Laluna, Grenada: Not for Everyone, On Purpose

Reviews - Unaccompanied Miner

The bites from the bathroom did not stop itching until the Tuesday after we got home, and we got home on a Saturday. The bathroom was open air, which meant a shower with portholes looking out at the ocean and a swinging door onto a small private tub, and it also meant mosquitoes had the run of the place, more of them once the rain stopped on day two.

The room itself was simple by design. A four-poster bed with canopy curtains that turned out to double as mosquito netting. Linen sheets, cool and new to me. The mattress was not a heavenly bed, but it beat a Hampton or a Holiday Inn Express by a wide margin. The pillows were the low point, thin, worn down by however many seasons of gravity and humidity. There was no desk, just a small couch and a chair. That was both a blessing and a curse: nothing convenient for real work, which was more or less the point, since the plan was to spend the day outside the room anyway. We managed that every day except the first two, when the rain kept us in.

[The four-poster bed, mosquito netting doing double duty.]

The front porch looked out at the ocean through foliage and flowers my phone could not identify, since we were traveling abroad. We could name exactly one: the flamboyant, a flowering tree that seemed to be everywhere on the island, Laluna included. A couch and a large chair sat out there, useful whenever the mosquitoes were elsewhere. The bathroom, dark and humid from being open to the air, stepped out through a swinging door to a small private tub on its own little porch. Not a hot tub, it was cool with no bubbles. Not a pool either, there was only room for two. But a good place to rinse the sand off after the beach.

[The flamboyant — the one plant we could actually name. Thanks to a tour guide]

[The water bath.]

Housekeeping worked while we were out for the day and did turndown every night while we were at dinner. The grounds were kept immaculately, even in the off season, at the height of summer, for what amounted to very few guests. Our room sat 38 steps above the beach and the restaurant. Going down each morning was enough to let your knees know it was time to wake up. Climbing back up did the same for your heart rate.

Breakfast started every morning with a cappuccino and a bowl of fresh fruit to share, mango, papaya, banana, melon. The mango won every time. I worked through the menu until I settled on the omelette for the last three days, mostly as a vehicle for the scotch bonnet hot sauce, local to the islands, which did more for the morning than the coffee did. The dining room was open on all sides, and we were greeted at every meal by a bananaquit, a small yellow-breasted bird that worked the tables for scraps whether you invited it or not. We ate lunch off the property most days and dinner on it most nights, at a restaurant that turned out to be Italian-themed, which was not the plan going in, though the food itself was very good.

[Breakfast, every morning.]

[The bananaquit- ready to follow us to dinner]

There are no private beaches in Grenada, and we were never at a loss for a spot, often the only ones on our stretch. The stretch was shared with another property, well beyond our price range and going for a different look entirely. That property was sleek, white, and clearly working from a different price point and a different idea of what a beach resort should look like. Laluna does not do that. It does not stand apart from the landscape so much as sit inside it.

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[Often the only ones on our stretch of the beach.]

A separate building held a small gym, treadmill, elliptical, bike, weights, mats, all in working order, plus yoga and pilates offerings; my wife caught a morning pilates class. The spa and the tiki bar were both closed for the season, set to reopen as the island woke up for Spicemas.

None of that is really what made the week, though. The staff were the best part of it, and it did not take long to understand why. They learned us fast. The one morning I came down before the official opening time, the espresso machine was already going. Across a full week there was not a single miss, and while we were not difficult guests and it was the off season, so they could have coasted, nobody did. Everyone appeared to actually enjoy the work, not just do it well.

I ended up talking with the owners, Bernardo and Wendy Bertucci, one evening while the World Cup was on. Bernardo drove the conversation, Wendy was clearly part of it, part of the operation, without being the one carrying the discussion. The plan had been something closer to an interview. What actually happened was a chat during a football match, which is a fair trade. Bernardo talked about staff longevity, some employees dating back to the property's opening, others with twenty years in, and how the team functions more like a family than a conventional business. The staff, independently, said the same thing.

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[The dining room, open on all sides.]

Two stories back that up better than anything either of them said directly. After Hurricane Beryl hit Grenada on July 1, 2024, Bernardo and Wendy ran a "Double Your Impact" relief campaign, matching donations from guests and friends dollar for dollar. Together they put in more than $55,000. The match brought the total past $110,000, and it went toward housing, food, books, and school supplies for students displaced from Carriacou and Petite Martinique for the entire 2024-25 school year.

The other story came up first from staff, not from the owner, over the course of the week, before Bernardo confirmed it himself. A longtime chef named Albert Paul had died suddenly in March 2026, at 38. He had spent eighteen years at Laluna, starting as a dishwasher and working up to head chef, a job he held for about a decade. Laluna's public tribute does not give a cause of death. In his memory, Bernardo and Wendy started the Albert Paul Laluna Chef Forever Scholarship, which, beginning in August 2026, provides a Grenadian student at T.A. Marryshow Community College EC$5,000 a year for two years to study culinary arts, plus a six week internship in Laluna's own kitchen. The college's own committee picks the recipient.

None of that is required of an owner. Relief campaigns and scholarships in an employee's name are not standard hospitality practice, they are a choice, made twice, by people who did not have to make it. Put that next to a property that tells you plainly what it is not, no five-star polish, no private beach, mosquitoes after dark, thin pillows, and you get something close to the inverse of what is usually wrong with hospitality: honesty about the limitations, and a culture that is not staged for guests, confirmed independently by the people who work there.

There are a few unfavorable reviews of Laluna out there too, and I brought them up with Bernardo. Reading them, it was obvious the people writing them had come looking for a different trip entirely. Reading how they made their case, I also found myself thinking I would not have wanted to share a beach chair or a bar stool with them anyway.

Laluna is not for everyone, and it says so itself. Read that as a gift rather than a warning. Do the research anyway, know what you are booking into, and then decide if what it is not matters less to you than what it actually is. I would stay again, but I would stay differently.

A postscript, since this one earns it. None of what Laluna did, for us or for Grenada, came out of a corporate initiative or a business plan built around return visits. It was closer to the hospitality you would give a guest in your own home. That approach did more to take the sting out of the mosquito bites than anything else could have, and it made the unplanned dollars we spent feel like they went toward something better than a black number on a spreadsheet or a shareholder's return. Thank you, Bernardo and Wendy. More than that, thank you to the staff who took care of Julie and me all week and made us feel like part of the family rather than guests passing through.