Spice Island Beach Resort

This year we decided to stay at the Spice Island Resort in Grenada.|It was our first time there and many people highly recommended the property.|We have stayed many times at sandals, Royalton, Raddison and Silver Sands.|So the obvious attraction was grand anse beach which is probably the best beach in the caribbean. That did not disappoint. The beach fron was clean at all times and there was no shortatge of beach chairs and beach umbrellas in immaculate condition.|All staff were friendly and extremely helpful.|We stayed in the seagrape villas literally on the beach. The room was very well appointed with all the usual amenities.|Meals were above average. Breakfast was tops. |Drinks were in abundance and the bar staff knew their stuff.|Janissa Spa was amazing. Absolutely professional and worthwhile.|So two questions. What fell short? short answer, nothing really. I think they can improve of the evening dining offering. I think they can bring the bar closer to the beach rooms . A beach bar would work.|The property is beautiful and well maintained. The Website does not do it justice.|The second question is would I return. Absolutely. Planning that already.|Cheers to the staff and location!

We are widely travelled and this was one of the most expensive Caribbean hotels we have stayed in, and thus our expectations were high. Unfortunately, we were disappointed in several areas.||Good points|Beach front rooms are fabulous, very comfortable, leading straight onto the white sand beach and turquoise sea.||Grand Anse beach is great to walk along (although very busy when large cruise boats visit).||Most of the staff are very friendly (especially Katrina) and service is generally good.||The hotel has a total no-smoking policy, even on your sunbed on the beach. I wish more hotels would introduce this. Smoking is so disgusting.||Bad points|On several evenings there was nothing we liked on the dinner menu in Olivers. The food was pretentious, overly complex, and often unhealthy, with few fresh vegetables. Several other guests also complained about the food and the poor quality of the all-inclusive wine compared with other hotels.||The breakfast buffet had limited healthy choice: no muesli; no bananas (in the Caribbean!) or pineapple on several days. There were usually unacceptably long waits before a cooked breakfast arrived. ||In its advertising the hotel claims that “Every moment at Spice Island resort is a haven of relaxation”. However, the weekly game of Bingo (played over loud speakers) at the bar while we were having sunset drinks or the shouting during the Cocktail Blind Tasting competition in the restaurant during our lunch were far from relaxing. Such events should be held at times and in places where they do not disturb other guests. ||There was a shortage of sunbeds with good shade. Guests put towels out to reserve sunbeds before breakfast, but then did not use them for 4 hours. Not what one expects at a five-star hotel.

Our second visit to Spice Island Beach Resort was just as wonderful as our first visit in Feb 2024. Our Gardenview accommodations, the gourmet food and the service were all outstanding. All of the staff from the restaurant & bar service, housekeeping, reception and even the gardeners are all friendly and accommodating. Grand Anse Beach is great for walking and swimming.

This well laid out hotel with accommodation on either side of public eating and entry areas. Everything basically faces towards the magnificent Grand Anse Beach giving views over the water to St George's. There can be few better gardens in the entire Caribbean than those that spread across the accommodation. ||The meet and greet was first class. We were in rooms 51 and 23, both having plunge pools in their private gardens. Room 23 was larger, with a private fully stocked bar, a very comfortable fully king sized bed, spotlessly presented and upkept by the team.||The bar team was brilliant, fronted by Dexter with the likes of the ever happy Jeron and Kevin. Seriously good guys.||The breakfast was a joy with beautiful fresh fruit, yoghurt, cereals etc and if you wanted, a good variety of hot dishes. Lunch and dinner were quite different with perhaps lunch providing more local dishes. Do try the Goat Roti if available.||The serving teams were in the main most helpful and even smiled at their guest's poor jokes! ||Whilst the food from the kitchen could take time, the upside was it felt freshly cooked. If not enjoyed, it was sent back, and senior staff would come out afterwards asking what went wrong and how could they rectify. ||The concierge headed by Elizabeth, went way beyond being just helpful, she basically enabled our holiday. She organised everything off site, including a historic walking tour to St George's, a food tour across the island which included stopping for fresh coconut, snow cones, together with lunch and snacks etc.||There is a barbecue but with the best will in the world the food is much better at the hotel.||We tried several restaurants, and our preferences were 'Sails' overlooking the water, 'Dexter's' (the ex-Calabash chef's home) and Calabash itself, a totally different experience to Spice Island.||If I have left anything out, forgive me. This is a most delightful hotel well worthy of five stars, giving the most relaxing times under a constant 25 to 30 degrees of heat. will we be visiting again? Yes.

Grenada is not known for all-inclusive hotels and it's better that way. Spice Island stands out as one of the few all-inclusive options on the island, but it’s far from the standard formulaic experience. Everything is first class! The staff is super friendly and competent, the food is delicious and fresh, and the location on the quiet end of Grand Anse is simply the best.||The hotel is quite small so it really feels like personalised luxury. The highlights for me included the gorgeous and private Luxury Almond Pool Suite, absolutely delicious desserts and the lovely yoga pavilion on the beach. I had a perfect two-day break and will be returning for sure, as it was one of the best hotel experiences I have had in Grenada. Check out my blog Hopping Around the Globe in Style for a full review as well as my other Grenada hotel experiences.

