Astwood met every need we had. Friendly people. The pool in April was chilly but not enough to prevent Canadians from jumping in and snorkeling. BBQ access was great-home cooked bar-b in Bermuda. Everything clean and great little beach to walk down to and explore. Walking distance to really nice restaurant but shop in Hamilton for supplies.

My family has returned to Bermuda every summer for the past 20 years. We love Bermuda and we have stayed at Astwood Cove for about 10 out of the 20 times (we have also cruised and stayed at the Wyndam, Grotto Bay, Aunt Neas, Banana Beach, Elbow Beach). We loved Astwood Cove because of it's quaint intimate feel and prime location, but the hotel has gone downhill FAST since it changed ownership a few years ago. I think this could be in part because the island seems to be changing. It is no longer the safe haven that it was, and I think the economy there has been suffering because things in general are looking run down, and crime / homeless, etc. appear to be up (never the case a decade ago).

Regarding Astwood Cove, the price is right, yes. But that's about it. It is now dirty, increasingly unsafe, and bug infested. We will not stay there any longer because of our last experience. This is a shame because the location is nice and the hotel used to be so quaint and well-kept. I will summarize the bad things:

Upon check-in we were shown to our two rooms. The first room was missing towels for the pool. When I asked housekeeping to please give us some towels, the maid literally yelled at me, called me a liar, and said that the towels were in the room. When I asked the front desk, and showed the manager that there were no towels, and explained how the housekeeping staff had treated me, I was handed some towels with no apology. Not a pleasant way to start the trip -- we just wanted to swim!

We had items stolen from our room, including a helmut for a scooter.

One of the two rooms (on the ground level near the pool) was completely infested with tiny ants. They were crawling all over the patio, kitchen, and up and down the walls in the living area. There were thousands of them (and I am not exaggerating -- this wasn't just a few or a handful). We couldn't walk around barefoot because there were too many ants. They were actually in lines crawling up and down the walls and in swarms on the patio and into the dining area (adjacent to the patio).

I realize that bugs are inevitable in tropical locations, but we could not walk around our own hotel room, lest we crunch all over them. When I called to the front desk and explained this, she said that they would spray. They never did. It was truly the grossest thing I have ever experienced. And the first time I ever experienced that at Astwood Cove.

The other family members staying up on the second floor did not have any bug issues. So, I would advise guests to request a room on the second/upper floors to avoid this disgusting problem.

Housekeeping was generally rude and confrontational, every morning around 9:30 AM or 10 AM the maids would bang on our door and ask us when we were leaving. We should not feel rushed to leave our own room that early, simply for their convenience, on our vacation.

Finally, and this was the final straw: We prepaid our hotel reservation through a on-line travel website. However, when we checked out, the manager on duty (not the owner) proceeded to argue with my husband and accuse us of not paying. She flew into a rage, demanded bank account numbers and credit card numbers. We showed her a print-out of our confirmation number for payment, as well as our statement/proof of payment, but she continued to yell at us impatiently and rudely. We were concerned that we would be charged more that the almost $2500 we already paid, and had to follow-up with our credit company when we got home to make sure.

I have never been treated with such disrespect by staff at a hotel in my life. And this is after we have stayed at Astwood Cove for many many years, as loyal repeat customers. We have been to Mexico and other Caribbean locations and have always been treated with hospitality and warmth. This is one problem with Bermuda in general, but was just amplified at Astwood Cove. There is no customer service whatsoever. Instead of being warm and welcoming the managment and housekeeping staff were hostile, confrontational, and made our stay extremely disappointing. In fact, we were so disappointed with our stay in Bermuda that we are planning to visit Aruba next year instead.

Astwood Cove is a great value, considering the cost of other hotels on the island. The property is quaint and clean, however with dated finishes and furniture. The staff were friendly and helpful.

