Riu Palace Aruba Hotel

2 readers found this review helpful

We stayed at the Riu Palace Aruba for 2 weeks. It was sold to us as a 5 star resort, but it is not.
Although facilities are good, it is no where near 5 star level. Our rooms (we stayed with 5 people) were 3 star at the very very best.
The carpet was old and dirty, the shower fell apart, dirty walls, lots of damage to the trim, no seating area, a TV from 1985 with very poor signal, no standard internet in the room (only at USD 25,=/day you can get it), very poor finishing of everything and it smelled bad in the rooms. Very strange, the wardrobe was in the shower, no doors. It is impossible to keep your clothes dry and not becoming moist. There were not enough coat hangers (we only had 5), staff told us they would resolve it the next day by getting them from oher guests rooms. They did resolve it for us, I feel sorry for the other guests.
The airconditioning is also an old system, you only have fan and warmer or cooler, you cannot set it to a temperature. Come on this is 2010.
We complained about the poor rooms and mentioned that we paid for 5 star and demanded a better room. The Hotel was not interested and seamed deaf to our complaints, you guessed it, we never got a better room or compensation.
The Hotel has 2 buffet restaurants and 3 signtaure restaurants (french, italian and japanese style). The buffet restaurants are good and serve the food that you expect at a buffet place, is it 5 star? You can question that. The signature restaurants are poor, don't go there, they are no where near 5 star level.
Be very carefull if you walk on the floors in the Hotel ad surrounding facilities. They are very slippery in the dry and many guests fell and hurt themselves. Imagine the floors being wet, its like an ice hockey field.
I live in Europe, but also travel a lot to North America. I read some comments on tripadvisor about the staff being unfriendly and not giving good service. Having visited them I can understand why many Americans feel this way. For US standard it is poor, however for European standards its OK.
The staff is initially not the friendliest in their first aproach, however we had the feeling that they are kept tight by hotel management. We starting joking around with them and ask them about advise on things to do on the Island. They were very helpfull and gave us good recommendations and loosened up quickly.
We have some friends living on the island so we made some phonecalls with the Hotel phone. DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!! They totally rip you off. They charge around USD 5,= /minute to landline connection and a staggering USD 8,=/min to cellphones. These rates or nowhere indicated. We asked our friends if Aruba cellphone rely was that expensive, its not, its actually cheap. They only charge around USD 0,30/min. The Hotel makes a outrageous profit on the calls. We complaint heavily, but staff was not willing to even listen it looked that they did not even care.
A huge problem is the lack of parasols at the pool and the beach in combination with a social behavior of some guests, see other comments on trip advisor. All parasols are reserved before 6:00 in the morning, blocking any access to it for any other guests. If you want one you have to get up rely early, not the thing you had in mind when you go on holiday.
Hotel has to resolve this problem quickly, many guest are very annoyed by this. They have to put up a lot more parasols.
Was it all bad? No. Pool is good, beach is excellent and only 30 yards from most rooms.
Would we go again. No way. You can better book the Radisson or the Westin who are right next door. If you have more to spend, you can also book the Hyatt, 100 yards down the road.