Margaritaville Beach Resort - Nassau — Attraction in New Providence

This place has so much going for it in terms of location and hotel amenities, and fails so hard on service. We stayed on the residence side which advertises washers and dryers, kitchenettes, and dishwashers. And this was a lot of the service downfall.

At one point, all the adults on the trip looked at each other and agreed that this was the worst hotel experience we’d ever had. We had four people in our rooms, but were consistently missing something from the right number of towels to no pods for the washer or dishwasher, to no shampoo or conditioner in the shower to a broken ice maker. It was all just so bad.

However, the location, the amenities, the private beach area, the water park, and the pool and hot tub at the residences is absolutely spectacular. But the basic hotel services one would expect from an upscale hotel, was just disastrous.

I travel a lot. I typically stay in Hiltons, Fairmont, JW Marriotts. I’ve never run out of shampoo or conditioner in those refillable containers. I’ve never been missing enough towels for the number of guests in the rooms. I’ve never had a broken piece of equipment that required me asking 3x for it to be fixed before someone did something about it.

The water park and additional pools are wonderful. The beach is wonderful. The water park pool has a max depth of 3 ft with a graduated pool entrance that’s great for toddlers to splash and play in. There are two kid size slides (my five year old loved them!), two adult size slides, one high dive, and a lazy river. On the residence side max depth of pool is 3ft 9 inches.

Would I stay here again? Yes. Would I bring my own dang shampoo and conditioner plus soap pods for the washer/dryer and dishwasher - heck yes. Because Lord knows the hotel won’t realize you’re missing them unless you buy a giant billboard asking them to pay attention to the basics they claim to provide.

With that being said, the hotel is cashless. It’s easy to run up a big bill if you’re not paying attention. We ordered groceries in the residence and that worked well for the four of us, since the rooms in the residence side all have a small fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washer/dryer, coffee maker, microwave, toaster, and an electric stovetop. The hotel provides one small frying pan (highly recommend keeping this in mind). The hotel advertised a grill. It never had propane, despite several guests requesting it. (again, missing the mark on the simple stuff).

The rooms have nice balconies and TVs, closets, and plenty of storage for clothing and personal items under the TV.

Be warned the food onsite is expensive. $25 burgers, $10 ice cream, and $14 Pina coladas. These are resort prices. Come prepared. We did find the happy hour at the steakhouse worth the money, as it was buy one get one sushi and certain cocktails.

The hotel has a nice boardwalk that connects it to the Straw Market area. The location is hard to beat for access to different restaurants, shopping, and downtown Bahamas. The beach area at the hotel on the residence side is shared with the hotel next door, but it’s so much cleaner and quieter than the Margaritaville hotel side. The Margaritaville hotel side beach is next to the public beach and is noisy and feels less relaxing than the beach by the residences. We spent most of our time at the shared beach since it was quieter and felt safer with our little one in tow.

While we were staying at the residences also known as One Particular Harbor, one of the elevators was broken. It made getting up and down between floors very slow.

I will say the smell at the hotel is insanely good. They pump some sort of magic scent into the lobbies and it does make you feel like you’re on vacation the minute you walk into the hotel.

For families, I’d recommend the residence over the main hotel, since it gives you access to the quieter beach and gives you the ability to still go to the waterpark and use all the main hotel amenities. Also, the perks of having a bit of kitchen for budget is...

We recently stayed in Margaritaville for 4 nights. I give the place an overall rating of 2 stars. We had pretty bad weather 2 out of the 5 days there, however, in writing this review disregarding the weather impact since we did enjoy the beach for a couple of days. Negative points listed below:

The resort has an event venue. This is a positive for anybody doing a wedding and having the hotel as a staying option, however, for those guests that are not part of the events, IT IS HORRIBLE!!! We were staying at the 6th floor and you could hear the loud music coming from the venue in the 2nd floor. We have 2 babies and they would wake up from the music, DJ screaming on the mic, people screaming. I would expect the building management to keep that under control since a lot of guests were not part of those events. This is probably my biggest complaint. Note, out the 4 nights we stayed, 3 nights were like this where the events would end between midnight and 2am.

Restaurants and food shop are extremely expensive for average/mediocre quality food. Note; prices do not include the mandatory 15% service fee (tip), and from the behavior we got from some servers, additional tip seems to be expected. So don't be surprised if you spend $20 fish & chips (which would total to about 25$ after all fees) and for it to be average, if not, mediocre.

