The Ritz-Carlton, St. Thomas — Hotel in Saint Thomas

First Impressions: Beautiful entrance, the Caribbean scenery I came here for.

Check in: We arrived early, about 1:30. I indicated this in my pre-arrival questionnaire. We were told that our room was not yet ready, which is understandable since official check in is not until 4 PM. We were told a room would be prepared ASAP. Well, 4 PM came and went, and after several trips inquiring about our room, one became available at 4:45 PM. While not an outlandish delay, it doesn't start the vacation out on the right foot, considering we were still wearing cold weather clothes and couldn't find a good spot to change into anything different.

Room: Got a 2 queen bed oceanview. Very pleased. Clean and inviting. Nice bathroom and products (typical Ritz brand). The large balcony was the highlight in my mind. The only downsides (pretty minor): water pressure in the bathrooms was terrible, literally a trickle of water out of the shower. And the bed sizes are small, not a queen size like I have in my house.

Grounds: Outstanding. Well manicured Caribbean scenery. Even had signs labeling the type of plants in some locations. Easy to navigate, nice lit paths.

Pools: The pools are great. Nicely maintained, warm water, a slide in one of them for the kids. On the condo side there is an adult only pool if that is your thing. There are numerous stations where they have sunscreen (15, 30, and 50, as well as aloe and bug spray). There is also water (with fruit) and towels. Everything you could want. Seats are limited and if you don't go early they will likely be hard to come by. The staff should probably clear unused towels more regularly than they do. If there were more seats in general, it probably wouldn't matter.

Beaches: Small and not the best, but they get the job done. The sand is pretty nice, but as soon as you walk into the water it is pretty rocky. There is a fair amount of seaweed, but nothing that was too bothersome. The water is warm and pretty shallow for a long ways out. Waves very small due to the resort location in the bay.

Water activities: They have a number options to take out including kayaks, stand up paddle boards, and sail boats. I took the kayak out and have to admit, the current on the day I went our made for some pretty intense paddling! What's nice is they have staff looking out over the bay and if they see someone struggling, they do come out in a motorized vehicle to check on you.

Food. Since you are not exactly close to anything else, you are stuck with the onsite food a lot of the times. I found the food quality to be pretty good overall. However, the prices are exorbitant! There are limited options for grab and go stuff, so yo are mostly going to be placing orders with staff. Staff is on Caribbean time. They are by no means slacking or inattentive, but you will not get fast service like you do in the US. So be prepared.

Drinks: The biggest disappointment were the drinks. I expect some good drinks by the beach in the Caribbean. These were awful. Everything super sweet and from a mix. No fresh fruit. No specialties. You are best to stick to beer/wine if drinking on site. This is something that a resort of this caliber really needs to pick it up on!

Staff: Very nice, pleasant, and outgoing. Our housekeeper was outstanding, kept the place immaculate. However, you will notice that there are too few staff for the number of people staying here. This is a problem everywhere, but I am judging this place on the quality expected from a Ritz (and the extraordinary prices they charge).

Overall: The property is beautiful. Other things are pretty good, but for the outlandish prices they charge to stay and for food, I expect near perfection. And they are not quite there. That being said, we had a great time and if we wound up there again, you wouldn't here any...

This was by far the worst hotel experience I’ve ever had, and I’ll never stay at a Ritz-Carlton again. Our entire group, here for a wedding, had nothing but problems from start to finish.

First, three of our rooms had roaches. Yes, ROACHES in a luxury resort. Unbelievable. But it didn’t end there. The service was appalling. Golf carts took multiple calls most of the time and the staff didn’t care when you had to repeatedly call. I was waiting for 30 minutes when I was trying to go to the front desk to handle an issue with my room key and getting locked out. The staff clearly didn’t care. Nearly everyone in our group had issues with their reservations. Rooms were mixed up, most requests were not even acknowledged. Two times on separate days it took me three phone calls and over an hour just to get a bathrobe after housekeeping took mine and didn’t leave a new one.

Kimorah who worked at the front desk was a nightmare. She refunded $1,000 in incidentals without understanding my request, then argued with me for two days. She insisted I wanted to switch cards when I only asked to use a different one for the remainder of my stay, which I extended due to issues with card approvals. She then called me at 7am the following morning telling me she needed a card of file for incidentals. A few hours later I got back to my room after calling my bank while In the gym and my room key wouldn’t work. They had locked me out because they didn’t have a card on file for incidentals. I went down to try to settle the issue and extend my stay for the last 2 days. When shown a $5k balance due, we were confused, as our trip was $4,700 total for 5 days. This second payment was for the last 2 days as we’d paid $2300 for the first 3 days already. She lowered it to $2400 on the screen for me to authorize and sign but secretly charged us double—$2,500 for incidentals on top of the $2400 payment.

