Sandals All-Inclusive Resorts include numerous properties throughout the Caribbean in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua and St. Lucia. Sandals resorts include Sandals Grande Antigua, Sandals Royal Bahamian, Sandals Dunn's River Villagio, Sandals Negril, Sandals Whitehouse, Sandals Grande Ocho Rios, Sandals Inn, Sandals Montego Bay, Sandals Royal Caribbean, Sandals Grande St. Lucia and Sandals Halycon Beach. 

Sandals, in their television, web and print marketing, promise romance and most of all, luxury. In fact, their motto is "The Luxury Included Vacation". 

Do they deliver on their promise?

After spending eight days with my fiancée at the Sandals Grande Ocho Rios between December 19, 2008 and December 27, 2008, I would have to say that depends on what your definition of luxury is.

If being served lousy food in a pretty environment is your idea of luxury, then you'll be happy at the Grande Ocho Rios. If you expect more for $600-$800 a day (as I do), then you might want to shop around a bit before buying into Sandal's multimillion dollar advertising campaign.

As this was my first trip to the Caribbean (but not my fiancee's), I spent a lot of time researching different destinations, including hotels, privately-owned rentals and several all-inclusive vacations. Unfortunately, I found many of the reviews of Sandals Grande Ocho Rios unhelpful, especially on Trip Advisor, which happens to have the most reviews.

Let me say that Tripadvisor is a very helpful site, but unfortunately, their staff is unable to weed out the bogus reviews posted by Sandals employees, tourism board employees, travel agents and others who rely on Sandals to put food on their table. After all, the Sandals chain contributes a good chunk of cash to Jamaica's economy, with some sources estimating that number close to twenty percent.

UPDATE 5/2009: I urge you to read Arthur Frommer's March 26, 2009 blog posting, which confirms my suspicions about review sites like Trip Advisor. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so it took me a while to realize just how pervasive these fake reviews posted by Sandals and those who rely on Sandals really are.

UPDATE 8/2009: Click here for another great article by the Wall Street Journal Smart Money Online that explains why not every rave review of Sandals you read online is impartial. Many of the most friendly and helpful people on forums are travel agents who have a stake in convincing you that you'll get what Sandals promises in their advertising campaign. There's some great information about all-inclusives you may not be aware of as well as a sampling of the way you'll be treated by Sandals if you ask them to live up to their promises.

For the record, I didn't go into this vacation wanting or expecting to keep detailed notes of my experience; I just wanted to relax and forget about work for a week. Every day, as we lounged on the beach, thankfully, I did relax and forgot about the stress of work. Unfortunately, a different type of stress appeared each day as I stared at cold, tiny portions of poorly prepared food comprised of cheap ingredients and compared it in my mind to what Sandals spent millions to fool me into believing would be included in my luxury-included vacation. I've never been unhappy enough with any other vacation to spend my time making a web site about my experience, but I truly felt deceived by Sandals and wanted to share my experience with the world.

I invite you to read on and I promise to give you the good, the bad and the ugly about Sandals Grande Ocho Rios. I will try to be fair and balanced so others may have a more complete picture than I was able to find before I booked our all-inclusive vacation.

UPDATE 8/2009: According to my web logs, this humble little vacation review has received over 1,800 hits in just over three months! Average time spent on my site is 9 min 34 seconds. Large corporations pay millions to get visitors to spend that much time on their site.

I don't have a multi-million dollar budget like Sandals, but I do have something on my side: THE TRUTH!!!

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