Best Hotels near Playa Santa Clara, Santa Clara

Here for 2 weeks...leaving tomorrow! Definitely not a 4 star..2 maybe, 3 at best! Rooms were clean and cleaned well every day! The hotel is showing wear and tear! Pool is missing alot of tiles, broken taps, public bathroom doors don't lock. All public bathrooms were always clean, stocked and had soap. Food was better than Cuban food by far! Pool with pool bar is a cesspool of drinks, drunks and alcohol. We spent most days at the beach which often was very noisy with crazy intoxicated people on seadoos and quads racing up and down the water and beach, often spraying sand and water on people looking for some peace and quiet. No shade is an issue as are lack of chairs. Horses on the beach every day selling rides, drugs and photos. Poor horses standing all day in sometimes 40 degree heat...no shade. Beware they are not part of the hotel. Jellyfish and stingrays were a problems every day the 2 weeks we were here! English was a problem...difficult to find anyone who could speak English. Shows were totally in Spanish every night...no English! Staff wore masks in the buffet which made it difficult to communicate with no English. Lack of communication was a problem. Never knew if there was entertainment at night or not or if a restaurant was open or closed. Felt a little lost at times! Japanese a la carte had to pay $20 each. Other a la Cartes not open every night. Sports bar and beach bar you had to pay for drinks. Lobby bar never open. Lagoon or Grand Pool had a Sunwing section way at the other end of the pool with a long, long hot walk to the closest bathroom. Sunwing/Nexus tours ripped us off. We took two tours totaling over $500 USD. They were totally misrepresented. Never went where we were supposed to go. Museum in Portobelo was closed for renovations. On the one tour protesters had set up blockades and blocked traffic. We never got to our destination...27 km. in 4 hours. 13 hour day...spent at least 10 in the van. Sunwing refused to help. Spent many an hour waiting in the lobby for Sunwing/Nexus reps in exhausting heat...no shows, late or non existent. Offered us a $40 refund. Sorry not enough! BEWARE!

We stayed Feb-March 2023. We were 2 couples, had rooms side by side on ground floor in plus section. It was a wonderful vacation, we could come out of our patio doors to socialize which was heavenly and walk over to the pool bar. The ground floor rooms side by side made our vacation. We will return annually just for that. All staff were so kind and happy to help. The grounds are beautiful, the food is good and lots of choice, beach is spectacular, plus section is so worth the extra money, we had our own pool, beach and restaurants, plus reservations at other restaurants was so easy. Rooms are always clean, if there is any issue with the room, safe or patio door, just call and the team comes within 5 mins to fix the issue. Not everyone speaks English, but it’s a Spanish country, they try and we always have a translation app. Both our husbands are golfers, so golfed every day, they could not always get the early Tee-times they wanted, but made do. My girlfriend and I were very happy on the beautiful beach every day. We are already booked to return Feb 2024 and we can’t wait. We hope our 2nd trip will be as good as the 1st and hope this will be our annual holiday for years to come. The only improvement I would say is to clean up the cigarette butts in the sand on the beach and have a fine for disrespectful smokers who do not clean them up. We all smoke when we are on vacation, we always put our butts in a cup and then put that in the garbage. It’s pretty disgusting to put your feet in the sand and see so many butts, and expect others to clean up after you. I am not proud of my vacation habit, but always clean up after myself. Penny