Janelle was absolutely the worst of the employees I dealt with. She was the other front desk employee. After I got locked out of my room, I called for assistance, and she was rude and hostile. Instead of helping, she made the situation worse with her attitude. The next day, after requesting a robe at 8 AM, I waited all day, and by 2 PM, it still hadn’t arrived. When I called to request one, Janelle assured me it would be there in 10-15 minutes—but it never came. I then called back 30 mins later and asked to speak to a manager, her response was aggressive and dismissive. She refused to transfer me, demanded to know why I wanted to speak to a manager, and even called me a liar when I told her I’d filed a complaint with corporate the day before and mentioned her name (she’d hung up on me when I asked what her name was for when I called corporate). It was clear she had no sense of urgency or professionalism. Her constant rudeness and inability to provide even basic customer service made my stay incredibly frustrating. The front desk staff was rude, argumentative, and dismissive, constantly talking over us and refusing to take responsibility. Their aggressive behavior and lack of customer service were unacceptable.

If you're even considering staying here, do yourself a favor and book anywhere else. The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas is an embarrassment to the brand, and honestly, I wish I had read reviews before throwing away $5k on this nightmare of a 5-day stay. The fact that I spent that much money here makes me sick, especially after the abysmal experience I’ve had. I will never stay at another Ritz again, and I’m seriously questioning whether I’ll stay at any Marriott property in the future unless they do something extraordinary to make up for this disaster. So far, I’ve heard absolutely nothing from them, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I never hear back at all. This was an utter failure on...

We needed a hotel in St Thomas for a few nights after spending a week on St John and my wife and I decided to splurge on the Ritz Carlton. Overall it is a nice hotel and if it had been just a regular Marriott or Hilton I’m not sure I would have even bothered with this review, but we both just had much higher expectations it being a RC, especially for the money.

I’ll start with the positives… it is a very beautiful property with very nice view of Great Bay and St. John The beds are comfortable The pools are large and inviting with a nice kids pool that has a water slide and plenty of cabanas (although we did not rent one) The water sports area is convenient with paddle boards and kayak rentals included in the resort fee. The food at Sails is above average for what you’d expect from a pool bar Alloro, the Italian restaurant on site, is very good, we ate dinner there both nights There are some other nice touches, like complimentary fruit skewers and cookies served by the pool

Ok so now for the negatives… We were originally checked in to a ground floor room in building D. Within an hour of being checked in we found multiple milllipedes in the room apparently entering through a gap under the door. The woman at the front desk seemed very annoyed with us when we voiced the complaint and certainly not apologetic at all, but eventually agreed to move us to a room on a higher floor. The new room had no bugs, but also had a large gap under the door that we decided to just deal with my shoving a towel under to keep critters out The room, while well-appointed, just felt very worn out. There was a musty smell. The area rug under the bed was dingy. The water in the shower had no pressure and took about 10 mins to warm up. The frosted glass shower enclosure looks cool, but leaks water all over the bedroom floor anytime someone showered. While none of these issues were a huge deal on their own, they did not make for a very luxurious feel to the room. The service overall on the property was very lackluster, inconsistent, and generally unfriendly. I found myself constantly having to look for staff at the pool if we needed towels, drinks, etc. and the entire staff disappears at 5pm. Housekeeping didn’t show up til almost 5pm even though we had been out of the room since 830am. Very slow service at the restaurants. The bellmen on the other hand were very good. The beach at the hotel is pretty crummy. We mostly stayed at the pool but if you are coming for the beach there are much much much better options on the island. CATS EVERYWHERE. I don’t know what is up with the stray cat problem at this resort or if it is a problem for the whole island. For some reason I don’t have a problem with iguanas roaming around at other Caribbean resorts but there is something very off-putting about stray cats meandering under your lounge chair or rubbing up against your leg while eating dinner. And speaking of iguanas, you won’t see hardly any on this property, you want to know why? Because the CATS EAT THEM! It is just bizzare to me and seems like a completely solvable problem if the resort cared at all.

So again, it’s a nice hotel, but we were left very unimpressed. When you are spending almost $1k per night for a standard room, you expect everything to be a notch above and we were left disappointed with this place. We will definitely be returning to USVI, but don’t think I’d waste the money on the ritz Carlton again when there are other good options on the island for...