The Coconut Beach Club is, by and large, a good little all-inclusive resort, although I'm left with a couple of major reservations about it.

The resort facilities are well laid out, with the bar and two dining areas surrounding the central pool area and a quiet beach just beyond that, overlooked by the bar and 'day' dining area. Due to the aforementioned communal areas having an attractive open-sided (i.e. un-walled) beach hut look, the resort has an open, airy feel; you soon get used to small, colourful birds perching on the end of your dining table at breakfast/lunch!

The guest rooms are in a long 3-storey building running alongside the beach, all of about 30-seconds walk from the sea/bar/dining areas. Our 1st floor room was quite big, accommodating a kitchen, king bed, sofa and arm chairs, dining table, walk-in wardrobe and reasonable size bathroom, with large patio doors leading to a balcony (with hammock) overlooking the beach. The room was cleaned thoroughly every day, and although it showed a few signs of wear it was generally in good condition. That said, the air conditioning unit, ceiling fan and shower tended to be rather noisy/squeaky, and the room's safe was a bit temperamental (sometimes taking up to 10 attempts to open!), but overall it was a nice room.

The soft sandy beach was quite small but a good length for a leisurely stroll along. The parasols and sun loungers provided were much in demand, so if we wanted to secure a spot for a day of beach-dwelling we had to get out there by 10am at the latest! Although all beaches in Antigua are open to the public, we only ever saw resort guests and the occasional souvenir/excursion seller there (boat excursions usually leave from/return to the beach!). During the latter part of our week there, quite large (dinner plate size) jellyfish were a bit of a problem, with a fair few in the shallows and washing up on the beach; hotel staff assured us their sting was no worse than a nettle, but we were sure to watch out for them all the same!

Although the resort is small (50-ish guest rooms I'd say), this works to its advantage, as it has a peaceful, laid-back vibe, rarely feeling crowded (although the bar can fill-up at night). Be warned though: it's in a very isolated part of the island - nothing of interest is within easy walking distance. The capital St John's is only a 15-minute cab ride away though.

The staff are, for the most part, friendly, chatty and incredibly attentive, especially those in the restaurants - take a sip of your drink at breakfast/lunch/dinner and it gets refilled almost instantly! In fact the food and service in the restaurants was a definite highlight for me. Despite being a particularly fussy vegetarian, I never struggled to find anything to eat and there was usually plenty of it. There was always a veggie option on the lunch/dinner menu, and my daily omelette at breakfast became something of an addiction! We did notice a couple of shortcuts being taken towards the end of our stay (the Irish stew at lunch one day looked remarkably similar to the St Lucian hotpot served that night at dinner...), and my wife found that most meat dishes were usually on the spicy side, but when food is served in this quantity and in this friendly a manner you overlook any such qualms.

Despite these largely positive comments, my wife and I did experience one major problem with the resort which ruined our enjoyment of the first couple of days stay: we didn't get our room until 24 hours after we checked in! We'd travelled from the UK to Antigua for a week-long honeymoon, our reward to ourselves after a frantic, stressful and problematic year of wedding planning. I'd emailed the resort directly a week before we were due to arrive to confirm our booking and received a reassuringly prompt reply from their Reservations Manager confirming there were "holding accommodations" for us. On arrival at the resort we were therefore surprised and upset to be told by the very same Reservations Manager (who now denied knowledge of our email correspondence) that an error with our booking (blamed on both their staff and their "system" at different times) meant that our room was double-booked and would not be available until lunchtime the following day. Apparently this problem had come to light 2 days beforehand, yet this was the first we’d heard of it. As we had nowhere else to go at that late stage, the resort provided us with accommodation for that night in a small chalet at Yepton Cottages, a small development on the same estate but a full 5-minute walk away from the actual resort complex, down an unlit track. (Incidentally, the lake at Yepton Cottages backs onto the main 'guest room' building, and appears to be the source of some rather unpleasant odours that occasionally waft in the rooms at the Coconut resort.)

Knowing that we'd be moving rooms again the following day, we were unable to unpack, settle into our room and generally relax as expected/needed. We had to trek back and forth between the chalet and the resort for dinner and the following day's breakfast and lunch, as well as to use the hotel's beach, pool, bar, etc; facilities which we had paid a lot of money for easy access to. Without access to the usual resort information held in the guest rooms, we had to repeatedly return to Reception to ask about meal times, facilities and the like, only to receive information that wasn't always correct (e.g. we missed breakfast being served the next day as a result, although the restaurant staff were still kind enough to rustle us up a little grub). The fact that it rained torrentially at various points on our first 2 days there only made matters worse; we had to get accustomed to getting soaked through on our frequent journeys between the chalet and the resort.

We checked out of the chalet at Yepton Cottages just after 12 noon the following day (we'd been assured our room in the actual resort complex should be ready by around 1pm). Due to the aforementioned heavy rain and the fact that the resort is in the middle of nowhere, we had no choice but to seek shelter in the resort's communal bar area, without our luggage, unable to change our clothes, use the bathroom, and so on. We finally received the key to our room at 3pm, a full 24 hours after we’d first arrived.

In fairness to the resort’s Reception staff, in recognition of their error in mishandling of our booking they did offer us compensation of a sort: 2 free bottles of drinking water on arrival as well as a free massage in their spa. On our third day they also offered us a boat trip around the island for the following week, but unfortunately by that time we'd already booked the very same cruise through the resort's own excursions booking agent, and the Reception staff were apparently unable or unwilling to refund us for this and come good on their offer.

Having been looking forward to a relaxing honeymoon for many months, unfortunately we started it feeling disappointed, angry, upset, cheated and confused at how this double-booking could have happened to us (it appeared other couples who arrived the same day as us had no problem booking in). This could have so easily been the perfect ‘once in a lifetime’ honeymoon we'd been hoping for (the actual resort facilities and majority of the staff were great, and Antigua is a fun place), but that was not to be due to this upsetting and unfair start to our holiday, which really did taint the rest of our time there, leaving us feeling that we effectively lost one whole day of a honeymoon that was short enough to begin with. Needless to say, we are currently in the process of pursuing a claim for compensation through our booking agent.

As a result of these difficulties I'm afraid I'm unable to recommend the resort, despite it's many plus points.