Cap Vermell Grand Hotel

Bravo was a real bright spot: dinner, live music, and service were all excellent, and Guest Relations genuinely tried to help when we brought them problems. The breakfast team was excellent too. But those moments were exceptions in a stay where the front desk and management repeatedly let us down. We booked through Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts, and the service fell far short of what I’ve experienced at other properties in the programme. Other guests and Amex cardholders told us they’d had similar problems, so this didn’t seem like a one-off. We also received little meaningful recognition of the benefits attached to the booking. Before we arrived, I emailed two days ahead to ask for adjacent rooms for our group’s three bookings and to check on early check-in. We were put in separate buildings, and one room wasn’t ready until after the usual check-in time. My booking details were correct, but the hotel addressed me inconsistently: one document said “Mrs” and the welcome card said “Mr.” The front desk was the weakest part of the stay. Front Desk Manager Johana repeatedly passed issues to Guest Relations instead of taking responsibility, and her apologies didn’t lead to resolutions. The desk team seemed poorly trained and badly managed. Promises of updates stretched from “five more minutes” to ten, twenty, then forty, and much of our holiday went into waiting. When I gave a doorman three room numbers, he left us at the furthest room and wrongly said the other two were next door. Pool service was practically absent. Nobody greeted or acknowledged us, and we had to sort out our own umbrellas, sunbeds, and towels. The hotel also failed to deliver a relaxing five-star experience at checkout: we found incorrect charges on the bills that needed removing, and although we confirmed our keys would work until 4pm under the Amex late checkout benefit and were assured they would, every key stopped working and had to be reissued. I stopped trusting what the front desk told us. They need more training, or a different line of work. After reading more guest reviews, the problems with the front desk and management seem to come up repeatedly. If you’re used to Park Hyatt, Edition, or similar luxury brands, I’d look elsewhere. There are better options on the island, especially if you’re booking through Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts.

The breakfast was great, and the staff were really attentive. The hotel feels a little artificial, probably because it’s quite new. The pool could be larger, and I can imagine it getting crowded in season. It’s near a lovely coastal town with some very nice restaurants. If golf is what you’re after, this could be a good place to stay. One odd thing for a five-star resort was having to wait at reception for check-in and checkout. It would help to have more people there.

We contacted management during our stay and never got a reply. That summed up the lack of communication, which also meant we had to follow up several times over a room change that took hours after we found there was no mobile reception. The pool setup wasn’t relaxing either. The adult pool is small and enclosed, with no real view, and music from several sources made it noisy. Pool staff were hard to find, and the nearby bathrooms weren’t well kept. In the room, the fridge was very loud, the air conditioning weak, and housekeeping inconsistent. The cleanliness wasn’t up to standard, and cleaning equipment was left behind once. We’d expected a restful five-star stay, but the comfort and service didn’t meet that level.

The view was amazing, and the breakfast, dinner, and service staff were all wonderful. I wish I’d praised them more. Still, I came away with a couple of bitter feelings about the stay. We had accidentally booked two rooms when we only needed one. The receptionist, Lisa? seemed impatient while helping us sort it out, then told us to take a particular room because “the surprise is there like you requested.” That gave away my partner’s surprise. The other problem was the room’s AC controller. Its down button was broken, and when we tried adjusting it at 2am, it got stuck at 24, far too warm for us to sleep. Since we were there for just one night, we let it go, but we slept badly.