Drinks, similar to the food, extremely expensive. 2 beers for $22 (USD) at the bar. $8 USD for a single bottled beer at their "convenience" shop.

Most of the shopping and restaurants outside of the Hotel close after 5 PM. From what I noticed, this seems to be mainly because most of the economy in that area is dependent on the cruises that arrive and depart at that port. They arrive at around 8 am, everything opens at 8 am.... and depart between 4-5PM, everything closes after 5pm. I understand the reason behind the schedules, it just sucks if you want to go outside the hotel to eat because options are limited beyond those hours.

Taxi ride to and from airport is quite expensive. But this is probably all around the island. A 20 minute ride from the airport to the hotel was $75 for 5 passengers and 2 babies (no car seats)

Private beach is great and kept very clean, however, a lot of tourists arrive and quickly take on the beach chairs. I assume in high season this becomes more of an issue.

Hotel pools are open until dusk (Except adult pool on 4th floor). It would be nice if they were open until later.

I didn't give it lower start rating because there were some positives listed below:

Private beach was very clean

Pool area is nicely setup for all ages

Rooms are clean with pretty nice view

Cribs made available for small babies (take your own travel pack-&-play mattress though)

Not all resort employees are grumpy. The cleaning crew was always happy to help, the bartenders in the 1st floor bar were always upbeat and the performers that were presenting at the bar area were also very happy! The lady that played the piano would dedicate every other song to my little one just because it would make my baby so happy :)

I hope you appreciate the review above and is useful to you. Given my circumstances (2 babies under 2 years old), if I would have know the above Pros & Cons I would have probably opted for staying at a...

Stayed in a 2 bedroom sunset suite, nice view spacious clean rooms , well appointed. The private hot tub on balcony was a nice bonus. Sofa bed not comfortable- fine for a small child ( which was the case) . Otherwise the room accommodated our family of 5 well . Not really anywhere to unpack in the bedrooms , 1 small closet and one “mistake closet that was only 6 inches or so deep and it made no sense. No drawers. Beautiful bathrooms but very unforgiving with heavy glass and sharp edges and tile everywhere, slippery floors. We had several stubbed toes . The door to the master bedroom wasn’t trimmed enough to allow you to fully open the door without a fight- again several stubbed toes. Very expensive in the Joe Merchant provisions store ,the cheapest bottle of water is over $3 tax and gratuity are added to everything single thing. The 12 Volt bar is by far a best spot to sit and have a cocktail with a view but the hours are only til 8 pm. The drinks I’m sure by design are not very strong, but the drink in the blender is worth the purchase for later refills. The water park was great fun but closes at dusk, and the slides could use a cleaning at the very top- overall clean though and very fun. the adult pool ( infinity pool ) on 4th floor is heaven, although there always seems to be dip$hit$ that bring their kids - fortunately they don’t last long. The grueling looks from couples trying to get away from tiny humans scare them off quickly. The water here is crystal clear and protected by the jetty with the “ugly view wrecking-round soon -to -be opened restaurant-“ you can snorkel and paddle board right here. For the most the water was clean (a few straws we picked up ) we saw a turtle eating the grass and lots of fish. The beach just to the left of the resort is public but the resort itself was not over crowded. Over all a descent experience- just be prepared to spend money- we went to the store and bought a few cases of water just to save on an essential need, stay out of the fish fry area at night no matter what anyone tells you- it’s super sketchy with a lot of homeless and drugged out characters walking around. Tons of stray dogs . The giant screen at the pool could be used better- maybe play old Buffett concerts instead of the news - I’m trying to escape reality. Staff was friendly overall especially Keross the life guard! And the ladies at Feeding Frenzy-Would love some more entertainment on property and more jimmy Buffett music playing outside. - lockers are available at pool but we felt perfectly safe leaving our bags at our chairs with no real valuables inside. It’s location is sandwiched between the cruise docks and a public beach so there is a lot of activity, we didn’t mind watching the cruise ships come in and out of port , but it’s a loud noisy area , lots of sirens and street noise, mostly blocked out by the heavy glass. we stayed on property after our scary “fish fry” outing . Would overall recommend but definitely see room for improvement at this resort from an owner and managerial level. Needs a bit stronger...