My husband and I planned our first trip to The Bahamas for my birthday. After making the arrangements with the travel agency we received our hotel documents for the Royal Palm. I then began to check out the hotel on-line. I was so terrified that the hotel was going to be horrible after reading the reviews! I just knew our first trip to The Bahamas was going to be a disaster! I was VERY pleased with the cleanliness and service at the hotel!! The rooms were equipped with everything we needed. There is a very inexpensive restaurant right on-site that's open for breakfast and lunch. We were able to take a five minute walk to downtown Freeport. From there we paid $1 to ride anywhere we wanted to go! There is also a KFC, Burger King, Quiznos, Subway and chinese restaurant nearby! Don't believe the horror stories. It may have been that way in the past but at present this hotel is A-OK!!

This hotel was nice, clean, and had a very friendly staff. It was nice if you didnt mind walking 10-15 min. for food, even though they had a restaurant on site. But they had a nice kitchen with microwave and fridge. It was cool since we went to KFC and bought extra stuff, they heated it up later in our hotel room. The main thing i didnt like was the fact that the door didnt have any additional locks on it other than the fact that it locks automatically (from the outside) when you shut the door. But other than that, i loved this hotel. It was very pretty, and the pool looked very clean. I hated the little lizards running around there, but you can control nature. I would definitly stay here again.

We stayed for four days in the Royal Palm Resort & Suites, in the Grand Bahama island. The name is a bit of an overstatement; I wouldn't quite call it a resort; yet it's a very nice place with most of the in-room amenities that one needs, and with very good prices. This makes it overall a GREAT deal, especially if you're looking for a place just to sleep, and are planning to spend most of your day exploring the island.

The hotel is situated in Freeport, the "city" (don't expect a big city; it's more like a ... village) in the center of Grand Bahama. It is very close to the airport, easily accessible from a central street that crosses the city. It offers free parking and it's very convenient if you rent a car; there's also a gas station right across the hotel. If you don't have a car, keep in mind that it's far from the beaches and from Lucaya.

During our stay we barely had to interact with the hotel staff; we had already paid through travelocity, and there were no surprises or anything else major to go wrong, so we didn't really have to interact with the staff. Checking in took only a minute, and we were accommodated even though we had arrived around 2pm, two hours before check-in time (which is 4pm).

Our room was on the second floor and was clean and tidy. The room had two double beds, air conditioning (very important!), a TV, a small kitchen with a sink and a microwave (and a table with two chairs), a bathroom with a tub and a hair dryer, an iron board with iron, and hangers for clothes. It was very comfortable with no major issues, other than a burnt light bulb, and a smoke detector that was constantly beeping (we had to take its battery off).

The complex has a pool and a bar. We didn't use the pool, and we only had a coke in the bar (which sells for $1). Also, we did not make any phone calls.

A few minor annoyances:
* The bathroom has only two large towels and two tiny washcloths; each person gets only one large towel and one washcloth!
* The bathroom doesn't have any shampoo or lotion; only some (harsh for your skin) soap bar that gets replenished daily. Bring your own shampoo, facial soap, and body lotion.
* On Saturday, the bar turned into a regular night club, complete with loud music and everything. We left the AC on all night, because the noise from the AC was blocking the loud noise from the night club.

Nevertheless, this is a great little place, very comfortable and with all the amenities one might need, and I definitely recommend it to fellow travelers, especially since we paid only $66/night for a double room. Why spend triple the money and go to a bigger hotel, if you are planning to explore around the island and go to secluded beaches anyway?

I wanted to give Royal Palm a better rating, because the staff was very friendly, and the rooms were clean, but there were some pungent downsides, and I'm just finding out that I got royally screwed making
international phone calls from the place. I should have known better and brought a calling card, but how would I know that each call (all but one was less than 5 mins) would cost me over $40! 6 calls cost me
$250!!!! The prices were not posted nor offered to me when making the
calls. The pungent comment comes from a couple of evenings during our stay when there was a really strong sewer smell in the neighborhood. Not the motel's fault, but one could not enjoy oneself outside at the pool inhaling the smell. Fortunately, the rooms were well sealed, and the smell didn't permeate into them.

Another note: the photos on this site are of the Island Palm, which is another hotel/motel under the same ownership. We drove by the Island Palm a number of times, and I recognize the 3 floors of balconies in the pictures. The Royal Palm just had 2 floors.

Again, the staff was friendly and the rooms clean, but I wouldn't go here again.