Melia Las Americas

5 readers found this review helpful

Melia Las Americas is an adult only hotel set right on the beach at Varadero. We were on the 4th (top) floor and had a fantastic sea view but no balcony. When I enquired about a room with a balcony the staff were very willing to change our room, but warned us that the only available room on the 1st floor had a balcony but nowhere near as good a view. We had a look at the other room, but in the end we decided to stay where we were. The room itself was spacious and clean.
The main buffet restaurant was nothing special. It was fine for breakfast with the usual selection of fruit, cereal, cooked meats, etc. There was also a station where omlettes and fried eggs were produced to order. At lunchtime and dinner the buffet served a pretty standard selection of food with pork steaks, chicken and fish cooked to order.
You can book into each of the 4 speciality restaurants once per week. There's a barbeque/fish restaurant which was fairly disappointing but we enjoyed the Italian, the international cuisine and especially the Japanese restaurant where food was cooked for your group on a hotplate right in front of you, making it more of an event.
The Italian and the barbeque restaurants were also open at lunchtime and no bookings were required. We ate at the Italian a few times as it's in a great location right on the beach.
The beach itself had plenty of loungers and umbrellas. Although some people were up fairly early putting towels on loungers there wasn't really any need as you could usually get a place at most times of the day. However, the hotel wasn't full when we were there either side of the Easter weekend. The pools weren't used by many people. Again there were sufficient loungers around for everyone who needed one. The pool outside the main hotel building is very nice, but there's also a pool at the far end of the complex which we preferred. It was always very quiet when we were there and it's sheltered if there's a wind from the sea.
The staff were mostly very pleasant, friendly and helpful despite what it says in some reviews on other sites. Maybe you get treated according to the way you treat them, as some guests had an appalling attitude towards waiting staff.