Online Reputation Manager”
Group of 9. Keep in mind we went with low expectations and we are not picky people. Also keep in mind this ALL happened on the first day….I’m going to cut to the chase; this resort is an absolute dump and not worth the money. Here is a quick summary of our groups experience: 3 days without hot water, intermittent black outs daily, no a/c in any common areas, bugs in rooms and buffet tables, no bath towels, no clean beach towels, stained sheets and hand towels, tv and phones did not work, glass sliding doors fell off tracks, closet sliding doors fell off tracks, shower head not working, keys had to be reset daily, 4 guests stuck in elevator including a baby, trip hazards from broken tiles throughout resort, light fixtures broken or without lamps, drain hair throughout pools, frequently ran out of staple foods such as lettuce and chicken, food was awful and made most sick, had to tip extra to track down bottled water, most staff arrogant, slow and rude, no toilet seats in public areas. The list can continue forever…
I don’t know how to start telling u about this hotel , i was in choke of lack of services filthy rooms with bugs under the sheet and mold stain on towels and robs , ac doesn’t work in most of the hotel , specially the buffet area flys all over the food and dairy product , cheese was smelly , hotdogs were one side warm other side cold , not enough plates in buffet , and when i asked for clean plate i saw them wipes the dirty cups and used plate ,with dirty towel and put it back on counter for people to reuse them. We told the person in charge about our room has bugs , they changed it to different room for us but we found out the sheets has makeup stain and smelled sweat the maid told us they do have problem with laundry .the hotel has big mould smell all over the building inside the room but that could be from Cubans weather . Then at night after all day changing from room to the other , my kids room the couch was full of bugs and in there sheets they didn’t want to sleep in there room . The next morning we talked to sunwing representative and told him we need to go back to Toronto no way we can stay here .or move us to another hotel, finally we got Moved to grand memories and what a big different between services cleanliness and food quality .
Having just returned I would strongly advise anyone not to go to this hotel? the food is at best atrocious, the hotel it self is clean and some of the staff are friendly but most are very ignorant. The rooms are cleaned daily but the cleaner struggles to crack a smile, the restaurant is infested with flies and they do not use the air conditioning in the restaurant, there is also birds flying about the buffet and picking at the food but nothing is ever done about this or the amount of flies at every table, you will struggle to find a clean plate when there is plates available as we had to wait for plates on more than one occasion.
Let me start off by warning you all that my review will be long and detailed..however I highly recommend fully reading this before making any decision to book this hotel.
My family and I (9 people) booked this hotel a month prior to leaving to varadero. I have been to this ho tel before and I loved it and so I had recommended it to the rest of my family. So all 9 of us book ..little did we know we were booking a hotel of pure nightmare.
Let me start off with the moment we arrived. We waited.. AN HOUR AND A HALF…yes an hour and a half to get to check into our rooms..granted it was not even busy at front desk…why it took an hour and a half? who knows. Anyhow..after our dreaded wait to simply check into our rooms in a lobby that literally has no A/C , only one room was ready and we had to wait for the other rooms. A family member of mine has a disability and we had booked her a accessibility room ONE MONTH PRIOR. so..if we booked 1 WHOLE MONTH PRIOR , why is it that when we arrived..there was nothing there for us …there was no disability room and nothing was booked …How unorganized.
Finally after getting our rooms we went up to check them out. the smell of MOLD literally drenched our rooms and the hallway. but we thought it must be from the Cuban weather , my family had 5 rooms in total…EACH ROOM HAD AN ISSUE WITH IT.
let me start with my list of how bad the rooms were.
1. Shower head in the accessibility room (that we finally got ) was broken …
2.there was GREEN..yes I said it..GREEN mold on the robes… (this was in 2/5 rooms)
3. shower heads were broken and hardly any water coming out
4. I found BUGS in my bed…TONS of them.. as well as on the furniture
5. dirty and stained sheets in ALL 5 ROOMS
6. our room cards kept deactivating themselves and we went up and down to the lobby i think at least 12 times.
7. no towels in the bathroom and the towels are so thin and worn out we cant even use them to dry ourselves.
8. stained sheets, stained pillows, mold smell in all 5 rooms
9. AC broke in 2/5 rooms
10. each room got switched at least twice that half day that we were there..
We spent ALL day changing rooms instead of being in the pool or beach. Aside from the rooms let me move on to the rest of the issues in this hotel.
every complaint we made to front desk was written down..we were refused MANY times to speak to a manager…manager is literally never there and that is so hard to believe. every complaint we make does not matter to them..they brush it off find a temporary solution and then we find an even bigger problem. no manager to speak too…that is absolutely RIDICULOUS.
the food at the buffet reminded me of jail food. First of all the dining hall itself is so dark and depressing .and the food there is SO BAD. i have been to cuba many times and I fully understand that they are not famous for their food but this place….the food was so low quality i refused to eat anything but bread and butter. The one hot dog i tried to eat was literally three different temperatures…hot, cold and warm.
There were SOOOO many flies and bugs in the food and the food literally smelt like it was rotting away.. the reason why is because for some reason they dont have AC in the dining hall either so all the food is sitting in this drenched and sticky heat …
Next is the service…which surprised me the most. No one that works there cares. I ask for a cup of water in the lobby and they say they cant give me water…only juice or alcohol. THEY LITERALLY COULD NOT GIVE US CUPS OF WATER IN THE LOBBY OR BAR…WHY?!
The workers there do not care about anyone..even when we tipped the bell boy 4 dollars he looked at it and shook his head because he was not happy with his tip.
