Emerald Beach Resort — Hotel in Charlotte Amalie West

My husband and I stayed at this hotel for our babymoon at the beginning of this month and found it to be perfectly “okay” at best. Somewhere just right in the middle between being a cheap hotel and an above-average stay. I will try and break this hotel down by categories as best I can. ||||Location: If you are staying here for a few days, this hotel is conveniently located by the airport. Like it is basically on top of the airport. While this might disturb some guests, we actually thought it was pretty neat to watch the planes take off from the airport all day from the water. At night, there didn’t seem to be any planes taking off so it didn’t disturb our sleep at all, and then picked back up with small planes around 7 am ish. The island is very small, but we rented a car for a few days and found it a great way to see some of the other beaches in the area and to go to the downtown area where the cruise ships let off. There are what they call “safari trucks” that can take you for a fee like public transit- we enjoyed the privacy of our rental car if you’re able to swing it. ||||Check-in / Lobby: If you’re like us, we flew in to arrive as early as possible and landed around 12ish on the island, so we were too early to check in. The front desk was fine enough, we did have to wait until basically 4 pm on the dot to check in for the day. In the meantime we went to the bar/restaurant area to wait with no issues. ||||Room: We booked an “oceanfront” room for a little extra. The few from the room was right on the beach, but honestly, all of the buildings are right on the beach. I’m not sure that actually was worth the upgrade at all, I would probably pass on the extra upgrade if I were booking it again for the first time. The hotel is small, with just a few buildings. The room was clean and well maintained. We had no issues with air conditioning or hot water. The water pressure kind of sucks, but it is the Caribbean so we didn’t care about this much. Housekeeping was relatively attentive during our stay. The balcony offered a nice few of the beach/bay. ||||Beach: This is where I find a lot of the faults with this hotel unfortunately. The bay/beach area is located on a public beach. There are beach chairs and umbrellas for hotel guests. However, there is a “beach chair rental” service / water sports service basically on top of the hotels chairs to the right of the hotel that offers chair rentals, drinks etc. While we understood that it’s a public beach, the men that operate this area play the music very loudly during the day. It reeks of marijuana, and they do heckle guests if they want to buy weed or beach chairs throughout the day. They will offer cruise goers the hotels umbrellas/chairs, we witnessed this happen numerous times. We tend to sit in the water all day so it didn’t affect us, but I can see how it would be annoying to guests looking for chairs. The days the cruises let off large groups of people, it seems like they were bused in to use the beach and take advantage of the hotel bar and restaurant, and the entire beach was mobbed with people. Hundreds of people flocked to the beach where on non-cruise days it was essentially empty. Again, it’s a public beach- but just so you know what to expect from this location. ||||Bar and Restaurant: The bar and restaurant were also just okay at best. The bartenders were great, they pour heavy drinks although they are very overpriced. The food is also overpriced and honestly below average. We did sit down and get restaurant service for one meal and the server was lazy and inattentive, but included an automatic 18% gratuity so I’m sure he didn’t care about providing hospitalible service. For the rest of the trip we just ate at the bar. As mentioned before, the days the cruises let in, the bar was overrun. The poor bartenders were run into the ground trying to serve hundreds of cruise goers, so be prepared to wait for food and drink. We waited close to 90 minutes for a bar pie that probably took them 6 minutes to actually make. ||||All in all, for what we paid for it, it was acceptable at best. I probably wouldn’t stay here again if I could pay more for better accommodations. It was just fine on...

