I was there late January 2012, I find this hotel has good features but management is careless .
security , disco, entertainment, landscape, coffee bars,free bus system to downtown for 4 times and location are 5 star, The food that most people complain are not that bad ,its abundant and fresh but you have to search, imagine they had everyday fresh shrimp ,fresh fish , great pastry and lots of seasonal fruits.
rooms are basic furnished but still clean ,there is fridge,air condition, TV, even bidet .
in my opinion the management letting workers steel and ask for tips, you can get 3 bottles of rum for 10 CUC from any bar, buy coffee bags as many as you want cheap, on the beach every vendor after selling something has to pay a share to the security guard, even when you ask a drink with motts clamato ,trust me I saw with my own eyes they are mixing kethchup and water and shaking in motts clamato bottle, probably they are taking home the real stuff home. and i wonder how many fresh foods that is supposed to feed us gone to employees house, these things I noticed within a week , don't you think management doesn't know? probably they are partners and collect percentage at the end of the day,the richest ones are the bartenders, scooping money non stop, that's why after 3 days if you tip you get service fast, they make more money than doctors of Cuba.So if you go that hotel , try to solve problems by yourself which is bribing directly,and you will have less stressful vacation! and enjoy your stay.

I went with 26 of my friends for a grad trip. I love Cuba and always had a good time until I went to this resort. I'm not a picky person or looking for luxury. I just wanted a clean, well functioning resort. All I got was a big safety/health hazard.

The only good thing was the beach. The club was nice but no people.....just my group!

NEGATIVES:

1. Rusty holes in the bath tub with bugs

2. No working lights. We had to come to our room early to get ready in daylight for our dinner outings.

3. Cockroaches in our room. My friend was getting hives and she got tested back in Canada after the trip...she was allergic to them. We saw them in the resort lobby so we knew they were around.

4. Horrible food. HORRIBLE. I was eating chips with ketchup because nothing looked safe to eat. Meat undercooked. Ran out of vegetables and cheese. Pizza had only clumpy cheese and sauce! It tasted worse than a rotten pizza pocket. We had a group of 26 people. 6 people got really sick and couldn't enjoy the rest of the trip.


5. It looks like an old church (no disrespect) on the outside.

6. Staff was friendly BUT they were allowing people in our group to take out keys to each others rooms without any identification or safety measures. How is that possible? Strangers can get in your room?!?!

7. Broken glass in my room. Room never cleaned.


8. An "all inclusive" that ran out of everything apparently. Our pizza later on in the week had no cheese. They ran out of cheese, potatoes, alcoholic beverages. All that was left is the worst type of rum.

9. The hotel was empty? Not many people around and nothing to really do.



Hope this helps. Please for your own sake, there are way better hotels than this in cuba.

We paid way too much for the crappiest experience. All 26 of us agree we would never go back and couldn't wait to come home. We can have fun anywhere but this was just horrible.



Playa Pesquero was amazing. Bella Costa another amazing hotel. They aren't even that expensive.

Having traveled extensively for the last 25yrs of my life I would have to say this was a major disappointment. On the positive side I would say the beach is nice but its comparable to hundreds of other beaches around the world with more to offer. The country was very clean compared to most other 3rd world countries but those are about the only two positive points.
The food at the resort was so bad that my only decision was based on what was less likely to make me ill. I would consider the room 3star in comparison to what you would get in any resort in Asia. My back has yet to recover from the bow shaped mattress. Havana is no longer Historic but simply old and crumbling. I left feeling sorry for the people and the obvious deterioration in the country itself. I guess most Canadians have such low expectations that as long as the beer is flowing and the sun is shinning there happy.

We stayed at the Arenas Doradas from January 27-February 4th and we had a really great time. There were 7 of us, and we never had any trouble getting seats and beach or pool chairs together. The staff were are really wonderful to us the entire stay - remember when reading some of these reviews that you get what you give, espically in terms of attitude. We tipped well and often, but even when we didn't tip the service was the same.

The food was pretty good for Cuba, considering we all paid less than $700 a person for the entire vacation. Yes, some of the things at the Buffet were questionable, but the omlettes at breakfast were great (bringing your own Ketchup (Heinz) and Franks Red Hot makes it taste even better) and the make your own pasta at dinner were a hit for our entire group! The Beach BBQ during the day was amazing - it was the highlight of the day! They had ribs, chicken, beef, pork and fish, and all of them were flavorful and cooked perfectly.

The resort itself was better than expected, as we had read the reviews here and were expecting the worse. Many of these reviews are unfair to the resort, as we found it to be clean and the things that were important were well maintained. Could it use upgrades? Sure, and they are working on it, but its never going to be the Ritz, people! Our origional room had no air conditioning, so they gave use a nice hospitality suite our first night then we moved into a room across the hall from our origional one and had no problems. We had fresh towels every day, and none of us had any issues with the level of cleanliness. Even all the public washrooms were pretty well maintained were cleaned frequently - despite the lack of consideration by many of the other guests (throwing tp on the ground, getting so hammered that you throw up all over the wall in the men's room).The only complaint was the lack of toilet seats in the lobby bathrooms - in the women's washroom there is only 1 toilet out of 6 that has a seat.