Bougainvillea Barbados - All Inclusive

Customer ratings & reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

2692 reviews

• 

  Beautiful bougainvillea

  Bougainvillea has retained a sense of boutique charm visit after visit, with a picturesque meandering path from reception straight to Maxwell Beach. Every room I’ve stayed in over the last 4 visits has had a beautiful sea view and nothing can beat the ambience offered from the 2 bed deluxe beach front apartments. The swim up bar offers a relaxed charm, with happy hour between 3:30 - 4:30. However, there is only one operating bar during this time and often only one bar tender - ordering a drink can become a timely affair. Rooms offer reasonable kitchen amenities but don’t come with oven gloves, scissors or a colander. We found the oven to be slow to heat up and the kettle even slower. The hotel gym was a disappointment for me, with very old equipment which is in need of an upgrade; the dumbbells and pull up bar are rusty in places and ultimately do not make for a motivating exercising experience. Live music is on offer each evening, including guitar and saxophone, singing and steel pan. Mondays evenings offer a free drink during the manager’s welcome - although the manager was nowhere to be seen when I visited. Overall, I’d highly recommend this hotel.

  Apr 15, 2025
• 

  Nice, Friendly, Small Hotel but not a True 4 star

  This hotel is good in parts. Great position on the beautiful Maxwell beach . Nice rooms, well maintained by the friendly staff unfortunately very few rooms have a true sea view and there are no complimentary beverages in the rooms. There are no lifts, so if you can't deal with stairs, ask for a ground floor room. Nice small pools that seem child friendly and plenty of beach sunbeds and umbrellas serviced by a friendly water sports group. Food is a high standard in the only restaurant, but the menu is fixed, which can be a bit monotonous if, like us, you are there for 14 nights. The restaurant staff are very friendly and helpful but be aware, there is loud music next to the restaurant in the evening which makes it hard to have a conversation over dinner. There is a pool bar with great staff. We did find a problem getting room faults corrected during the stay. TV in the bedroom didn't work for the first week. Turns out, it needed a Google TV box. The phone was faulty, and it took them 12 days to fix it, in spite of repeatedly reporting it. Checkout is 11.00, so if you have a later flight, you will be hanging around the lobby for hours. One major fault is that there is only a single public toilet in the lobby and only one to cover the beach and restaurant. Overall, it is a nicely positioned hotel, but the single, noisey dining option means it's not a true four star facility, and we would not choose it in future. That may be something to do with us being in our late seventies.

  Apr 07, 2025
• 

  Lovely spot.

  Grounds are fabulous, pools are nice. Staff is great. Units are good.The beach is awesome, but sometimes the surf is rough. I really like it here.

  Apr 04, 2025
• 

  Great resort with no complaints

  We stayed here for seven nights in a junior suite. This room had kitchen facilities including a stove, freezer, refrigerator, and microwave. Dishes and glassware as well. I'm not sure if we really needed that since it really isn't the kind of place where you want to bring groceries in and cook your own meals. Our room was on the 1st floor but elevated above the swimming pools. Beautiful landscaping outside the rooms and our room had a miniature plunge pool connected to the swimming pool. Nice big deck with a table and seating for four as well as a chaise lounge. Big shower. Internet is pretty slow but reliable. The room furnishings were excellent and the bed comfortable. If you're going to be on the 1st floor I suggest getting a room on the West side because otherwise you are right out on the pool level. The staff were very helpful and friendly. We rented a car and they had arranged it so we could pick it up at the lobby. There are two pools and a sit-down pool bar that were surrounded by many beach chairs. Again, the landscaping was very nice and there was privacy easily found in these areas despite all of the rooms surrounding it. There is a little gift shop with things like sunscreen and snacks if needed. The beach was beautiful, large and sandy. Not a snorkeling location. However, there are big waves which actually prohibited people from swimming on certain days because of the wind. You could wade on those days but the staff were very careful about keeping people out of the water. Same with the adjacent Sandals Resort. There were many beach chairs and no problem with getting one anytime of the day. The staff would set up an umbrella if you needed one and there were also permanent palapas. There was no drink service on the beach but the bar was just a short walk away. The restaurant Calabas had very good food and I highly recommend signing up for the breakfast buffet plan. Lots of creative and fresh local foods that are different every morning. I will review the restaurant separately but suffice to say the service at lunch was slow and at dinner was unacceptably slow. The hotel is in a busy neighborhood and is not very amenable to walking, but there wasn't much to walk to anyway. However, we did find out that the Dover Market which has all kinds of good stuff (food, liquor, sandwiches, etc.) can actually be accessed if you walk down the beach about a 1,000 ft to the west. There are discrete paths between the beach and the roads since beaches in Barbados are all public. The guests were almost all British and ranged from families to elderly folks. Definitely not dominated by kids but it is kid friendly. All in all I highly recommend this place.

  Apr 02, 2025
• 

  Our 2nd Christmas at Bougainvillea

  After a fantastic family Christmas vacation at Bougainvillea in 2022, we decided to return for Christmas 2024, and once again, it did not disappoint. Bougainvillea embodies everything we love about Barbados! We love the location, the friendly staff, and the beautiful beach. Our family of 8, ranging from 14 to 83, occupied 3 beautiful rooms for 9 glorious days. If you are thinking about staying here, don't hesitate....book it! Thank you Bougainvillea for another memorable Christmas, hope to see you in 2026!

  Apr 02, 2025