This Sandals All-Inclusive Hands Butler Guests a MINI Cooper — and Money to Leave the Resort
One Sandals resort in the Dutch Caribbean is built around a formula that most all-inclusives resist: getting you to explore beyond the gates.
Most all-inclusive resorts want you to stay put. Sandals Royal Curaçao is built around the opposite idea.
The adults-only resort on Curaçao’s remote southeastern coast runs a program called Island Inclusive that actively pushes guests off the property. Butler-level guests staying seven nights or longer receive a $250 credit to dine at a participating restaurant elsewhere on the island, along with the use of a convertible MINI Cooper to get there. For a category of vacation that usually keeps everything — food, drinks, activities — inside one gate, handing guests a car and money to spend outside is an unusual move.
It fits the setting. The resort sits at Santa Barbara, well away from the pastel streets of Willemstad and the busier hotel districts to the west, in a landscape of dry hills and the deep blues of Spanish Water. Curaçao rewards wandering, from the Handelskade waterfront to west-coast coves like Cas Abao and Grote Knip.
Back on property, the signature Dos Awa pool cascades across two levels toward the bay, and the 351 rooms include swim-up suites, private-pool suites, Rondoval villas and the Awa Seaside Butler Bungalows, which put a private infinity pool and uninterrupted water views just outside the room. Dining spans a full restaurant collection plus three food trucks, with 13 bars across the resort.
The approach separates this property from the rest of the Sandals portfolio, where the lush mountains of Saint Lucia or the long beaches of Jamaica set the tone. Here, the resort works as a home base rather than the entire vacation — you can spend one day beside the pool and the next driving across the island with the top down.
