Comparision to Other AI Resots?
Hello!
What a great option for a resort to have message boards!!
My husband and I have have been to Ocho Rios for the past five years. We love the people, the weather, the laid back fun. I already have the winter travel bug and have been look at airfare and resorts online. The past five years we have stayed a S resort ... we love the resort. BUT, right now for February the price is TWICE what we paid last year. I ran across the Couples website today and the resorts look beautiful! I'm thinking that this may be the year for a change. :) We could do top of the line room at Couples for half of what S would cost.
Can anyone tell me how the two resort companies compare as far as customer service, food, activites, etc.
Just from looking today, I like the looks of Couples Tower Isle for the fact I read it has a private beach, but they do all look beautiful!
Thanks for any advice! Kris :)
So Far, There IS No Comparison...
We stayed at CTI and we LOVED it. Jim had researched a lot of the other resorts before deciding on a Couples resort, and then we had to choose out of them. For various reasons, we chose CTI. We had been at a non-Couples resort in '07, and liked it OK--at that time, I'd had nothing to compare with. The one we went to was a sort of family-oriented place, because we had our son with us. Since this time we were celebrating our 30th anniversary, there was no question of having him along! ;)
Jim played tennis almost every day, and as soon as he got done with that, we'd meet at the Dive Shop and we'd dive. We did this four days in a row and saw all sorts of cool stuff. And for a feeling of comfort and security, especially if you do not dive any more often than we do, there is nothing like a Jamaican resort dive master.
We loved the island, and now I have an all-over tan for the first time in my life. All the places we ate at served great food, I enjoyed singing at the piano bar, where on two nights, I jammed with some people who are in a band at home (Hi, Darcy & Jim! and Hullo, John!) We had fun every single day we were there and we hated to have to go.
We ought to have been home Saturday night--we'd planned for a day of unwinding and catching up on the laundry. But NWA CANCELED OUR FLIGHT! We finally got home at 12:45 Monday morning, but in the meantime, NWA put us up at a resort about 45 minutes away from the airport, the newest one in Jamaica, and one of the largest. It had a Romanesque theme and is owned by a Spanish corporation.
Well, we were glad not to have to sleep at the airport, but the Spanish place was as different from CTI as night and day. For one thing, it really is huge--so much so, that if you're staying in one of the outlying villas, they really ought to provide bar bikes or Segways for you to get between there and the main area. Between the NWA reps and the staff, who soon began plying us with rum punches to soothe our frayed nerves, all us refugees got processed.
But there was something kind of impersonal about the service--at CTI, all the staff were not only alert and observant, but they seemed to actually enjoy their jobs. And they seemed to like the guests. The staff at the Spanish place were efficient, but you could tell that they felt themselves to be At Work. And I suppose that in a place so much bigger than the Couples resorts, all those walkie-talkies were necessary, but they certainly did not convey warmth and hospitality. One was abundantly reminded that this place was a Business.
Once we got to our villa, we couldn't get the electric to go on. We finally figured out that one was supposed to put a key card into this slot next to the wall, just inside, but it would have been nice if this had been explained to us. We finally found mention of it in the ginormous set of instructions that came with the room, but geez--supposed we'd gotten checked in after dark? With no lights, we were supposed to read this, um, how?
Later on I had leisure to read the rest of the literature, which seemed to contain a list of rules as long as your arm. You could only have one beach towel. You were not supposed to remove the white terrycloth slippers that came with the room. Sheesh! We'd assumed they were complementary and were going to take them with us, like soap and pens and such. They did not look sturdy enough to endure repeated washings, which one assumes--one hopes they did between guests...Some of our friends reported that they wanted to take a glass of wine to their rooms, which we did all the time at CTI--but they were told they couldn't do that. Sheesh! This wasn't any better than being in the States, where you also can't take your drink out of the establishment...
I'm still trying to get my head around that business with the key cards and the electric...they explained that this was an energy-saving measure, but I much prefer CTI's methods of saving energy, and letting us having a fresh beach towel more than once in the day did not break the bank.
We're already trying to figure out how soon we can afford to come back to CTI, which need not fear the Spanish place ever taking our business.
