We stayed for seven days in Vila do Mar for a leisure trip with my girlfriend, and we enjoyed our stay.
The hotel has decent and clean rooms, with views to the beach. The pools are good, always warm and in good conditions. The best of the hotel is the beach next to it.

However, the worst part of Vila do Mar is the service quality and some annoying details.

The room has air conditioning which is very noisy and you can only turn it on or off, but you cannot adjust the temperature. You can freeze at night if you sleep close to it. I goo

Wifi stickers are posted all over the hotel walls but, the small detail is that they charge you for it, and it is not cheap. 15 to 20 Reais per day. It should be free at least in the lobby!

As mentioned in other reviews, if you are in the pool or beach and you want a towel, you have to pay R$ 1.10
for each one, and return it before 8pm (the 10 cents are for what they call Service Tax, a kind of fixed 10% tip that they charge you for everything). There is also a hidden cost of R$2.00
per day for a ¨National Tourist Promotion Fund¨, that was not mentioned by the travel agency.

But nothing is really bad as the service
we had.
The restaurant food and price is good but the waiters are really unprofessional and not always willing to bring you a good service. Once you can catch a waiter and make you order, you have to wait and wait until you can even get you drink, and once the main dish finally arrives it might be a bit cold. To give you an example of the magnitude of the delay, we had to wait exactly 60 minutes to get a simple hamburger with chips.
This happened every day consistently and with the other people that we talked to.
The bad thing is that you only have that restaurant or a 15 minute public bus to town.

To summarize, try to avoid this hotel if you can.

We spent New Year's 2009/10 at Vila Do Mar and we actually selected it based on Trip Advisor Reviews and availability. The Resort has a great website that touts it amenities but it fails to mention that there is an additional fee for things like towels, tennis rackets, WiFi, and there is also no longer a free shuttle to Ponta Negra (a R$20 minimum cab ride...approx $13 US each way). However, the beach and pool area at the hotel are very nice and it is probably worth staying this distance from the main beach as Ponta Negra is very crowded and definitely not as nice. The breakfast is good and the dinner buffet is decent. That being said, you'll definitely want to venture to other restaurants as the food can be redundant.

There are two restaurants nearby that offer free shuttle service for dinner: Farofa de Agua and Guinza. However, it's best to use the phone book in the room and make your own reservation for these places as we tried to have the front desk do it and at 9pm we discovered that they never actually called for us...after we sat waiting for the shuttle in the lobby for an hour! You should plan to get to the pool early and ask for chairs...the guy who gets them is great though he works alone so if you wait until later he'll be running around trying to find you a chair. He and the poolside waiters work very hard and are very friendly.

The biggest disappointment about Vila Do Mar is the rooms...don't expect anything fancy. The bathrooms are VERY outdated and ours actually had burn marks on the wall from an apparent outlet fire. I opted not to plug anything in while we were there just to be safe. We also had to sleep sans air conditioning for most of our stay as ours was so loud it was impossible to sleep.

This hotel has a perfectly good structure, five or six pools, tennis court, all rooms facing the ocean, but it has seen better days. The walls in my bedroom need some repainting, the bed was not very confortable and the air conditioning was awful. Very very noisy and I had to call maintenance three times. All in all, it´s a fair trade. That´s not the most expensive and luxurious hotel in town, but it offers a decent and very clean room (ask for the ones in the intermediate floor - have better balcony), nice breakfast, beautiful beach and helpful staff. One might add a good range of TV channels, a restaurant with not overpriced food and a store that sells from snacks to swimsuits for a reasonable price, at least more reasonable that I expected. It´s perfect if you plan to relax and enjoy the beach and the sun. Great for families, couples and mature travellers. If you plan to enjoy the town and meet some natives, though, you better stay in Ponta Negra beach.

I've stayed in this hotel in two ocasions, both for holidays, and I must say this is a real bargain!
All rooms are just in front of the sea, you'll always sleep listening to the sounds of waves. The rooms are simple, just bed and TV (international channels) and the bathroom should be better, but the common areas of the hotel are really well preserved and it has two nice pools facing the beach. There're two other pools, but one is for children and the another one to water sports.
It's located in the best part of the beach, as there's no rocks in front of the hotel and there're rocks in front of all its neighbours.
The breakfast is nice, great amount of fruits and breads, and they serve omelets and tapiocas.
There's a free bus that takes you to the city centre, giving you options for dinner, as you'll forget lunch time staring at the sea.
Cleaning should be better, as in my second stay there was always sand in the bathroom floor.