Royalton Antigua Resort and Spa

Just returned from a 2 week holiday. Positives. Amazing location, lovely beach and beautiful water. Snorkelling from the beach saw Stingrays Barracuda and Groupers. Tip go to the far right close to the rocks for more colourful fish. Good water sport options both hotel and through the various sellers on the beach. Cabanas were nice to hire. Loads of beds available and not being reserved by the 6am risers. Diamond club got us some additional extras. Food was always good but did run out of some choices from the non buffet restaurants. Drinks never any issues and staff did a great job. Coffee shop and team brilliant.

Negatives. Checkin for our kids non diamond club. Took forever - over an hour to be seen. No apology for having to wait. Shame as have never experienced such a long time previously. First restaurant booking had table for 4 not 5 as requested. Told one person would have to dine on their own 1.5 hours later! Sorted in the end but a ridiculous initial response. Some of the hotel needs some TLC examples the pool and missing tiles, but nothing major that we noticed.

Make sure you do Shirley Heights. We had a great holiday and loved the island.

Do not stay at this hotel. We booked a family holiday for 3 wrapped into a business trip for me, and when we arrived, we were allocated the absolutely worst room that had no resemblance to anything advertised online. The room was horrific. While the beach is lovely, the hotel facilities are seriously sub par and not maintained. The pool was unusable. Disgusting. Not properly cleaned, with dirt and god knows what else floating about in it. Possibly excrement. The main pool I would say was that bad that it was a health hazard and no attempt to clean it was made. The sheer body count in the pool relative to the water was not properly dealt with. The facilities were generally poorly maintained and the food was horrific American slop. The worst bread quality I have ever experienced. The choice of beverages was limited and basically everything was compromised by the out of control crowds who were allowed to run riot without any attempt by the staff to rectify the situation. In the children's pool the colour of the water was yellow. The only redeeming feature was the beach, but again the ratio of guests to facility is such that it is nothing close to a luxury experience. This is a mass market low quality hotel masquerading as a supposedly high-end experience. The children's area, which is why we booked it, was totally unmaintained and unusable. Everything was broken in the games area too. Checkin reception area has no air conditioning and after a long flight over, we were kept waiting nearly 1 hour just to get our rooms allocated to us.

The room was significantly subpar. No lights in the shower (showering in the dark). No complimentary shampoo (it was missing, as if someone had stolen it and they couldn't be bothered to replace it). The furniture in the room was battered and not of the quality of a supposed medium- to high-end business chain.

But the absolute worst thing is that the hotel has defrauded it. We complained about the horrible facilities and asked what the penalty was for checking out early. They told us it was company policy that we could check out with one night's notice. Since we complained the morning after our first night in a seven-day stay, we were told we were entitled to a refund for 5 nights. Except when we asked for confirmation of this in writing, the staff made all sorts of excuses. We were so tired from lack of sleep and unnerved by our disappointment, we just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I never in a million years thougth a Marriott would defraud you or that staff at such a chain would consciously lie to us verbally at the front desk. But this is seemingly what they have done as it's been 14 days now since we checked out and I still haven't received a refund for the 5 nights despite being told it would come in 7 days. I have tried repeatedly to raise the issue with Marriott Bonvoy support staff, and have continuously been cut off. I am on the verge of concluding that Marriott is now a fraudulent company that not just lied to us but conned us out of our money by misrepresenting their intention to give us our money back.

DO NOT STAY HERE.

PS I am a very experienced traveller and understand what normal quality standards are. This is arguably the worst hotel within its advertised standard range I have ever stayed at. I also have many photos of the disgusting pool. We checked into the Carlilse Bay at last minute instead to save our experience, which is just marginally more expense. This hotel outperformed our expectations. Wonderful facility. Stay there not at the Royalton.

I have had to resort to a dispute via my credit card company.