The Worst Luxury Hotel Ever?

Usually I am envious of James Bond, fiction’s most dapper, well-traveled and all around awesome character. Most of the time, 007 is “The Great Life” personified.

But instead of envy I felt pity for him in the franchise re-launch, Casino Royale, and not because I didn’t like the movie (loved it!). I felt pity because Bond had to check into the One & Only Ocean Club on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, which has the notorious distinction of being the worst so-called “luxury” hotel I have ever visited. And I have visited a lot of hotels, good, bad, and ugly.

People ask me for travel advice all the time, and they mostly ask me about bests. “What’s the best hotel you ever stayed at,  the best trip you ever took, the best meal you ever ate, the best golf course,” etc., etc. Rarely do they ask about worsts, and the travel media is the same way. You absolutely will never open an issue of Conde Nast Traveler or Travel & Leisure or Golf Digest and have them tell you not to visit a resort. Unlike movie or restaurant reviews, the mainstream travel media is undying in its adulation, invariably flattering, and on those occasions when I have had an assignment to cover a place and felt guilty telling people to go there because it was not worthwhile, the story would be killed, rather than run in a way that reflects reality.

So this is something I need to get off my chest. The Ocean Club is the worst luxury hotel I have been to, period.

I say luxury because travel is all about expectations. I’ve stayed at plenty of Super 8’s and Motel 6’s and while I certainly don’t love them, I usually feel I got my money’s worth and what I expected. I once had a late arrival and early departure the next day from Phoenix, and stayed at an airport hotel at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport where I literally pushed the dresser against the door to ward off a home invasion, but even that was somewhat in sync with expectations for an ultra-cheap, 1-star hotel in a bad neighborhood a few blocks from the airport. On the other hand, the Ocean Club is, in its own not too humble words:

“…a treasured sanctuary of privileged perfection… Today, this alluring beachfront hideaway reflects the glamorous ambience and posh exclusivity of a grand colonial manor, welcoming generations of the world’s travelling elite. .. Here, service is elevated to a fine art form by a gracious staff welcoming you into their colonial plantation home. Warm and inviting accommodation and residential-style villas are ideal for couples and families alike. The dining options at One & Only Ocean Club are renowned and unforgettable featuring the imaginative cuisine of chef Jean-George Vongerichten.”

Lofty expectations indeed – and even more so when the room rates for regular hotel rooms start at $995 a night, while suites, villas, and cottages are considerably more expensive. I picked a random October weekend to check these rates, neither high season nor low season. In general, while you can find rooms for under a thousand bucks on occasion, the Ocean Club is a four-figure property, and I still think you should get something pretty good for those rates. There are just 105 “guestrooms, suites and villas exude a warm and inviting ambience with modern conveniences and the discreet services of a personal butler, 24 hours a day.”

Before I detail exactly what was wrong with my stay, I’d like to add a couple of caveats. First, I was not paying for my very expensive room, which is the norm for travel writers for most publications, and often the case for even those that claim they do not accept free travel. One problem with being a guest for the resort or hotel is that you often receive better treatment than paying customers, and you have to be critical enough to not let this cloud your judgment. Believe me, this was not an issue at the Ocean Club.

Another caveat is that I don’t think there are any great hotels or resorts in the Bahamas, or the potential for them to exist. In their defense, the physical aspects of the property are wonderful and the rooms lavish, which proves that anyone with sufficiently deep pockets can build a monument to marble, but not everyone can deliver of service. I was at the grand opening of the short lived Four Seasons Great Exuma, and one of the managers, with a world of experience in great service economies like the Maldives, told me bluntly that is was impossible to run the hotel up to the brand’s standards in the Bahamas, where highly protectionist labor laws limit experienced and eager staff from being brought in. The hotel closed quickly, a rarity for Four Seasons. I’ve been to hotels on Nassau, Paradise Island, Abaco, and other islands, and the service experience has been completely underwhelming, so I understand the Ocean Club’s challenges. Then again, I didn’t chose to build a high-priced luxury resort in the Bahamas, One & Only did.

I’d like to add that what makes this all the more surprising is that One & Only is actually quite a good company, and their resort in Los Cabos, Mexico, the One & Only Palmilla, is fantastic. I stayed there shortly after it was extensively renovated and rebranded as One & Only, and everything from the room to service to the omnipresent and omniscient butler to that property’s celebrity chef eatery, was exemplary. This makes the puzzle that is the Ocean Club even more confusing.

My visit was years ago, and of course there is always the chance things have changed, possibly even for the better, but it was bad enough where I was not going to entertain the idea of ever returning.

Finally, I’d like to explain that the Ocean Club is a boutique hotel within the larger Atlantis Resort complex. It has its own manicured and landscaped grounds and good modicum of privacy, but many of the facilities, including the golf course, casino, and extensive theme park-style water rides, faux Mayan pyramids, and aquarium-like shark tanks are in the main Atlantis resort.

Here is how my stay went:

On my first day I came down with my clubs and told the front desk I was playing golf, and asked how to get to the golf club. They told me to walk down the long, tree-lined driveway and wait in the street for a shuttle bus that makes a loop of the various Atlantis properties. This immediately struck me as odd, since any other hotel of this size and price I have been to either has it owns shuttle or would simply have a bellman take me over, but I schlepped down the driveway in the tropical heat and waited for the bus.

