I notice that sole travellers like myself have given this hotel a 'poor' rating so I am wondering whether we get different rooms??

However here goes...

I stayed here for the New Year celebrations last weekend.......Arriving late as is usual these days.

The location is convenient for the beach although it is at the wrong end of Copacabana, Although I fail to see why anyone would want to go and sit on Copacabana Beach. There is a shortage of restaurants around this area, apart from rather seedy 'fast food' places, so you will have to walk a little way along Av. Copacabana one block back from the sea to find a restaurant, the further you go towards Ipanema the better.

The hotel gives a reasonable impression in the lobby, but unfortunately it was built some years ago so the rooms themselves are somewhat drab and dull although the bed was comfortable, but was considerably narrower than the space provided for it so you nearly fell out of bed reaching out to turn off the bedside light.

In common with nearly everyone that I met who actually comes from Rio itself, the staff were unfriendly and having travelled through Peru, Chile, and Argentina it came as something of a surprise that no one bothers to say Good Morning, Evening, or whatever in any language.

At breakfast the 'greeter' on the restaurant floor merely thrusts a pen at you and points at the sheet of paper for you to write your room number on, the number of people having breakfast, the time, and your signature. During my four day stay the neither the porters or reception staff even acknowledged me, which is surprising the problem I had with my bathroom.

The breakfast was OK although I had been spoilt in Peru and Chile by fresh juices and these clearly were not, the waiters do have a tendency to take your plate away while you are still eating off it.

On New Year;'s Eve afternoon I reported to reception that my toilet did not flush, I am sorry if you find this a bit unsavoury, but the remains of the previous day's food were still in the bowl, it was still not fixed on New Year's Day until I asked about it again, when it was fixed. In the meantime I had to use the toilet down in the lobby. I am amazed that the house keeping staff had not reported this before I even got there.

For an hotel that charges this sort of price you would also expect that you would be able to get a decent shower but I doubt if the shower head had been cleaned out for years.

Like everywhere these days all the lights are energy saving, so much so that two of them didn't work, something that was not really important as all they would do is illuminate two water stained pictures on the wall...As it happened on the day before I was leaving, for reasons I do not understand they started to work. They worked so well that that I could not work out how to turn them off so on the last night I got on a chair and took the bulbs out.

The hotel 'rules' say 'No noise after 10pm'...On two nights of my stay I was woken by the sound of children playing games in the hallway outside my room, on the second night I was woken at 1.30am by the sound of two women and a man having an argument in the hall, apparently about money, presumably this was the two prostitutes that I saw entering one of the rooms earlier that night.

I took a video of the shower and blocked toilet...Maybe I should put them on YouTube??

Room service and food is terrible
Rooms are very dirty the never get cleaned up we stayed 15 days the first night my son spilled milk and 3 days later the smell was awfull because it went bad in the bed never changed it!

Good hotel at Copacabana, although not so close to the beach. It's kind of gloomy, the staff is good but not very nice (as usually in Brazil) and the rooms are not very spacious. The diner is great. It's clean and everything works fine. It has free high speed Internet (one of best I've ever seen at hotels - I could download entire movies).

Seconds away from the beach, Merlin has a nice little pool and rooftop bar with a great view down the road to the beach.

Spacious rooms, but nothing special. Only soap provided is an all purpose hand/body/hair shampoo in a dispenser in the shower and next to the sink.

It was exactly what I needed at the time, a hot shower and space to spread out my stuff and plan the next part of my trip.