Beaches Turks & Caicos

We flew with British Airways, the flight went via Antigua to drop off passengers then flew onto Turks after being on the ground for 1 hour. In total, the flying time was 11hrs 35mins, it sounds long and it is but my children aged 7 and 9 were perfect, never got bored and were fully entertained.

We had a 2 bedroomed, butler villa suite booked, so I was very excited about having our own butler, only because I book butler rooms often for customers going on Sandals and Beaches holidays that I wanted to try this out for myself.

On arrival, we were met by a Beaches Representive holding up a board with my name on. We were then shown to a lovely Beaches SUV car and inside they had beers, cokes, cakes and cookies for us all.

The transfer for the airport was 15mins, already from the moment we landed it was apparent the island was beautiful. The driver was very informative about the Island and showed us where the late singer Prince’s house is and telling us which other famous people owed houses here.

Driving into the grounds of Beaches was exciting being welcomed by ‘Welcome Home’ which is the Sandals and Beaches greeting at all resorts because they want you to think of your holiday as your home for the time you are with them. We had a separate area to check in, where our butler greeted us.

We had two butlers for the week Ellen and Souke, a male and female, both were lovely they were never intrusive or made us feel anything other than very special and they were great with the kids.

Ellen walked us to our suite which was No. 402, this villa suite was so lovely, it had 3 bedrooms each with a shower and bath a large living area/dining area and kitchen which was fully stocked with beers, soft drinks, bottle of gin, vodka, black label johnnie walker whiskey, rum, and snacks for the children. A video clip of the room we had is on my Facebook page.

This resort has over 20 restaurants to choose from and I really wondered how we would get though them all in a week, but we did pretty much all for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we hardly went for buffets because while we had the wonderful restaurants and option of waiter service for breakfast, lunches and dinners then going for buffets seemed a waste. All restaurants were lovely, I couldn't’t find fault with any of them.

The types of food, service and quality would have been expensive if in the UK, all the food was of high standard.

The perk of having a butler was they make dinner reservations for you, escort you to dinner, get you the best table and serve your first drinks. If spending time at the pool or beach they allocate you the best areas, have towels ready arranged on the sunbeds and a cool box next to you with your favourite drinks. To start with I thought why would I need a cool box of drinks when there are bars right there in the pool area, but I soon became very lazy, just leaning over to get a beer or water rather than going to the pool to get a drink!

The butler would also reserve us cabanas which are normally quite expensive to hire and if you wanted lunch served they would bring you whatever you wanted.

If you have a concierge room here rather than butler, you get the perks of the drinks in the room, bath robes, Concierge making dinner reservations for you plus more. However you do not need to have a Concierge or Butler room to enjoy this holiday, they add to the wow factor but it is not essential at all.

The Italian Village pool is where we spent most of our time, they had entertainment and music throughout the day, although the Iguana pool and Arizona pool were closest to our villa, the French village pool was lovely too.

Both our children loved the kid’s clubs so much so that they wanted to dine with their new friends. The great thing too was they take the children to different restaurants for lunches and dinners each day and the kids club programme was extensive with so much for them to do. They loved the club when we went to Beaches Ochi Rios in Jamaica so I knew they were going to love this just as much. My daughter loved the Xbox room which was a huge area full of xbox consoles to play on. We also had an Xbox console pre loaded with games in the room but they never got a chance to play it, we were so busy, they never got the chance while we were at the room.

The water park was lovely for the children too, not too big which was good and the surf simulator was great fun.

Each night there were live shows, 6.30pm was a Sesame Street show then at 8.30pm a different show suited to all. Kids clubs also took them here too until 10pm so the children really were entertained all day and night if they wanted to and ours were having so much fun going to the water park or snorkelling with their new friends that they didn’t want to spend too much time with us, at the end of the day this was their holiday too so we let them do what they wanted to do. It also meant 3 nights we got to dine just us and could dine in the adult only restaurants.

I have been to some amazing Caribbean Islands before but Beaches Turks really did impress us, it was stunning!

The big thing we loved about Beaches holidays is the no tipping policy, the staff even wore badges saying, ‘no tipping’. It's etiquette to tip butlers at the end of the holiday, but that’s only on butler rooms, others don’t need to tip. I love the dining choices and standard of food, the top brand drinks and cocktails and the watersports all being included as part of the package.

I could talk to people for ages about how amazing this holiday was, its one I have always recommended and everyone I have booked have said exactly what I now do, and that is that it was the best holiday ever and is certainly a hard holiday to beat.

Within a week of being back I booked 3 holidays here for people who had been following me on my business facebook page and loved the photos and updates I was putting on my page while I was away..I have since booked more holidays for people here too. Feel free to take a look at my facebook page at my photos and updates, just scroll down to my posts for mid June. www.facebook.com/DonnaBidwellTC