I vacillated between 4 and 5 stars.||The presence of large family groups over Christmas killed it for me. Dominated meal times and sucked up service / kitchen time. ||We had a sea grape room which couldn’t be faulted. As others have said, avoid the vet low numbers by the water sports centre. We were10, so that was ok.||Bar service was slow / inconsistent in the evenings. Wine was relatively low cost Australian and S American. Purchased bottles off the wine list reasonably priced. Took us a few days to realise there was a wine list. It was only as we saw on Christmas Day that people had bottles.||Too many buffets at lunch and dinner, probably as the holiday season. Food was good generally.||Would I go back - maybe. Staff did generally try to please

Beautiful resort! Sea breeze and lovely trees We went for breakfast the food was good however we were rather confused on the buffet and main menu. Limited choices as well. Service was also very slow

We had a really lovely family holiday at SIBR with some lovely highlights. We'd definitely go back sometime – though probably not at a peak time. Long read coming, sorry:||+ For the first four or so days it felt like we had the place to ourselves .. the resort must only have been around half occupied before schools broke up and it was great – really personal service, everything was fast, the beach was practically empty etc. (there’s another side to that below...)|+ We had two lovely rooms, even if they were the most basic Garden Suites ... there was plenty of space, they were nice and cool, 2 mins from the beach & main resort centre, kept very clean, nicely stocked mini bar, plenty of towels, generally very good. We were happier I think to be set back a little bit into the resort as the beachfront rooms are literally steps from the public beach and maybe didn't have as much privacy. The second (sofa) bed in the boys' room was decent.|+ SIBR is a very nice, high quality property throughout (though maybe not middle east 5* quality) .. it has a decent small gym (though some of the equipment disappeared mid-stay - maybe being replaced) and a very nice spa which we used.|+ The food was consistently very good .. our boys weren’t always up for the slightly fancier meals in the main restaurant but the staff were always happy to do some fresh fish or meat with fries & vegetables. In our view there was enough variety across the two options for dinner and we definitely didn’t go short of food! They also offered an afternoon tea option every day which we didn’t go need to go anywhere near! The less formal restaurant was open most nights and our boys preferred that menu – but that’s where the young families ate and it was sometimes a bit chaotic/loud. Breakfast was very good and lunch too. We enjoyed very much the occasional BBQs for lunch.|+ Resort location was excellent .. the Grand Anse beach is great (though definitely not one of the best in the world) and the resort is really well positioned at the quieter end of it. The sea was fantastic for swimming in (though there are hardly any fish etc to see). It was nice to walk along for a few km, though as it’s a public beach, the livelier end was pretty lively at weekends with sometimes some really loud party boats moored just off the beach.|+ Some of the service in the bar & restaurants and throughout was absolutely top notch – regularly addressed by name and some lovely touches (opened the gym early for us, delivered oat milk to the room, we mentioned one of the boys had burned and they delivered fresh aloe vera to the room for example). Some of the F&B staff were the best we’ve had anywhere - e.g. Katrina & Lyndonna (and others, sorry we didn't get more names)|+ We liked Grenada a lot – it's beautiful, small enough to get around easily; we did a nice tour organised through the local agent; it felt safe.||There were a few things we were disappointed with and had to raise a couple of them with the hotel (not really addressed):||- When the hotel filled up around Christmas Eve/Day, the service notably dropped off. It felt a touch over-full and we had quite a few meals which took too long, parts of the order were missed, drinks took ages, water refills had to be chased. Really small points individually but added together and done multiple times got quite annoying. We were probably a bit spoiled by the first half of our stay. A lot of guests were families with young kids (we have no problem at all with that having been through it for many years!) but the last couple of lunches and especially the last breakfast were chaotic and not relaxing.|- We have food intolerance in the family which the staff ask about and we clearly mentioned when checking in. For the first few days they were great at managing it – not letting us order anything inappropriate, suggesting & even making alternatives. But after those few days they totally forgot about it (apart from Katrina) – really not so good. Hopefully they do a better job with allergies rather than intolerance.||We raised both of these points with reception who said the manager would probably want to get in touch to discuss but that didn’t happen.||- They had an entertainment schedule which was a bit of a mystery to us (I found on the last but one day it was posted on the reception desk so it was probably my bad) – so we had no real idea what was happening... and we missed out on a sunset boat cruise because no-one told us until too late it was happening. We really liked Fabian who was in charge of it - saw him regularly and loved his energy and care for guests having a good time.||The resort had some really good evening music ... but often they were playing to a handful of people after dinner because many guests had gone to bed well before 10pm.||All in all though it was a really lovely holiday and we'd love to be back there right now. Maybe just about worth the price. In Tripadvisor terms half was 5*, half was 4* maybe. We’d stay at SIBR again for sure, but not during a peak school holiday period. We rounded up to 5* on balance because of some of the superb staff. Thanks for a lovely time.