Puntarena Playa Caleta Hotel

Stayed here for 5 nights in August. All inclusive in beach view room on 7th floor. Good value for 5 nights however need to make following comments which I rarely do. The good: Beach is lovely. View from room is amazing. Housemaid serving our room, (713) was lovely. Pool areas are good but rather noisy most of the time with loud music playing perhaps too loud through the day which made us exit to the beach for some peace. Some may prefer this. The two restaurants (not the buffet) were ok but you have to book in advance. And they have limited menu options. Free shuttle bus to downtown Varadero Mon-Sat. There is entertainment for kids and adults most days but as no kids we preferred to stay at beach. The not so good. Location – nothing else around within easy walking distance. Taxis don’t want to drive there as only access road gets flooded with seawater and they won’t drive through it so you’d be stuck unless you check the tides! I Buffet. We stayed 5 nights but I swear the same salads and meats are constantly recycled. I also believe this is what had me stuck on toilet for 3 days with food poisoning. The guests here seem to be rather greedy and would capture as much freshly cooked meat so that others had to queue for up to 30 minutes. Not sure where other guests were from but rather inconsiderate. They need to limit servings to each to make it fair for all. Staff – the only nice people were housemaid, some of the bar staff and concierge. The rest behave as if you’re a complete nuisance and everything was too hard with bad attitudes from many. They were very unhelpful and one receptionist was particularly nasty when trying to exchange money. The pool bar staff seem to hate their job, in fact many in the building carried this same attitude. Internet – this is complete joke. I was trying to work from room which is impossible on 7th floor. You have to sit in steaming hot reception area and reconnect several times, often not working which created all sorts of stress when I had deadlines. Some reception staff just plainly not interested in helping – I heard the word NO! a lot. Toilets to level 2 bar area need a good fire. **** & piss overflowing. They put sign at door stating wet floor. It was like this for 5 days whilst there. Also no toilet paper in pool toilets although we did carry our own in preparation. Room fridge didn’t work and when reported, nothing was done to fix it. Towels in the room not necessarily the cleanest or best. A/C in room works but just. It’s cooler than outside but not as you’d expect. Building is very outdated and worn down. The pictures on trip.com made it look so much better. But that seems the case in many hotels. Biggest thing for us was the poor attitude of many staff.

There was no buffer table and when we wanted to take drinks to our room it wasn’t allowed we won’t be staying here again