We went to Necker Island back in 2019, before the hurricane and COVID. Much of that review is still valid today, so I’ll just write all of the updates over the past 4 years. I had booked this last October or so using 1.7M Virgin points.
Before we get started though, I had booked Intercarribean Air from San Juan, PR to Tortola. I suggest you NOT book them. There is now a direct AA flight from Miami to Tortola. It’s pretty expensive (I heard around $1700 RT,) but you avoid the a) prop plane and b) the possible delays. Our flight from PR to Tortola was delayed 4 hours so instead of arriving at 3pm, we got in at 7pm at night. Had to hang out at a restaurant that was mosquito filled for about 30 minutes, only to find out the captain of our boat was just hanging out in his boat and never saw us. We flew back on Saturday and we saw the Friday flight was delayed 4 hours. Luckily we were only delayed 1 hour, but if it was delayed 4 hours, we would have missed our connecting flight home and stay the night in PR. At the very least, book Silver Air instead of Intercarribean if you do fly from PR.
A call before you get there
This didn’t happen in 2019, but about 2-3 weeks out, someone from Necker should arrange a phone call with you to ask any questions that you have or take any requests. While the call was great, we had issues scheduling the call 3-4 times. The person never followed up with what we spoke about on the phone (although the items we had discussed were taken care of when we got there.) I also heard not everyone got this phone call. I suggest you request one if it’s your first time.
Itinerary is now digital
A week before you get there, they’ll send you a link to download an app that has the daily activities for the day. It also has a messaging platform built in as well if you need to arrange activities or anything.
Bali Lo, Bali Hi and Temple are now open to guests
Back in 2019, only the Great House was open. Now, the 3 smaller buildings have opened up to guests. I still suggest you stay in the Great House because you’ll have 2-3 dinners at the Great House and usually people hang out at the bar after dinner, so it’s just easier to get to your room. This also means that I think 50ish people can now be on the island, so a much bigger group than before. I think we had about 3 dozen people in our group starting out, but some left early and we were down to 2 dozen when we checked out.
More animals
I guess during COVID, they decided to let some lemurs out of the fence, so you may see random lemurs around the island now, which is pretty cool. They now have I want to say 2 dozen peacocks, with a handful roaming around (not sure why you need that many.) You can’t pet the mini horses anymore apparently becaue one of them was biting the guests. The big tortoises who were at Turtle Beach now roam the island and so it’s harder to see them. They got some rabbits and more small turtles. They have a pond by Richard’s house with fish now. They said they’re getting 2 kangaroos and sloths
We didn’t see Richard much this time
Last time, we saw him quite often at breakfast and he joined us for a lot of the dinners and even tennis. However, this time, I think he came to one dinner and we’d see him walking here and there, but definitely not as often as last time around. I don’t think he did lunch with us at all this time. I’m not saying this is a negative; just pointing out a fact.
Service is questionable
We loved the wait staff and bartenders. Very friendly, nice and memorized our drinks/food preferences. I mean, everyone who works there is very friendly and nice. However, there were still some weird incidents. For one, they had assigned up a buggy, but no one told us until day 3 just because they expected someone else to have told us? One day, our buggy ran out of battery, so someone took it to recharge it. However, no one could find it for 12 hours. We had scheduled a water activity for 10:30AM and the person didn’t show up until noon. We had requested a few things on the app that weren’t immediately addressed. Our room never got below like 74-75 degrees and we asked someone to check it (no one ever did.) The phone in our room didn’t work and when someone tried to call our room, they got the room next to ours. So it’s a bunch of these small shortcomings that add up to a bit of an annoyance that service wasn’t 5 stars.
Would we go back
Yeah I mean even with the minor service issues, we still enjoyed our time there and would go back. Definitely not an annual thing, but once every few years would work.
Bummer service is decreasing, makes me less want to go to it, but I do love water sports incl kiteboarding, wonder if any other place like this exists with all inclusive sports, that are not just sailing which I had access to at some resorts.
Also since this is not your annual thing, is there a place or places for you that are an annual thing?
Probably a Hawaii just because it’s close to the West coast.
A few minor corrections to this post:
1. When you went in 2019, it was not long after that big hurricane (Hurricane Irma was in 2017) so the island was still rebuilding and planting, but that’s also why Bali Hi, Lo, and Temple are now available to guests. Temple was Richard’s house until around 2020 when his new house by the dock was completed, I believe.
2. I don’t remember about 2019 anymore but in 2021 we had a call. The Guest Preference form hasn’t changed in the past 4 years though.
3. The giant tortoises have always been allowed to roam the entire island, but in 2019 there were two that happened to really like Turtle Beach. There are 8 total, and a bunch of baby turtles and tortoises now. And currently 97 lemurs of 7 species.
4. Richard was actually still at almost every breakfast, but he eats at around 8 am after tennis and stays for about 30 min. He also led the Virgin Gorda bike ride and cold plunge activities, and played chess with P2 and another guest. So he was mostly available for guests until about noon-ish. But the main reason he didn’t hang out for the dinners after that first night was that his family had just arrived for their annual Branson summer so he was bouncing between the guests and his family. On the other hand…we got to meet many of his family members, some of whom are famous too, and that was pretty cool!
5. P2 definitely agreed that service was not as good as 2019 and 2021, though interestingly, the service decline was mainly from the Brits/American staff. The local staff, especially those that have been there for decades, were still solid. The local bartenders were way better!
6. Totally agreed on every 2-3 years.