Incredibly disappointing
Jan 24, 2025 6333jess Norwich, United Kingdom
The number of good reviews below is a bit mind-boggling because the experience we had at the O2 was so far away from anything that anyone else is describing. We arrived to confusion - we had booked through LastMinute but the hotel did not honour the room type we had paid for initially, telling us that we had had an ‘upgrade’ to a swim up room… Read more
The number of good reviews below is a bit mind-boggling because the experience we had at the O2 was so far away from anything that anyone else is describing. We arrived to confusion - we had booked through LastMinute but the hotel did not honour the room type we had paid for initially, telling us that we had had an ‘upgrade’ to a swim up room that we didn’t want, which was a lower room category and cost than what we had paid for. This was eventually resolved after several hours but was a difficult start to the stay. The room was okay but not in a great state of repair - the curtains fell down when we tried to close them (see photo below) and it all felt a bit shabby. Housekeeping was inconsistent - every time we walked out of the room there were empty bottles, plates of food etc from other rooms left on the floor, which in one case sat in the same place for nearly 3 days before anyone moved them. No room service which is fairly unusual for a ‘5 star’ hotel - on two occasions, a member of staff quite simply let themselves into the room without knocking to ask if there was anything we wanted. Lots of sunbeds by the pool and beach, but the pink beds around the pool were all growing black mould (see picture) and lots of the beach beds were broken or falling apart. The food was …. Terrible. Again, I don’t know if we were just very unlucky based on other reviews but almost everything we ate was horrible to the point of being inedible. Club sandwich consisting of one lettuce leaf, one slice of tomato and burnt, charred chicken on soggy bread … lukewarm, claggy buffet food morning and evening … the hotel claims to have 5 restaurants, but realistically there are two main locations - Elements and Bluefin - a rooftop ‘tapas’ bar with a very small selection, a grab and go area in the lobby and then Oro, which was the closest thing to a decent meal that we had but you can’t eat here every night. Everything is buffet morning and evening on two nights a week and the selection and quality of the food was appalling. On the last day we waited 1 hour and 45 minutes for a club sandwich and some quesadillas, which both arrived cold and tasting of smoke. There were a couple of good, friendly members of staff who went out of their way to help us - Omarion and Carolann were great - but many more surly, if not downright rude servers. We asked for service on the beach, for example, and the dedicated beach server held a finger up in my face and shook her head, before collecting two glasses and returning to take an order 20 minutes later. It was all just so, so disappointing and really exacerbated by the cost - nearly £1000 GBP a night will give you an amazing experience in so many of the world’s top hotels and this just felt like a complete joke. It was so sad, ruined the end of our trip to the Caribbean - will definitely never return. We always search hotels on Condé Nast etc before we travel and so before we stayed felt secure in the knowledge that this was one of Condé Nast’s top hotels in Barbados - but they have got it so, so wrong, I am astonished that they are recommending at all let alone placing it in the same league as Sandy Lane, Colony Club, etc. If you are going to spend this kind of money on a holiday then let it be somewhere clean, friendly and with good food … and that is not the O2 beach club. Read less
