Loved my vacay!!!

The rooms are a bit old and could use some updating such as doors. The staff was great and accommodating. The food was great, no complaints there at all. The bar staff were very pleasant and put up with a lot of crap from crabby customers to very obnoxious customers, must commend them for being able to put up with all of this. Had some good laughs with the bar staff, especially when the one forgot to put the lid on blender for pina colada's. All in all I would go there again.

A great stay at Playa de Oro!

Our poolview room was spacious and clean, though it had 2 three quarter beds instead of a double. They were willing to switch us to one with a king size bed, but it wasn't a poolview, so we stayed in our original room. And it was great. Our room maid Liansy was very nice. She left us a little note everyday and towel art on our bed...loved that! The front staff were very welcoming and helpful. The food at both the Cuban and The International a la carte restaurants were excellent! The foo [... read more]d at the buffets were great too, but could have been a bit warmer. The omelets in the morning were really good! The buffet staff are very friendly and nice. The pool games were fun and the night entertainment was great, especially the magic show and the aquatic show in the pool. The coffee bar was amazing!..Spanish Coffees especially! Renier and Joel and Yienis were great bartenders! The Sunwing representative Ernesto was great! He was in the lobby everyday and helped us with anything we needed and booked our excursions. The only REAL complaint we would have is the gym. The equipment doesn't work and it needs a major overhaul! It is grungy. It is not a big, bright, cheerful room. Which is too bad because we enjoy working out every morning.. I would definitely recommend this resort. We had an amazing vacation there!

Needs a lot of work in the hall needs pInting

Needs a lot of work need clean hallways wall need to be painted some rooms need to be update with furniture when I asked for a room facing the pool and not the garbage the front cleark was rude and said I asked for astander room she would not chances the room a representative from sunwng set in and she changed my room still in the back with a big rubber tree in front the food needs to be improve some of the staff where really good the waiters the house keeper all accepted the one person at fr [... read more]ont desk the new management can improve this it can be a great hotel

One of the worst in Varadero

I have written several reviews over the past few years. It is my hope that these will help future travellers to Varadero and other places that I visit. I have visited Varadero on about 6 occasions, and this is my first time staying at Hotel Playa De Oro. I will provide to you here my unbiased review. After my second night at this so-called resort, I spoke to the Air Transat representative at the resort, Margarita. I expressed the following concerns and let her know that I will be writing a revi [... read more]ew on the establishment. She told me that she would provide this list to the management, and that a manager would be contacting me -- that never happened. I then saw Margarita a few days later and she asked me if some changes had already begun. I told her that indeed they were repairing some of the sidewalks around the establishment that would be a disaster for any woman wearing high heels, especially at night time. They did not repair the concrete surrounding the pool, however. Notably, none of my other concerns were addressed which I will list as follows: 1. Men's washroom across from coffee bar. This was the first public washroom that I found. The urinal actually had no pipes underneath! If I had urinated there, all of it would've ended up on the floor. I was told later by Margarita that this was a staff washroom. There was no sign to that effect. I feel sorry for their employees. 2. The pool areas are badly in need of repair. The concrete simply needs to be resurfaced. 3. The hallways in the hotel accommodations need to be painted. The walls look absolutely filthy and there is a great deal of gouging that seems to have occurred on the walls. Need some touch up and paint. 4. Getting my luggage to the room was slow. After checking in, it took the bellhop between 15 to 20 minutes to come down to the front desk to take my luggage. I was not given my room number otherwise I would've gone to the room myself with my luggage. This was absolutely unnecessary. 5. The bar fridge was empty. In every other resort I've stayed in in Varadero, the bar fridge has always had drinks in it and water. 6. There was no water in the room. We were told that there would be water in our room and this was not the case. I needed to come down to the front desk to ask for water. 7. There was no telephone in the room. All of the other hotels I have stayed in have had telephones. It meant that I had to come down to the front desk which was in a different building every time I had a complaint. 8. No directions were provided for anything at this resort. There was no instruction as to how to lock the balcony door, on how to to turn off the air conditioning which was quite cold, or how to use the shower – none of these were obvious in fact. At most resorts, you get a floorplan of the establishment and you get a list of the activities and what time these occur each day. At most places, you also get a list of the hours that the restaurants are open. This was not provided. There was no list of activities anywhere that I could find. So instead, the recreational leaders would just simply try to draw people together for an event at the time of the event. I like to plan my day around some of these activities but I was unable to do so. 9. One of the elevators did not work through the duration. I believe I read this about this place on someone else's review. They are simply not fixing it. One day, the second and only other elevator was down forcing everybody to use the stairs. 10. The small table in my room wobbled. This was not a big concern, but it is annoying when you put glasses on a table and they are likely to fall off if you do not hold them. 11. The toilet seat was half broken off. This small repair was undertaken. I am just surprised I had to ask for that to be done. There ought to be inspections of these units before people come into them. 12. Almost all of the equipment in the gym was broken. I am sure that is been the case for a long period of time. 13. The garbage bin by the beach bar was broken on the bottom and one day there was garbage simply strewn about. Just a bloody mess. 14. There were only about 12 palapas at this resort. I noticed that the next resort there were at least three times as many. What that meant is most of the time you could not find a shady spot in which to read your book.

