Sugar Bay Barbados - All Inclusive

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

2481 reviews

• 

  We love Sugar Bay! Highly recommend for families!

  We had such an amazing time. The food at the reef restaurant is absolutely amazing, chef Gale made the best lamb I have ever had in my life! Our almost 4 year old fell in love with the kids club, she even wanted to spend our last morning at the hotel there. The cocktails were amazing and so are the staff. We will definitely be back again and highly recommend sugar bay for families.

  Jan 05, 2026
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  The good, the bad and the beautiful

  Firstly, if you are worried about not having a fabulous time here, please don't. You would be hard pushed to not enjoy yourself at the Beautiful Sugar Bay. We had an amazing time, is Sugar Bay perfect ? No. Will I be making recommendations for improvements? Yes. Did any of these suggestions stop me having a wonderful time? No, but I do think given the price there are a few tweaks needed. First impressions - we were fortunate to arrive at 3pm in the afternoon on a glorious dunny day. Wow what a first impression, visually stunning and a fantastic welcome by staff, what a beautiful hotel and resort right on the beach front - just WOW. Rooms - our room was ground floor at the back of the pool and had it's own lovely private garden area with sun loungers and chairs and a table. The room on first impression looked nice but I wasn't overly impressed with there not being any fronts on the wardrobes or drawers - so all your personal belongings are on display which made it feel messy. I also didn't like 2 single beds being pushed together and I've never been anywhere where there wasn't a dressing table or the fridge restocked - found the room basic but we weren't in it enough to worry. Food and drinks - drink choices were plentiful. The food was a tale of two halves for us. The standard in the buffet was really high - tasty, good quality food mostly very well cooked. However, choice was very limited and on 2 of our 10 nights there really wasn't anything we wanted for dinner. Both the steak and Asian fusion restaurants were fantastic - wish I'd viewed the buffet menus on arrival so we could plan our restaurant visits based on the evening buffet selection. Breakfast and lunch were good - but the lunch salad selection was measly in comparison to what I'm used to and I would have preferred a wider choice. Colins Bar was good for late lunch. Would really benefit from late night snacks 10pm - Midnight. We often had dinner at 7pm and after a few drinks would've like a snack. Perhaps peanuts/ crisps on the bars or in the pubs. Overall the food was good with some of it being delicious but there were occasions when choice was a bit sparse or we were peckish. The Bay and the pool - the pictures do not do the Bay justice, it is absolutely stunning. No problems whatsoever securing sun beds on the beach or at the pool. The pool and pool bar were great. The sea is a little rougher than I've experienced elsewhere in the Caribbean but still absolutely glorious and I really couldn't fault the beach or pool. The beach would've benefitted from being raked now and then. Made the most of the snorkelling equipment provided at Watersports. Make sure you visit Pebbles Beach and Carlisle Bay all within walking distance. Visit the Boatyard - you get a 45 min boat trip included in entrance, money back on food and drinks and the beach is stunning. We used the local buses to get there and back. Entertainment - the entertainment was really good but fairly quiet and ended by 11pm most evenings. The hotel is definitely on the quieter side. The steel pans at Sunday lunch was wonderful - more entertainment like this especially during the day would be good. The non-stop Christmas music drove us absolutely insane (we were there 7th - 18th December). We love Christmas and Christmas music but felt it should be limited to meal times or a couple of hours a day. No Caribbean vibe as such, but perhaps it was the time of year. Staff - what can I say, absolutely outstanding and what a credit they are to Sugar Bay. Truly fantastic and really made our trip. Location - really well located for access, close to the airport and everything you need there. We would thoroughly recommend Sugar Bay. I'm not sure if we'd return as it was a touch on the quiet side for us and we've never yet returned to the same place as so many more places we want to visit, but this is one place I would certainly consider coming back to. The bad wasn't bad, this place is already amazing, I just think a few tweaks would make it even better and make it better value for money.

  Jan 05, 2026
• 

  BIG BIRTHDAY

  We upgraded to an ocean view room, definitely not worth it, and avoid room room 313. Sugar Bay is a beautiful hotel with quite possibly the most wonderful caring staff i have ever witnessed. its nice to eat on the Terrace but you must compete with the pigeons. a real big issue! the food is self service, but the main dish of the day is carved by the chef. plenty of various dishes to appeal to any palette. Breakfast superb. Two extra restaurants to add to the main restaurant and beach bar. A wonderful Steak restaurant serving Angus beef on a wooden platter, and an Asian house, serving Chinese/Thai and sushi meals. Both highly recommended; these two restaurants allow two visits in a given week. the beach is stunning with ample sun beds and umbrellas. however the German disease of bagging an area will be a little disheartening, but there will always be plenty of room to soak up the sun in relative solitude. HOWEVER, forget the lovely pool with a swim up bar; it appears the sun beds are taken before daybreak!! i took US dollars thinking that would be sensible but really take the Barbados dollar. 2 Barbados dollar =1 us Dollar. Back to the room, i thought that the upgrade with an ocean view would be nice, but when we had a courtesy room in a standard garden view room; for our departure;, we were amazed at the size and refinements in the room. Far the superior to our room. Maybe room 313 was just a bad deal!!! our lock broke three times and the toilet was basically unusable due to the placement of the system, basically you have to use it sideways!!! that was the only negative. but this was overshadowed by the absolutely wonderful staff. Kay, Cherisse,Javan; to name just three is cruel as nothing was too much for any of the staff, never have we had such kindness. The evening entertainment was either a soloist or a band but the girl group VIRGO, were utterly brilliant. the area of sugar bay is only 10 minutes from the airport. Hired a car, and recommend a visit to Crane Beach with massive waves, and Bathsheba, you will not be disappointed with this lovely family run hotel

