We had a great stay at the Leme Othon Palace for two nights just before Christmas. It is located right across from the beach, on a short, quiet street in the Leme neighbourhood of Rio, which I found to be a nice change from the intensity of Ipanema and the heavy touristic feel of Copacabana. We are a family of four with two kids (aged 11 and 13). We had two spacious, clean, comfortable adjoining rooms with a wonderful sea view. There were many good restaurants within walking distance and it wasn't too loud at night. The breakfast (included in the price) was substantial and good quality, and the service in the hotel was excellent. To note that the room that our kids were in had two double (not queen) beds. Our room had a king size. We probably could have fit all four of us in the one room with the two smaller beds, although it would have been a bit snug with kids our size. But it you are travelling with smaller children you could probably make do with one room instead of getting two. As it was, we were very pleased with our accommodation, and having the rooms connected internally was very reassuring in terms of security. The only comment I would make is that the hotel doesn't have a swimming pool. As the ocean is quite rough and not particularly clean for swimming in Rio, this might be important for you. As we were heading down the coast of Brazil to nicer beaches after our stay Rio, we weren't troubled by this.

Stayed there for one night....the room was quite smelly due to humidity. The bathrooms were renovated so that was a plus. The breakfast buffet was OK but I asked for an omlette but they said it was not possible. Generally, the hotel staff has a take it or leave it attitude. Somewhat expected considering the location.

Location is good, room is ok,clean and big, beach was not so crowded, I remember that people in reception doesn't have enough information about their own city.
Breakfast is very good, I can recommend this hotel if you are new in city,

Good things about this hotel:

1. Location is good.
2. Clean rooms
3. Polite cleaning room staff(something the front of staff can actually learn something from)

Bad things about this hotel

1. No Iron in room...they say that do not issue irons to guests for SECURITY reasons?? In other words they do not trust their guests...and haven't they thought that they already have people's credit card numbers anyway. Love them to explain their logic.

2. They were so keen to push some sort of jewelry tour by a compnay called H Stern, even tried to delay us going out the next morning and putting their leaflet packs in our room!

3. No local maps on display and a RELUCTANCE to hand over more than one decent map to our group of nine, so we felt compelled to approach them at differnt times.

4. When enquiring about travelling by Metro they said it was a long complicated journey which would take a 35 minute walk to get to(station is in fact only an easy 10 min walk away and the Rio metro system is very clean and very efficient.)

5. Disgraceful computer facilities in th lobby(2 terminals only)...charge is if you do not have a wi-fi enabled device at £12 or $18/hour. With two terminals their own staff would be hogging it for themselves for long periods at a time using the webcam facility...very unprofessional why could they not use a back office one and leave these for the actual PAYING customers? If you had a wi-fi enabled phone then it was £3 or $4.50/day.

6. Although cleanliness was pretty good the let down was the towels were marked with black markers of some sort which left a mark on my face. Embroidered towels would be an idea perhaps??

Overall experience was...poor knowledge by staff at front desk..or reluctnace to impart knowledge. They are not all bi-lingual in my opinion as the brochure claims..if there is a problem with that then more literature in other languages would have helped...I am not one of those that believe that the whole world should speak English. A lot of misinformation by the staff and I would not necessarily take their information as gospel. Stay here if you have done a bit more research otherwise go somewhere else....maybe Ipanema as that is a nicer beach.

Hotel would get better reviews if the front of house staff actually gave better information. First impressions really do count. You may ask why I did not put all these complaints to the hotel at the time..I and the others I was with wanted to spend our time productively and did not feel we could really get our issues resolved there and then. Will be emailing the Othon group directly or actually hope they see this review and respond directly.