TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Avoid this place with any cost! There are multiple complaints about this horrible place from my side: • Food and water shortages. Stinky salad with flies, stale fish and chewy chicken are the best options that you can find here to feed yourself… And line up for 20 minutes for everything that’s so so eatable • Dirty and old rooms. The photos in ads are not quite correct. Many things in the room are not working. You can’t get in to the room due to the old lock system in the door. • Useless and rude staff. The waitress literally said me “What’s your problem?” when I tried to ask her a bottle of water and she refused to provide it. • Unsanitary conditions. Cockroaches are everywhere. I got sick at the 5th day of my stay • Unkempt beach with the lack of chairs. Nobody cleaned stinky seaweed on the sand. • Boring entertainment. I have been in resorts around the world and …Cuba is on top of the worst ones. Will never return back!

I was here for 2 weeks in January, and I am already back again. I love this resort. All the staff are eager to create the best experience for the guests. I booked Alegance because I love having a pool in my backyard. Easy to request ground floor rooms or suites. Many restaurants to choose from, hop on hop off bus to tour all of Varadero. Come and enjoy Cuba!

Would not recommend Cuba in general right now. The shortages are really bad here. even water is hard to get unless you're at the bar. I was dehydrated throughout the trip because of a lack of drinking water. Even when you ask a waitress to get water, they will wait awhile before giving it to you or just won't give you any at all. If you ask the front desk for bottled water they'll tell you they are all out because of the shortages. the food is also really limited. Most of the time when I would ask for a menu item, the response would be "oh we're out of that". At one point, the snack bar only had vegetarian spring rolls, no other options. The only fruit that was available the whole week was guava and paprika, and I don't like either so I just didn't have any fruit all week. there was also pretty much no vegetables. just meat, fish, bread and pasta... for a whole week. Also, everything here is kinda falling apart. The pictures on TripAdvisor really do not look like a rooms we got. I'm not sure if this is also a Cuba-wide thing, but everything here just seems super old and run down. the front and back doors on our room would not lock so we actually had to wedge a piece of metal into the back door to make sure nobody could get in. The bathroom door in my friends room also just would not close at all so we had to keep in closed with a heavy brick on the ground. Everything here is also very expensive. even in the city. other Latin American countries have everything at much cheaper prices in the cities but in varadero I was paying prices I would expect to pay back in canada for pretty much anything. everything is marked up for tourists. In general, I feel like we got tricked by all the good reviews and nice pictures on here. they must have all been written before all the shortages because I would not put this resort anywhere near four-stars.

Rooms not ready , front desk staff told us they “ may” be ready the same day . Manager left 2 young girls holding the bag while she hid and told half truths . Staff member rolled her eyes at the lady be side me then denied it - I saw it . We waited hours after promised available time 4 pm . So many various reasons given - so what is the real reason you can’t get a room after travelling 24 hrs ? Absolutely no info given about resort , restaurants time etc Key cards consistently don’t open door - front desk staff blame tech , tech blames from desk it’s a cycle of incompetence that left me locked out of my room more than 5 hrs then every time I left it’s near impossible to get back in . Oh look there is my neighbour with same issues . There are not enough lounger for either pool , beach is narrow and rocky in spots - you could forgive if you had a lounger to sit on . Piles of seaweed left all week . Stinky Food at buffett is slop - pans full of slimy okra and pale eggplant oh sone boiled red weiners . The Alegance side does offer much better , professional service and 100x better food . The supposed 24 hr snack bar was closed at 11:30 one day with “ no food “ no explanation. I found out later they had no bread or buns - maybe tell people the truth instead of shrugging your shoulders . When you can go in to Varadero and eat and drink anything you like you realize there is no excuse for this nonsense. Smaller resorts with less stars have been much better than this place. The highlight of the staff are the gardeners - they are like the welcome committee . The coffee bar makes excellent coffee. Sad I couldn’t get a mojito most days on this resort - they literally grow everything they need for it right in Cuba

Our experience at the Valentin El Patriarca a five-star hotel: We are an older couple and my wife uses a wheelchair. We were at this hotel for ten days in April 2024 First Impression: We arrived at the hotel at midnight, after checking in, they took us to the room and left us at the door, (regularly the hotel porter turns on the lights, shows the amenities of the room, the AC, the refrigerator, none of this), we had to look for the lights in the dark, and the first surprise, NO TOILET PAPER or towels, we called the front desk, totally useless, we only got the toilet paper the next day at about ten in the morning as well as the towels. Breakfast: In the buffet there was no coffee, if we wanted coffee we had to go get it from the cafeteria, no eggs sometimes there was chicken once hamburgers otherwise cold meat (different shapes round, square but same meat), granted, there was sea food and veggies, dinner a copy of lunch, day one to day ten the same, fish every day even one day they ran out of bread. (I understand that Cuba is going through a difficult time, but we were talking to people from other lower category hotels and they had a more varied menu) they even had coffee in the buffet. The only good meal we ate at this hotel, was once in the Italian dining room. We didn't see a snack bar anywhere. Amenities: If you are in a wheelchair you do not have access to the beach, there path was made with patio stones separated about two inches on a bed of sand. The floor of the pool is slippery when we entered the pool we made that comment and someone who heard us told us it was because we didn't wear water shoes (we didn't find that precaution anywhere) The administration is a complete disaster (tourism is the only source of income that Cuba has, but with an administration like this they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs) Looking on the bright side, the staff is very helpful and always cheerful, and the hotel itself is very nice, a five star hotel with the well-kept grounds It's not the first time we've been to Cuba, we've been to Santiago de Cuba at least twenty times, we know everything between them, we've been in two, three and four-star hotels but a two-star hotel is much better than this one.