The hotel is very attractive to the eye. Very convenient location, on the beach, easy to reach by car (warning about the garage: rent the smallest car you can get, it's a tight squeeze).
All that aside, this is not the hotel that is advertised on this site. Whether it's the room itself: the "refrigerator" is actually the mini-bar, try sticking your ice cream and milk and soda and water, etc., in this little thing next to all the other items you're expected to purchase (but there was no mini-bar menu, so how do you know how much it costs? there's NOTHING in this room, no emergency exit sign, no hotel information, nada!). Speaking of nada, try cooking on the two-element electric hot plate with no pots or pans. Kitchenware is limited to two cups, two saucers, two large plates, one small plate, two spoons, two forks, one knife, two drinking glasses. Fortunately the microwave does work. Does it double as the in-room safe? The hotel description mentions an in-room safe. There is none. While I'm mentioning the hotel features, what private beach was there? None. Garden? None, unless you count the narrow strip of unpaved dirt along each side of the hotel. They hide their onsite shopping/gift shop very well, I never saw it. DVD player? None. Refrigerator? None. Coffe/tea maker? None. Room service? None (how could there be, there is no menu, nothing at all, in this room). Night club? You've got to be kidding. What did someone from this hotel do, go through all the options and just check "yes" for everything!? I specifically chose this hotel because, among other things, I wanted an in-room safe. I had to carry my valuables with me the entire visit.
Now, I am saving the best for last. At checkin I was informed that my room was not ready. That's fine, happened before, I can get lost for an hour. Come back, handed a key to my room and..... Oh, did I mention I reserved and paid for a "deluxe double"? Well, I walk into the room and it's a barren, small, first floor white tiled, white walled, nothing in it besides a dining table, cave. Open a door, into a tiny bedroom, to find a single bed. Not at all deluxe, not at all a double. Back to the front desk where I am told in halting English that the hotel is sold out and that's all there is. Only my "New Yorker", well-traveled attitude that such a room is not acceptable seemed to communicate, and finally I was grudgingly given a double that, compared to the utterly unacceptable single room, was a trifling more deluxe. At least it had a balcony. That first room had a view of the wall, and was the room most distant from the beach of any in the hotel. When my companion, who speaks Portuguese, arrived, the story he was given was not that they were sold out but that they had no record of the reservation and was unexpected.
Already I'm writing far more than I have ever written in a review of a hotel, but I just wanted folks to know about the really poor quality of service this hotel provides. Such as, properly training the room cleaners, they need to know to NEVER touch the property of a guest. Imagine removing your contact lenses and reaching for your prescription glasses only to realize they've been moved. Several minutes groping around the room later and they're found, not in the bathroom, but in the bedroom. Items in the bath moved around, rearranged, items that one would expect trained staff to know, again, do not touch.
So sure, the photos are pretty, it's a reasonably new hotel I guess, if all you are concerned about is the condition of the building, go for it. The building gets three stars; the service could barely qualify for one star.
