stayed at carlisle bay for 6 nights the week it reopened for the season. The resort is tastefully elegant and all the public areas and rooms are in top condition. I find it hard to beleive that we stayed at the same resort as the person's in the last few reviews because we found it to be absolutely wonderful. The food was very good and presented very nicely. Service was a bit slow at times but we were never in a rush anywhere. Overall had a great time and would go back in a heartbeat. Go and enjoy this beautiful resort.

Carlisle Bay has definitely gone down market. We have just returned from a stay there and was expecting the same quality that we experienced in March 2005. We were bitterly dissappointed. The food was below average, the inefficiency commonplace, it was hard to believe that it was the same hotel. We had to move room after the A/C failed for the third time. Infact it was not working when we arrived. The staff tried to please but having to constantly remind them of everything does not make for a relaxing break. This level of service no way justifies the cost.
Trip advisor member, UK

The staff is very friendly but this does not compensate for the shortcomings of this hotel. Food is very poor, the facilities are spartanic and the beach front resembles in no way the pictures you can see on their website. The pool is tiny and not very clean, which is even more of a problem since there is little to do, so most guests tend to hang around it. I believe we were the only guests paying full fare (over US$800/day) as all other guests were on really inexpensive all-inclusive packages. It is really amazing that this resort managed to be part of the small leading hotels of the the world, it hardly deserves 3 stars. We planned to stay there for 10 days and left after 36 hours... It has been the 2nd time this year that we were fiercely disappointed by a conde nast traveller recommendation.

The Carlisle Bay make a big thing of putting an espresso machine in every one of their 80 suites. For it is the little touches like this that are supposed to justify the high season rate of £675 per night b and b (inclusive of service and taxes), a chunky amount even by Caribbean standards.
My wife and I were using my 50th birthday to justify our monstrously expensive week at the Carlisle Bay. I am not normally that picky but when you pay top dollar you expect top service.
So the broken espresso machine was not a good start. I rang reception and asked for a replacement. After some minutes (long pauses of up to 30 minutes are typical of Carlisle Bay room service) they returned my call and said sorry, they didn’t have one. But I could have an electric kettle instead.
I thought about making a fuss. But this was our first day and no hotel guest likes to be known as a troublemaker on his first day. In the end I did a swap with the machine in our friends’ suite next door. Being herbal tea types they could do without it.
The Carlisle Bay is one of those boutique hotels that is said to be the haunt of celebrities like Robert de Niro who stayed here once. The only “celebrities” during my visit were ex-Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan and Royal cuckold Andrew Parker Bowles. Probably nice blokes, but not a night at the Oscars.
The sister hotel of London’s immaculately trendy One Aldwych, the Carlisle Bay was designed by a lady called Mary Fox Linton whose name is bandied about in the hotel literature on the understanding that we’re all supposed to have heard of her. Anyway, she’s done a nice job and has produced a beautiful hotel in a charming colonial style with comfortable suites set around a lush, palmy bay. The private beach is large enough so that you can while the hours unbothered by other guests. For the more energetic there is an impressive array of free-to-use sailing boats to take out when you feel like it. I spent much of the week scudding round the bay on a Hobie Cat. Great fun.
The wide beach was rigorously cleaned early each morning by an army of men with rakes but other areas were not so pristine. Cigarette butts littered the flower beds alongside the al fresco dining area. The wardrobes in our room were unhoovered and the shower room tiles were chipped. The complimentary nail care kit had been re-filled with a used emery board. One day our room wasn’t cleaned until 3 pm and I’m afraid that simply isn’t good enough for £675 per night. The service at breakfast was diabolical (a 20 minute wait for bacon and eggs) with staff so hopelessly slow to clear the tables that birds would swoop down and peck at the leftovers.
The two much-vaunted restaurants weren’t much cop. The first night we dined at Indigo, which is written up (presumably by journalists on freebies) as being amaaazing. One of those places where things are “drizzled” and where gravy is called “jus.” Our dinner was unimpressive with dried-up chicken, uninteresting fish and remarkably horrible spinach.
The oriental restaurant East, described as “serving exciting Asian food in a stunning contemporary setting,” was no better. Actually it produces unmemorable Thai nosh in such dim lighting that people with fading eyesight like me find it impossible to read the menu.
Now the spa. What is it about spas that can turn perfectly normal brochure writers into Bulwer-Lyttons with frightful turns of sentence such as “By harbouring the precious energy of nature, Living Nature offers intrinsically pure and natural treatments to bring our bodies into balance and combat the results of a hectic pace of life?” The trouble with these posh hotel spas is that they’re so darned expensive. I had one of my best massages ever at the Carlisle Bay but it cost me almost a hundred quid with taxes. My wife said I was mad. My attitude was that when you’re paying such huge room rates night £100 is peanuts. And isn’t that exactly the state of mind that hotels such as the Carlisle Bay like their guests to be in on holiday? Not very Zen.

To sum up, the Carlisle Bay is a beautiful hotel with kind, if rather slow staff. It is a lovely place to spend a week but the ridiculously high rates let it down. It’s simply not worth the price.
Footnote: I felt quite hammered after I’d settled the bill. So I was not thrilled when just as we were about to leave for the airport a girl from reception rang to say that I still owed five dollars for today’s newspapers. For stinginess, this beat Gordon Brown on a bad day. Needless to say I did a runner without leaving a cent.