I can go on and on and on about how bad this hotel is but ive named most of my concerns. All I have to say is that after the one night we spent at this hotel , sunwing switched us to Grande memories instead because there was no way we would be okay sleeping and eating in a hotel like this…
This hotel is in BADDD need of a whole reno and management team. our concerns were ignored the whole day..nothing was being done and we had no choice but to either go back home or switch hotels.
Please read these reviews and dont skip them..I did that same mistake and took the reviews lightly and we suffered.
This resort was a dump!!!!!!!!! The food was gross, they never had clean plates or cups, the cups where reused without being cleaned, just wiped and put on other tables. The rooms smelled!!!! The towels where stained and had been changed twice in 7 days, the bed sheets and the pillows smelled of old body sweat. None of the restaurants had air conditioning so the doors where open letting flies and birds in to devour the food at the buffet. I saw really bad food cross contamination!!! the BBQ worker took the tongues and picked up RAW chicken and put it on the BBQ and then took the same tongues and put them back into the cooked hamburger container for the guests to use to grab a burger. My daughter got so ill from the food handling she was up one night vomiting and severe diarrhea, I went to customer service and they said it’s the heat, ya OK!!! Most of the staff wouldn’t lift a hand to help at all and only a couple had a smile on there faces, I had to get my own place mats cutlery and wine and water. Read the negative TripAdvisor reviews over the last month because they are the truth!! This was our third visit to Cuba and it was by far the worst.
This resort should have a 2 star rating NOT 5!!!
On the second to last day I asked to speak to the manager, but only got a runaround, I wanted to speak to him/her face to face instead of going this route to complain!!
I could go on and on but this and the other reviews speak for themselves
“Run down resort, nowhere near a 5 star hotel or experience. Don’t go!”
I stayed at this resort for the second half of a Havana/Varadero split vacation. The resort is run-down—there is no other way to say it, it’s a dump. It’s dirty, worn out, the staff are lacklustre and it needs an overhaul in management, staff training, customer service and standards of cleanliness. We checked in early (due to an early transfer) and our room was not ready—which is totally acceptable. However, what is not acceptable is to refuse to give us a towel to use the pool or beach for the four hour wait for our room. Only after mentioning it was poor customer service did the front desk lady call the towel hut and very rudely complain about me to the man giving out the towels and roll her eyes and shoot me dirty looks. Great first impression. That said, the towel dude was a sweetie and Iberostar should be ashamed of themselves for NEVER having clean beach/pool towels available to guests. We used the same towels for 4 days as did every other guest who was turned away repeatedly. I’m pretty sure the initial towel we got was dirty as well—it smelled musty and like a dirty towel. Disgusting. The rooms were run-down and bordering dirty. I found a silverfish in my bed on the second night, the sheets were never cleaned and felt sandy and there was a god awful plastic sheet over the mattress which basically made it impossible not to sweat to death even in the AC. On the last day I got the nerve up to move it and, of course, there were signs of bed bugs. Blood stains and trails. I was freaked out the rest of the stay. The shower was old and rusted and had to be used as a hand held since it was broken, the towels were never really clean and the toilet wouldn’t flush until the third try—every time. The only plus was that our AC worked and we had a little balcony. We also basically bribed the maid with pesos to keep the mini-bar stocked—which was expected— and she was a good sport about it, leaving us funny swan sculptures. The hallways were dirty—the same dishes and beer cups/cans sat in the stairwells of building 11 for days. I’m actually surprised I didn’t see any roaches due to this. Lots of snacks for the lizards though. The pools were nice, but again, lacked cleanliness. We clued in after day one that the bar pool was gross—the tiles were slimey and I burned my bottom on what looked to be chlorine or bleach pellets on one of the seats in the pool. I also don’t think it’s appropriate to have small children allowed in the pool where the bar is and where adults are swearing, smoking and generally hammered. We moved to a pool behind our building next to the snack bar and that seemed to be the cleanest spot in the resort. The pool was clean, there was a nice man getting people chair cushions, the snack bar folks were friendly and the bathrooms were clean. Overall, the rest of the resort was filthy—no paper towels, often no toilet paper, no soap in any public washrooms—including the lobby washrooms. No ac in public places other than the a la carte restos (which it was questionable it was on) and the lobby store. The buffet food was ok—better than I had expected—but there were flies everywhere, birds landing in the food and cutlery, plates, etc. were often hard to find or not even there. I was careful what I ate since I’ve been on resorts before, but it was alright. The a la carte restaurants were mediocre. The Japanese was ok, but a lot of frozen veggies which was a disappointment. The Romantico was looking up since the appetizer was great, but my lamb main was vomit worthy. It tasted like they cooked frozen veggies and dumped a can of Chunky Beef Stew in a bowl. It went right through me. Gross is an understatement. My friend ate contaminated chicken at the beach grill—the same tongs used for everything—and had horrible food poisoning the last two days so I spent half of my time on the resort alone. Fun times. I am just overall so unimpressed with the staff, the customer service, the lack of friendliness, cleanliness and that this resort has the nerve to rate itself as a five star. Even more humourous are the signs all over the front desk to rate them on Trip Advisor while offering piss poor service. The positives I took away from this were the beach—which was amazing (no thanks to Iberostar), the staff at the beach bar, the pizza lady (who seemed like the only person halfway conscious of food safety), and the bus driver taking us the hell outta there. I totally get that the Cuban economy is in rough shape—I get that supplies may be limited, etc., but it is no excuse for dirty bathrooms, building, towels, sheets, etc. I understand not being able to update as well, but at least make an effort. I gladly tipped, sometimes when the service wasn’t even warranted. Maybe that’s the problem. This resort and it’s staff have become complacent. I’ll never return and will tell anyone who will listen not to waste their money in this dump.
Room Tip: Don’t go.