The Cove Eleuthera — Hotel in Central Eleuthera

This was my 5th trip to The Cove in the last 4 years. The staff are very friendly and somewhat helpful, the property is beautiful and bed and bathroom linens are always fresh. The food at all 3 meal times is delicious and fresh. I recommend taking the boat out if you are staying for a few days. Captain T. was knowledgeable and proved to be skilled in keeping us safe while showing us a great time at some of the local spots by boat. This trip I paid about $1500 per night for my room and as usual spent $600-$1000 per day for 2 people at the bar and restaurant. I was disappointed when I discovered that they no longer offer simple black/drip/filter coffee. This is the most common coffee so I'm baffled by this change. The espresso drinks were made from pods. During my 5 night stay there were several other small menu items which were unavailable.. Like no green juice, no croissants and no ham. Last year during my stay there was no sushi available. My toilet seat was broken when I arrived. I called for repairs and 6 hours later I was still waiting for someone. I called again after 6 hours and was assured someone would come right away. Again No one came. When I saw a housekeeping staff member next door after dark I asked for the third time if they could send someone. Finally the following afternoon someone showed up and replaced the broken toilet seat. Thursday, Friday and Saturday I had to listen to the leaf blower while I laid in my beach chair as they cleaned empty rooms behind me. I chartered their boat for 4 hours. While I was with the restaurant manager who was helping me order over $500 worth of food and drinks for my boat trip, our conversation was suddenly inturrupted by the GM who wanted the restaurant manager to shift his focus and attention to a boat full of non-guests who were expected to arrive for lunch. This struck me as slightly rude. Saturday night we had to turn on the solar powered lanterns at the dark pool deck all by ourselves just to enjoy our champagne bucket. This was after we had to go into the restaurant, order it and carry it out by ourselves while we were charged 18% gratuity for no service what so ever. We watched the dining room staff turn off the indoor table lamps and begin to close up while there were still many guests enjoying their dinner close to 10pm. Two different restaurant staff members came outside only to check on the lights we were using outdoors but didn't ask us how we were doing or if we wanted anything. We had to carry our empty champagne bucket back indoors ourselves. Food is expensive. Burgers are close to $40 and do not include any chips or fries. Steaks are $60 and taste like vacuum sealed Omaha steaks. Seafood pasta is $45 and good luck finding any seafood inside. $12 for a muffin at breakfast. Want to eat anything between 4-6pm? Forget about it because there is NO food at all during these hours. This policy is also baffling and frankly just STUPID. Sunday night was my last night and I went to bed hungry because at 9:30pm we walked into the restaurant bar to order dinner to go. The bartender took our order but came back to explain that the manager refused to sell us any dinner except for a burger, stating that the kitchen was closed. I explained that we only came in late because we were at the sunset bar and fire pit with other guests where I spent at least $250 on drinks. 10 min after leaving the bar, the bartender Daniel showed up at our room with an unfresh burger and fries. I asked numerous times to have the name of the manager and he flat out refused to the point where I walked back to the restaurant but was told the manager was already gone. I had to call guest services to request the name of the restaurant manager. Burgers are only available at lunch, are only grilled outside at lunch time and take at least 15 minutes to cook. They refused us dinner and gave us a 6 hour old reheated burger for $40. Sadly the lack of hospitality and service leave a lot...

We stayed at The Cove for 5 nights at the end of January - it was our first time - and the property truly is magical. The location is gorgeous, the food is phenomenal, and the staff is friendly and helpful. We stayed in a beautifully appointed Beachfront Grand King and our back yard was the literally the beach and ocean. The deck (and its multi-levels) is a bonus place to lounge and stare at the Carribean Sea (which I could've done all day) and watch the most beautiful sunsets I've seen in a while.

There are a few things to know as you consider booking that I hope are helpful:

There may be construction noise - the construction site is just south of The Cove where it looks like a hotel is being built. They're literally leveling the top of a rocky ridge with heavy excavating equipment. I think the direction of wind determines how loud the noise is so it can vary - 2 out of the 4 full days we were here, we had to endure significantly disruptive jackhammering from 8-5. I actually called twice BEFORE booking to make sure there wasn't going to be any construction on the property because we were looking for a quiet visit - and was told there wasn't any. In fairness, that's true...the noise doesn't originate form the property and unfortunately not in their control, but given I was expressly looking for peace - it wouldn't been nice if they were honest about that. According to staff, the construction has been happening for months and doesn't look like it's anywhere close to completion. Recognizing it may not bother some...for me, that was the thing that disrupted my stay most. When it was quiet...it was blissfully quiet!!

Staff was GREAT - service was a little spotty. We're big room service people and while we had one order that fell through the cracks, the staff was always prompt and courteous (Shay rocks). Housekeeping was less consistent. Despite multiple requests to have our mini-bar restocked (via text, phone and in person), it didn't happen for 4 days. After a few days, my husband ended up taking one of the resort bikes down the street to a convenience store for snacks and drinks (which I wouldn't recommend...the street isn't bike friendly). If you're a snacker and don't always want to go to the dining room or order room service, you'll need to bring stuff onto the property. One day it seemed like housekeeping stopped cleaning our room abruptly and never came back (bed was half made, no towels were left) and requests for a foam pillow were never responded to. Beach and pool service is not robust, which is fine...but when you pay $1700/night, you kinda expect people to be all over you. The resort manager, Nick, introduced himself to us when we checked in (which was a nice touch) and told us if there anything we needed to just ask. What he failed to tell us is that you may...

Carefully read and don’t be fooled by all the good reviews. The cove is a beautiful setting and the staff were very friendly, which makes this a bit more difficult to write, but we missed all the bad reviews mixed into the 5/5 ones that must be from people who haven’t been to a 4-5 star resort that is properly staffed, maintained, and managed. I wouldn’t want to continue to allow people to be disappointed as we were. We have been to many different resorts over the years, and honestly this was one of the most consistently disappointing levels of service we have experienced particularly from one billed to be a luxury resort. The food was good, but the service in the restaurant was painfully slow and it was almost like the wait staff were openly attempting to ignore you at times. We awoke this morning to a flooded room due to drainage being improperly routed toward the structure rather than draining away, in the royal two bedroom nearest the restaurant. Our shower head was nearly clogged almost completely in one bathroom making showers miserable. The property is inadequately maintained, the pool is Not Heated and was freezing, and the very friendly staff(seriously they were very nice) always seemed to be off a tick. They would often forget items(two orders of fries last night that were on the bill but they didn’t bring, not bring towels( they didn’t tell us they didn’t have any clean pool/beach towels until our 2-3rd request wasn’t heeded and they were apparently waiting on the laundry), not make coffee when asked after they said they were brewing more and just didn’t at the bar, pretend they were getting a pen to get drink orders only to not return when we were by the beach (learned to get my own ultimately as it was easier and the bar was very close by), forgot our airport transfer that we requested the day before due to our early departure ( we gave them 24 hours notice that we would be leaving early due to poor weather and fact that we weren’t enjoying hanging at the resort honestly). The cove itself is perfect and the property has amazing potential, but it is overshadowed by the disorganized service and poorly maintained facilities. I honestly don’t write many reviews, but it was warranted in this case and after we got fooled into picking this property based on the many shining reviews I felt it best to at least mention the issues we...