Richus Dominique

Review of Coco Palm St Lucia

This place looks great on paper, but is mediocre a...

This place looks great on paper, but is mediocre and just about passable in reality

First, the positives - it's in a great location nearby to Baywalk mall and Rodney Bay Mall, both interesting and vibrant places with people keen to share the Gros Islet night life with you. The pool at the resort is also nice, being a good size with various depths, a decent internal temperature and very nice sunlight hitting it. The bar staff are also great, with most of them being quite charismatic and helpful.

However that's all I can really say is all that positive about this place. It advertises things that appear to be great but each thing has a significant hidden downside. For example the room we had was advertised as being in a great little Creole style block. What they didn't tell you is that the room itself is quite cramped, with a low ceiling and slightly lower and useless ceiling fan (the room had air conditioning) which me being 6ft tall would nearly bump my head into. The room was also overlooking a main road and had poor soundproofing, which meant we went to sleep to someone doing karaoke in a club over the street. The hot water in our room also took at least 10 minutes of continuous use to reach our room, forcing us to have cold showers as I made the mistake of turning the water off for a few seconds, restarting the 10 minute process.

Another issue I had is with the gym, which the hotel again proudly advertises. In reality the gym itself is very dingy and dirty in places, particularly on the weights which I held against my chest for a few minutes, resulting in a dirt patch on my shirt. It being indoors but open air resulted in one of the machines being covered with mosquitoes, about 5 of which came to life when I adjusted it for use. This is all not to mention a lot of the machines were slightly rusted or grimey, the Smith machine being so rusted the bar was unable to fall on it's own without a weight attached.

One of the stranger issues I had with with the concierge staff. While they were amenable when approached, one person we spoke to spoke so quietly we had to ask multiple times for him to repeat himself, and another had a habit of staring for a few moments before responding to us. Not huge problems but the staring came across unsettling. Outside of the bar staff I wouldn't say that any of them were "friendly", just "not rude" if that makes sense.

Another issue I feel I need to call out is the Wi-Fi on the resort. It does indeed exist, but it is so slow it's more or less useless for anything beyond WhatsApp messaging or calls. This could be a device level issue, but I feel it needs calling out regardless.

There were some other small issues (lack of a beach, not very knowledgeable waitresses, strangely expensive menu items) but those are the main ones to be aware of in my opinion. All in all, if you can get a room here for cheap, and don't care too much about the frills of a hotel in the Caribbean, then this place might be for you. Otherwise it may be worth paying the premium at another nearby resort to get a truly great experience.

As a side note, at the time of writing this, the all-inclusive prices of this hotel appear to be at least double or even triple the price of non all-inclusive. Do not get this, there are better hotels for far cheaper nearby to this location which are much more worth the money.