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Trinidad & Tobago Hotel, Resort & Villa Reviews
Arnos Vale Hotel 02/03/2003
Reviewers Rating:  Good
My wife and I visited Tobago in December 2002 and chose this hotel because it was so different from the others on offer. What the brochures say about the setting being wonderful are absolutely true. The hotel is set upon a hillside surrounded by lush tropical plants with a view to the almost private bay far below. The bay itself is so good for snorkelling that I didn't even bother to go diving (although I am a BSAC advanced diver and former instructor).
As for the hotel itself, if I'm honest, it was a little disappointing - I'll deal with each area in turn:
FOOD On the whole, the food was good. Breakfast comprised fruit, various breads and some hot food such as scrambled eggs and bacon. The restaurant is covered but open at the side, extending onto a terrace and large number of birds gather to be fed the scraps each morning. Watch your fruit juice or the banana quits will be in there!
If you are on full board, lunch will be a BBQ at the beach snack area - this is much the same every day - I found I had little need of lunch after a good breakfast anyway. The evening meal was usually well worth waiting for - I remember only one duff meal when tinned peas were served! Mostly, the food was well prepared and the choice was reasonable with four courses but if you like fish, don't expect a great variety - we had almost nothing but Kingfish for two weeks - "it all depends", they explained, "on what has been landed". The Caribbean Evening was particularly good on both weeks and some local entertainment was provided one evening while we were there. Drinks as always, are expensive. A good selection of Italian wines is available – but again, at a price (wine is always expensive in the Caribbean).
If you want some really good food, the nearby Waterwheel Restaurant was excellent - its surprising that so few people seemed to go there.
ROOMS The standard of rooms leaves much to be desired. We spoke to the other guests and compared notes. One couple didn't have any shower head on their shower - just a bare pipe. We had no tea or coffee making facilities or even a small fridge. The electrical fittings were old and cracked and one light fitting had a loose wire. I noticed a number of other dodgy bits of wiring around the hotel including some exposed wires but not having packed an AVO meter with me, I couldn't tell if they were live or not.
Plumbing was poor - while we had plenty of hot water, the shower pipe was not properly fixed to the wall (this did, however, facilitate shower positioning in the absence of more contemporary fittings). We got used it after a few days but we never did find out why the bathroom smelt so foul in the morning. I think that the smell was coming from the sewers at night via the sink - I would have blocked the sink but the plug supplied didn't fit the plug-hole...
The rooms were cleaned every day to a reasonable standard and the towels changed if you left them out but the mosquito net above the bed could have done with a wash every so often as it smelt of old net curtains (perhaps it was an old net curtain). The impression we were left with was that with the exception of the odd coat of paint, no maintenance or investment had been carried out for years.
MANAGEMENT The hotel is run by an Italian company and the managers are both Italians - a young woman and a middle-aged man. We would have expected to be welcomed by them when we arrived but we didn't even find out who they were for several days as they kept themselves to themselves (the resident parrot, "Cico", was far more affable and talkative). The managers' party we were told about never happened (on either week we were there). Once we found out who they were, we noticed what they did during the day. When she wasn't busy working out in the gym, she could be found sunning herself on the beach or jogging around the gardens in the evening. He could often be found chatting to Italian friends on the beach or messing around with his jet ski. It was as if the hotel was their own endless private holiday - we didn't really feel like guests at all - just another commodity. The hotel runs in spite of the management and not because of it and relies heavily on the hard working staff to keep going.
When we reported faults, they were rectified if possible but the point is that staff should notice problems before the guests have reason to report them.
There is little to indicate that any investment is being made in the fabric of the building and standards of service have a long way to go to catch up with the standard people now expect. In my view, this hotel has been resting on it's laurels for too long. If it wasn't for the excellent snorkelling and bird watching on offer, I doubt that people would bother to return.
David Baxter
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