self-catering hotels, they have taken the opposite strategy and gone for the very highest, toughest grades of furnishing and fitting, ensuring excellent standards of accommodation that will suffer the rigours of the market. The hotel has a well-equipped workshop and even constructs some of the furnishings and furniture on-site. Most things can be repaired internally.
All apartments are currently undergoing a two-year refurbishment programme. We had the opportunity to inspect every room grade and examples of both refurbished and un-refurbished rooms. Had we been allocated an un-refurbished room I would not have had cause for complaint.
I think the over-riding first impression was amazement at how much had been squeezed into the available space. I complimented General Manager, John Martyr, on the obvious skills of the architect. He smiled and admitted that the interior layout had been designed by a housewife.
We were also full of admiration for the cleanliness of the apartments. They simply glistened. There was no question of wiping fingers across cupboard tops and coming away with a dirty finger. No feeling of wanting to wash all cutlery and crockery before use.
Finally, we were astonished at how well equipped the apartments are. We have grown relatively used to apartments with assorted collections of cutlery and crockery clearly from different sets. Each apartment at the Beach Club is furnished with a full set of high quality matching crockery, cutlery, kitchen equipment, glassware and cooking utensils appropriate to the maximum accommodation capacity of the apartment. An itemised master inventory is clearly, but discreetly, available in the apartment, showing the quantity and value of each item. Guests are charged for missing or damaged items.
The apartments are serviced daily, with the high quality linen being changed each Monday and Wednesday and towels changed daily. Beach towels are provided for a small fee (TT$17.25 per towel per week) and can be exchanged at the front office at any time, without restriction. Coin operated laundry facilities are available at regular points around the premises for A and B-grade rooms, but larger apartments have their own washers, driers. All apartments have steam irons and ironing boards.
Each apartment is fitted with overhead ceiling fans and modern, very quiet, remotely controlled Mitsubishi split-unit air-conditioners. These Japanese units really make a mockery of the noisy Trinidadian Peake units that dominated the Tobago market until recent years. Each apartment had two or more units; normally one in the living area and one in each bedroom.
The one failing, if failing it can be called, is that the larger apartments do not benefit from a vast amount of natural light. The smaller studio and one-bedroom apartments are great, with wide glazed sliding doors leading out onto the balcony or terrace, but some of the courtyard apartments have narrower windows with some bedrooms having no natural light. In fairness, one does not go to Tobago to spend your days in your hotel room, no matter how comfortable, and all apartments were very well lit. Efficient reading lamps made reading in bed a pleasure and Jill commented that the bathroom lighting was about the best she had come across.
The rooms are simply decorated with white painted walls relieved by attractive and colourful framed prints of Caribbean life and art. The white laminate kitchen units are topped with eggshell grey tiles to match the dining table. The woodwork is light southern yellow pine with armchair cushions in bright Caribbean colours. Floors are surfaced with a local clear red clay tile. The combined effect is light, bright, functional and yet cosy.
Standard fittings in all apartments include cable TV (larger apartments feature DVD units and second TV in master bedroom), CD/tape/radio music centres, adequate wardrobe space with lots of hangers, bedside reading lamps, digital radio alarm clocks, hairdryers and a small security safe. Kitchen equipment included four-ring stoves with ovens, microwave, electric kettles, toaster, food blender and coffee filter machine, plus a large fridge/freezer. Our Courtyard apartment had wireless access to broadband Internet, which was brilliant for me. At the moment, the wireless range only covers the central area of the hotel, but this will be extended to all apartments in due course.
Naturally all sinks and the nicely tiled walk-in shower units provide both hot and cold running water. One of my very few criticisms was that the water pumping system (most Tobago properties require a water pump and do not rely upon header tanks or mains pressure) was unable to mix cold and hot water on a sustained regular basis. Although overall pressure was good, showers were a somewhat painful process, alternating between scalding hot and freezing cold. Management is aware of the problem and working on a solution.
With seven grades of accommodation, it is obviously impractical to provide a detailed description of each. Fortunately, this is unnecessary as the various grades of apartment are decorated, furnished and equipped almost identically, the only material difference being those changes necessary to cater for the increased capacity of the different grades. We will therefore summarise the accommodation provided by each grade.
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