I don’t even know where to begin. Let me start by saying that I am a seasoned traveler, I have traveled all over the world and travel quite often. My group had two rooms booked at this resort, for a total of $3,000 for the duration of our trip. The resort itself is walking distance to the airport, has its own beach, but is rather on the small side. As others have mentioned, the beach is a public beach, and anyone can come and go as they please. With that being said, there is a lot of drug use on the beach, and you will smell weed while relaxing on the beach for 75% of your trip. The rooms and resort in general have a lot of potential, and for the price you pay, you would expect much more. It is evident that they are not putting the money they are receiving back into the resort. There are holes in the walls of the rooms, the odds of having hot water are 50/50, the bathroom doors may not work properly, the TVs are tiny, are fuzzy and NEVER have signal, and please do not get me started with housekeeping. They will bang on the door at 9 am waking you up, and if you ask them to come back in an hour, they don’t show up. We asked for towels and the housekeeper said she “doesn’t understand” and walked away. Another day, housekeeping came banging on the door again, and after saying “just a minute” they started banging again. I repeated myself. They started banging again. I grabbed my shoes and ran out so they could access my room, came back later and my room wasn’t even attended to!!! Not once during my stay was my room ever cleaned; the garbage was never removed, never swept, never had my bed made, no fresh towels, NOTHING! The door locks and room key systems are in desperate need for an upgrade. We had to go back down to the lobby numerous times to have our key cards reprogrammed because they stopped working. You cannot put your credit card or phone even slightly close to your room key, or it will stop working. Very old. While in the lobby, we heard another woman yelling at the receptionist over how frustrated she was with the resort, as earlier that day her AC wasn’t working, then it was fixed, then it started leaking water all over the room, so they had to have someone come in to fix it again, and then later that night, while preparing to take a shower, she noticed that the shower was infested with ants. There were NUMEROUS people complaining. Don’t even get me started with the restaurant. The servers (most) try their best to do their jobs to the best of their ability, however, they are extremely slow (and understaffed) and you will wait 20 mins just for a menu, an hour for your food, another 20 mins for the check and then another 15 for your receipt. I was also overcharged one day while taking my food to go. I ordered and waited so I could bring my food up to my room (and waited an hour standing there) and when I looked at my receipt, it said that the steak tacos cost $30, and the wings were $13. The next day while viewing the menu, I noticed that the steak tacos are $15 and the wings are $12. Ridiculous!! I was charged $15 PER TACO!! They make up their own prices and will con you!! The food is good, though. The island itself is beautiful, however, the taxi drivers hang around the resort and will hound you. They will drive you somewhere and then randomly show up to where they dropped you off and ask you when you are ready to leave and stand there and watch you, making you feel pressured. Make sure you let them know that YOU will CALL THEM when you are finished. It had happened to my group on a couple of occasions. Then, when the driver sees you around the resort another day, they will ask you if you’re going anywhere the next day, where you went that day, etc. They can be very pushy. Also, the staff pick and choose when it’s convenient for them to wear their masks. I saw some staff wearing no masks at all, and others handling food and drinks with their masks pulled down their faces. For the price, I...

Where do I began? The first day the room was not very clean, exhaust fan would make a loud sound, we had 1 towel set in a 2 bedroom, the water ran all over the sink and the dinner service took forever with our order... Day 2 we did not get any service done to our room I called twice and went to the front desk twice before they just handed me 2 towel sets and I ordered breakfast at 8:45 A.M. and didn’t receive it until 10:36 A.M... Day 3 we took off for the day and when we returned at 4 P.M. the housekeeper saw us as she stood in the breezeway chatting it up with another housekeeper and hurried to our room because she forgot to service it again and hastily did a quick cleaning because it was her time to get off... I called down to the front desk and asked to speak to a manager because the mirrors, sink and tubs futures nor was any countertops wiped down nor did she refill the coffee area with more coffee or cups - oh and she took the dirty towels but did not leave any clean ones. Day 4 I finally spoke to a manager and her explained they were only doing a bare minimum in housekeeping because of COVID and I exclaimed to him the bare minimum was not even being done and that day when we returned to the room everything minus the fixtures were cleaned. Day 5 didn’t bother to service the room - I called the front desk and complained and was completely fed up by that time. I bagged up the trash and placed it in the hallway and put all the dirty towels out as well- made up our beds and used antibacterial wipes to clean down the countertops - if I wanted to be a housekeeper I would have stayed home and cleaned my own house not a “RESORT” where I essentially paid for such services. The manager of course wasn’t concerned he did not call or come by. I’m glad that was the last night and if I could’ve moved up my flight by a day I would’ve.

So let’s talk about the locals roaming the beach and hanging out and around on this private property. They came and left as they pleased and sometimes came as families to hangout at the beach... the cigarette buds were all over the place even though there are special designated areas. They moved the hood on my floor on the 3rd night and they partied, played loud music and smoked weed until their hearts were content between the 2 rooms 8 people shared. The manager told me that the minimum were being done to rooms because of COVID well none of the workers nor guests cared they walked in public places mask less (thank goodness I’m fully vaccinated) so I’m sure an outbreak could happen easily here. Food service is slow so get to the restaurant an hour before you’re hungry because with 5 tables they become overwhelmed and the food isn’t that great. Did I mention I stayed here before back in 2016 and it was nothing like this- it’s safe to say I definitely won’t be back a lot of money wasted just to have a relaxing getaway that wasn’t...