When I got to the golf course for my morning tee time, I was told that the twosome I was scheduled to play with had met another twosome in the casino the night before, and they wanted to play together, so my name had been scratched from the tee sheet. I was told this without surprise or apology, as if it happened every day. Now this is a golf course that costs $260 to play, and $190 in the lowest off season period, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I’ve never heard of it happening. I am one of the world’s more prolific golf travel writers, and have played most for the world’s top courses, and hundreds of not so top courses and this was simply shocking. It was even worse since they knew where I was staying – in the resort’s fanciest accommodations – and did not bother to call to tell me they had unceremoniously dumped my round of golf. When I expressed surprise and disappointment, the pro shop staff clearly did not care and begrudgingly booked me into a mid-afternoon tee time, screwing up my day. I would have simply skipped the golf except I had an assignment to write about the course and no choice. So I asked how to get back to the Ocean Club to wait out the service delay, and they told me to take the shuttle bus. The driver then told me he couldn’t turn down the Ocean Club driveway, even though it is part of the same resort, so he dropped me on the side of the loop road where I had started my trip to nowhere.

When I left for my afternoon tee time, I again inquired about how to best get to the golf club, and was again told to take the walk down the driveway to the bus. At the pro shop they told me I had to go off the back nine because a cruise ship had booked the whole afternoon. I was squeezed in between groups, the pace of play was horrid, and I was only able to finish about a dozen holes before my bus ride and walk back to my scheduled dinner – and butler surprise.

Upon arrival, the butler had asked me which night he wanted me to have him lay out an elaborate display of rose petals on our bed, fill the oversized tub, light candles and prepare the room for a romantic interlude, which I took to be a nice touch. He said we should do it on a night when we had dinner scheduled on site, so he could time it perfectly. I told him about our reservation at the Courtyard Terrace and we set it up for that night.

Dinner, at the resort’s more “traditional” restaurant, the Courtyard Terrace, was simply terrible. Traditional apparently means tired as in bad circa 1970s Atlantic City - with surly service at no extra charge.  During our dinner a patron at another table got down on his knees and proposed to his girlfriend, who said yes, and while everyone clapped, my first thought was “poor soul, now they are going to have to come back here someday.”

Speaking of coming back, it was time to return to the overpriced suite. When we got there, the door was open, there was a maid’s cart outside, and the when I stuck my head in the butler scurried out and ordered us, in a stern lecturing voice, to “come back in half an hour.” This was somewhat surprising to me, but much more to my wife, who did not know about the “perfectly timed” surprise and took it to be quite rude. In any case, by the belated time the butler finished his lackadaisical job, the moment was ruined.

I had arranged to return the next day to play the golf course’s missing holes. Different front desk person, same question: “How do I get to the golf course?” Same answer, walk down the driveway and catch the bus. Why did I keep asking this? Hang on, we’ll get there.

The golf course is okay. I say that as the author of a book on golf course architecture, a former resort rater for Golf Magazine, and an expert on golf courses worldwide, and it comes from a well-informed perspective, It’s merely fine, nothing special, disappointing based on the high price. Obviously, the service sucked. All in all, it took three trips and two days to play 18 overpriced holes. The only pleasant surprise I got was when I left the golf course - for the third time - and asked someone different yet again, how to get back to the Ocean Club. “I’ll call their private shuttle.” And there it was. I had known something was odd about the shuttle bus driveway deal.  The entire time they did in fact have an SUV or mini-van with the Ocean Club logo on the side, waiting to whisk guests around the property when the driver was not on permanent rest break. The fact that no one at the resort front desk and only one of the pro shop staff knew of its existence was emblematic of the overall service experience.

Next day was the low point of our entire stay, lunch at Dune, the hotel’s featured restaurant run by none other than star New York Michelin 3-star chef Jean Georges Vongerichten. Now I’ve always had a schizophrenic relationship with Vongerichten. I love his flagship, namesake New York restaurant, Jean Georges, and I think you could make the argument it is the city’s very best, especially for French fine dining. I’ve been several times, for lunch and dinner, and it never fails to impress. However, I have been disappointed, from slightly to hugely, at every other one of his properties I have visited, even those close to home in New York, but especially those in far flung locales. However, Dune set a new bar for how bad an upscale restaurant could be.

We were seated, as is the usual case with the Ocean Club, begrudgingly. There was exactly one place setting and one menu on the table for two. A waitress quickly appeared and without any prelude, asked if we were ready to order. I told her no, we needed a second menu and place setting. She shrugged and disappeared. Sometime later another waiter approached and asked if were ready to order. And so on. It literally took three increasingly agitated tries to get a menu, and a stroll to the manager to get us a place setting, and when we finally ate, the food was strictly mediocre. I mean this kind of service is not bad, it is inexcusably horrible. Can you imagine going into the flagship restaurant at any other luxury hotel on earth and having the staff repeatedly refuse to give you a menu?

After we got home, I started to think the experience was so bad that maybe something cataclysmic had happened like the GM running away the day before we arrived, something that threw every aspect of the operations into disarray, but I cold not think of any such event that would trickle down and poison the workers of the golf club, the front desk, the butlers, the waiters and restaurant management and so on, all simultaneously. The only consistent thing about our stay was unfriendly and unwelcoming, often hostile, service across the board.  Then a few months later a friend of mine who was the sales manager of a major pharmaceutical company had a contest and took his two top salespeople and their wives on an all-expense paid trip to the Ocean Club, booking three rooms and spending a lot of money, and when we debriefed, he basically had most of the same problems I had, said the front desk totally screwed his bill up and tried to overcharge him, and he vowed not to return. I completely understood.