We were surprised by a few extras we didn't expect - like full-size beach towels refreshed daily. And full maid service... we assumed that since it was an "apartment" type hotel that we'd only have maid service once during the week, but they came every day. AND they cleaned our dishes. That was an amazing surprise!

The location is DIRECTLY across from Astwood Cove with a public beach. And is not far from all of the south side beaches. It's a quick bus ride away from all of these beaches, or an even quicker moped ride. There are a couple small convenience stores and one grocery store along South Shore Road to pick up items to cook in your tiny kitchenette.

The website for the hotel makes it seem much more posh than it actually is. In reality it's a quaint, clean relaxing retreat in a beautiful location.

We first went to Bermuda in 1993. On our fourth trip to Bermuda in 2004, we booked the Astwood Cove because we have young kids and we wanted the convenience of a sofa bed, kitchen and grill. We were also hoping for a more genuine local flavor than you might get at a major resort hotel. We were not looking for the impressive physical plant, or the amenities, of the large hotels we had used previously (the Sonesta, the Reefs, and the Southhampton Princess). But we did expect it to be clean, safe, and comfortable. We were disappointed. Upon arrival, we found that our room had only one door, a sliding door, and it had been installed backward so that the moving panel was on the outside. This is a big security concern, because a burglar can dislodge the moving panel. You can't put a bar in the track to protect yourself when the track is on the outside. The door had a flimsy lock that was half hanging out, and no interior latch or bolt. We then saw the prominent placard warning guests to keep all windows and doors locked. We expressed our concern about the door and were met with a shrug and the assurance that "there haven't been too many problems". We ventured across the street to the nearest beach. One must walk through a park to reach the beach. The beach was deserted, and walking in through the park I noticed one, then two, then three men sitting, each by himself, partially obscured by shrubbery, positioned as if they were lookouts to gaze down at the beach and also at the approaching path. There was no apparent reason why they would be there, except to wait for tourists to get into the water and steal their stuff, or worse. My radar (having worked in the criminal courts of northern NJ) went off, so we left the park, and walked instead to the next large, busier beach. The walk was harrowing with small children, because there was no reliable shoulder on either side of the road. You had to cross back and forth to have a place to walk, sometimes at blind turns, with buses and trucks whizzing inches past our shoulders. The walk was longer than the Astwood Cove says it is. If you don't use scooters or taxis, you use four different bus stops to go to and from the Astwood Cove, depending on which end of the island you're going to or from. Only one of the four stops is a safe walk with kids on a reasonable sidewalk or shoulder. We had dinner in Hamilton the first night, and on the streets of Hamilton I got the impression that there is probably more of a drug problem on the island now than what I had seen in the 1990s. When we returned to the room that night, we felt that we had to put the kids in the bedroom and sleep on the sofa bed ourselves, to be the first ones to deal with anybody that might come through the flimsy door. We also called around the island to get another hotel, which is not easy at the last minute in August. We got the Hamilton Princess, but only for the fourth through seventh nights of our trip. (That facility did not disappoint.) On the second evening at the Astwood Cove, I happened to meet the owner, and again expressed my concerns. He permitted us to move to another vacant unit. This unit had the door installed correctly, so we were safer. This one absolutely reeked of Lestoil, to the extent that by morning, we woke up tasting it, and had to get out of there. I had to physically schlepp everything myself to the second unit, that night, with no assistance from Astwood personnel and not even a hand truck or bellman's cart to use. Despite the Lestoil smell, the place was not particularly clean. Both units were quite down-at-the-heels, with mismatched linens, stained upholstery, things chipped and dented, etc. The "kitchen" was a kitchenette, really, with a mini-fridge: okay for a bowl of cold cereal or some sandwiches, but not sufficent to really prepare a family a dinner. We had a mini-fridge put in our room at the Princess, bought some paper plates, and did just as well with fixing snacks and picnic lunches there. When you compare the Astwood to the Princess, the owners of the Astwood were far more effective at wringing money out of us in exchange for very little effort or investment on their part. We will never go back there.