  Jan 04, 2026
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  Our Home From Home

  We love the Sugar Bay, like many we met at the resort we are return guests and that probably tells you all you need to know as to how highly we rate the hotel. Once again our expectations were exceeded and the staff, the food and the resort were absolutely first class. Not everything is perfect and if you want absolute perfection you’re probably better suited to Sandy Bay but that comes at a cost. Whilst the positives far outweigh the negatives, I know the management read these reviews and would leave them the following constructive comments on where small improvements could be made based on this years visit: Beach - Standards have really dropped in how the beach is maintained, every morning it looked like a war zone! Beds all over the place, plastic cups and rubbish a plenty. The pool area staff work so hard each morning preparing that area, it appears the beach is the poor relation! Some TLC around the beach would make such a difference, tidy up the sunbeds, clean up the litter and rake the sand every now and again! When we left the sand was full of debris including, sticks, plastic and abandoned kids toys. The beach should be the jewel in the crown of this hotel, it seems to slip in terms of standards and cleanliness year on year. Rooms - we love the rooms and the decor and general size of them, but…. 4 coat hangers and minimal wardrobe space is baffling! There is so much room that could easily accommodate more storage space and it seemed to be a common gripe amongst guests. Pool Area - Please, please put a member of staff in the pool area that can go round and take drinks orders! It happens at the beach and works brilliantly but is non existent around the pool! At peak times the swim up bar can’t keep up and people have to resort to heading to the main bar on the beach! Finally (and the isn’t an easy one to fix) but there is a real lack of toilets in the resort and the one set by reception just isn’t enough and is a real problem. Take UMI for example. If you’re eating up there and need to use the facilities, it’s a trek to go all the way down to reception, with those around the pool an beach also using the same facility, it’s no wonder the reception areas has to almost have a full time cleaner sweeping the floors! Special mention to all the management team who go out of their way to engage and listen to feedback, You really have something special at Sugar Bay.

  Jan 04, 2026
• 

  Many good points but areas for improvement too

  Overall, we had a good time at Sugar Bay, and there are definitely folks who are over the moon about this property, but we saw a number of areas it could have been better. As a result we won’t be returning. First the good parts. The property is very pretty and we enjoyed the fact that the breakwater meant we could go in the water regardless of the roughness of the broader water. Our room was private and exceptionally clean. We had a garden view property, which I was very glad of as the oceanfront rooms are right in the middle of everything, meaning if you are on the first floor and on your patio you have people walking by on the sidewalk right in front of you. Everything was in good working order, though we could only get 1 hand towel and no washcloths. They did an excellent job varying the buffet so although it wasn’t huge, there was always a good variety and different food each day. The food was very good. The serving staff were all excellent; Kay particularly stood out. The 2 specialty restaurants were very good. The drinks at the bar were excellent. They don’t have mudslides on the menu, but I highly recommend them. The other guests were all pleasant. No one was obnoxious or loud. The nightly sunsets were gorgeous. One place they can improve is the front desk staff. Everyone was either neutral or curt. As first timers, it would really have helped to be given an overview when we checked in, but we were told nothing, causing me to return to the desk numerous times with questions. Examples include how do we get pool towels (on follow-up they gave us cards to get them), where do I make reservations for the specialty restaurants, what are the hours of the buffet, and can we get some drinks in our room (answer yes)? I would not have known to ask for the drinks if it weren’t for the Sugar Bay Facebook group, which I definitely recommend joining before you go. The nightly entertainment is a major area for improvement. There is no posting of the entertainment, so you don’t know if you are interested or not. The entertainment is so loud, I could hear it in my room (which was about as far away as you can be) with earplugs in (it went past when we go to sleep). However, the worst was our last night when we purposefully had chosen to eat at Umi as a special dinner overlooking the water. The entertainers went to the stage which was right in front of where we were sitting, plugged in music and jacked up the volume, and then sat down and scrolled on their phones. The music turned our romantic dinner into one where first we were having to scream at each other and the server to be heard, and then we gave up talking and hurried our meal so we could get out of there. It completely ruined the night and left a very poor impression. If you join the Sugar Bay Facebook group, you will see that the competition for chairs is a major topic of discussion. We were there in high season, and I believe pool chairs were usually gone by about 8 or so because people would reserve them with their towels. When the staff would try to do something, people complained bitterly. We like to sit on the beach, but while you could get chairs at any time, you needed to be there early to request an umbrella before they ran out, usually 9/9:30. And you really need an umbrella, even if you want to tan, because it gets quite hot. This removed the ability to enjoy a relaxing morning in bed because we felt we needed to rush so we could get out and get an umbrella. So in summary, while Sugar Bay has a number of positive points and excellent staff, they also have some definite opportunities for improvement.

  Jan 02, 2026