We stayed at the Sandpiper the week of April 22 and thoroughly enjoyed our vacation. The hotel is very intimate with only 45 rooms. The service, rooms, restaurant and the people are all friendly and make for an enjoyable experience. The beach is small and has a lot of coral rocks; but is adequate for the size of the resort.

The real key to Barbados though is the restaurants on the west coast. We visited The Cliff, Tides, LaMer and Sandy Lane and they are really excellent. Great views, great food, lots of atmosphere at each one. Expensive though as a meal for two will run about $300 USD with a bottle of wine. The Sandpiper restaurant is also very good; but a little below the others and a lot cheaper.

If you are there I suggest you use the Yellow Bus for local touring. Very inexpensive and zips up and down the west coast. Taxis are very expensive and ran us about $15 USD per mile.

We also checked out the Royal Pavilion, the Coral Reef, and Sandy Lane while we were there and all of these seem to be very nice hotels. The Sandy Lane is a little pompous for us though; but food was good.

I'd recommend the Sandpiper as a nice fairly inexpensive resort for a vacation. We also go to Jamaica and like the Royal Plantation there. More expensive; but a little nicer than the Sandpiper.

We have recently returned from The Sandpiper. We stayed in a one bed suite #19. The suite was as detailed in the previous posters review so I will not add any more details. The food was very good, the cocktails wonderful and the grounds and rooms kept very clean. The only annoyances I had was that we were unlucky to have babiies crying constantly across the way morning and night, people smoking at the beach bar tables during lunch and as previously mentioned sunbeds being reserved very very early in the morning. Seemed to be the same people most of the time and then people reserving and not turning up until hours later!!!! Also I am not really an early riser and the people looking after the gardens were sweeping up the leaves from 6.30am. So we generally had a poor nights sleep. On top of all this the staff were very friendly and it was a very nice hotel. Great guides on the boats.

We just returned from a two night stay at the Sandpiper. We had just disembarked from a 7 night cruise on the SeaDream Yacht Club and had never been to Barbados before. To get our land legs back before going home we booked a short stay to experience the island. We arrived before 11 am and was pleasantly surprised to find our room available. We booked a 1 bedroom suite for our family of four. It was suite #19 which was on the second floor overlooking the courtyard to the beach. We were so thrilled with the accomodations after being couped up in a very small room on our cruise. The suite had a large living room with a pullout couch and they put in a rollaway as well. There was a fully equipted kitchen, large bedroom with a king bed and TWO bathrooms (very important when you are traveling with teenage girls). But the best part was the balcony. It was very large with a dining table for 4 and two chaise lounges. Very relaxing. A full breakfast (excellent!) was included with our rate as well as the watersports and tax. I felt it was a very good value considering the size and the amenities. The unit was updated with lovely furnishings and very clean. A/C worked great in both rooms. The only (slight) disappointment was no TV.
We had lunch at Harolds Bar and ordered a room service lunch the day we were departing. Drinks and food were good though we heard that dinner at the restaurant was great we did not try it. We also had lunch one day at the Coral Reef Club (sister resort). We were told the price for the lunch buffet was 125 BD!!! We were shocked at the price. We only wanted salads or a light lunch but were told we had to pay for the buffet ---no ala carte. As we were about to leave the host said he could cut the price to 50 BD so we stayed. It was only on leaving that we noticed half the patrons in the restaurant had ordered ala carte and did not do the buffet. We were mad that we were treated this way and taken advantage of since we were staying at a property that was owned by the same people. So beware if you dine at the Coral Reef.
The beach in front of the Sandpiper hotel was very small. Unfortunately this led to people getting up at the crack of dawn to reserve beach chairs---which we hate but when one starts everyone has to. We enjoyed Barbados for our first trip and look forward to returning soon. I would highly recommend the Sandpiper Resort.

A fantastic week hiding away from post christmas blues and the uk winter. Stayed in a well appointed garden room in this small, personal family run beach hotel just on the edge of Holetown.
A warm welcome at reception is followed by some of the best food on the island (we tried the cliff and lone star, only to be slightly dissappointed).
Harold's Bar, right on the shoreline, is superb for lunch.
The staff, to a person, were friendly and professional at all times.
I will be booking for January 2009 shortly.

RG
Northern Ireland