Really nice experience!

The best part of the resort is probably how close it is to the beautiful beach. Also, on the beach, it was free to go for kayak, paddle boating, or sailboat rides. The pool area has a nice layout and has a bar beside it with lunch foods. The main buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner didn't always have the best food selections. We got two dinner reservations at the nicer restaurants during our week-long trip which were both very nice. Overall, we paid a cheap price for the package but had a wo [... read more]nderful time and I would definitely recommend the resort to a friend.

Nice resort

The rooms are clean but old, the staff were amazing, nice fun, the breakfasts were delicious and the donuts were amazing. But the rest of the food wasn't good even by Cuban standards! The pool was nice, clean and a lot of seating.

Good resort for the money

Beach is great! One a-la-carte restaurant is closed due to the roof being blown off during the hurricane. Staff is very helpful. The only issue we had was having to pay $15.00 for a beach towel that was taken from our chair at the pool while we were doing an activity. Time from the airport is good - 40 minutes with stops picking up/dropping off other tourists to their respective resorts.

Not amazing resort

the hotel is like 2 stars in Canada, slowly everything going down, we were there in May 2017 , and now second time October 2017, so we can see the difference. There was a little damage from the Irma, like about 15 palm threes removed from the resort, and the beach was almost with 1/3 shades compared to May, and they started to add simple sun protecting umbrellas. The room is with AC unit that you don't have control over it, so it blows cold air all day and night. The TV has bad quality satellite [... read more] programs, only CTV Montreal for Canada. There is a hot water but the quality of the shower is below 4 stars (talking about both times). when going Into the only buffet, since the Mercury( France) is not the owner, (now is grand Caribe from Cuba), all hotel people have lunch and dinner there, and there is always over 10 people in front of you everywhere. The swimming pool is also going down.

Fantastic Resort!!!

I had an amazing time at Playa De Oro. My room was spacious and clean with quick access to the pool and beach. I loved how compact everything was. I didn't have to spend time walking all over and trying to find everything. The grounds and beach were very clean even though they had just had a hurricane a week before. The food was plentiful and always hot and fresh. I have to admit my favourite part of the whole trip was getting to know all of the workers there. They were so open and friendly and  [... read more]always making sure that i was ok and was there anything they could do for me. I accepted some offers of home cooked meals at their houses and they took me for tours around their neighbourhoods. They treated me like family. I will definitely be going back in May.

Nice

Everything is nice, swimming pool is clean, food is fresh and delicious. room is a little wet but cleanly. service is ok. The snack bar has many kinds of drinks, juice. beer.rum.ect. And the music is perfect.

Didn't go

Our trip was cancelled because of a hurricane, hope everyone in Cuba was Ok!...................................................................................................................................................................

You get what you pay for

The hotel is a little run down (older than others) but as I said you get what you pay for. Staff was friendly but Sunwin rep was more interested in selling day trips than finding my luggage.if your looking for a low cost hotel then this will do.

Ok resort

The people were kind, amazing. But the resort could have been much cleaner. The beach was beautiful though there was no visible life guard throughout the duration of the trip. The waiters and chefs were great, and were some of the nicest people I have met, however the rooms lacking common necessities such as extra toilet paper and clean towels, made my experience in the trip much poorer than it should have been. The resort would have been perfect if we had cleaner rooms and good accessible fre [... read more]e wifi in our rooms. Overall the experience in this resort was ok

Dirty Rundown Resort

Our bedsheets were dirty, the blankets were dusty, there was mould and the room had a musty smell. Our supposed white towels looked like rags used in cleaning floors. There was enough variety of foods to eat but the cups and plates did not look washed. The food was bland. The waitresses were begging for stuff. There were some activities at night but I hated the snake show. Would never go there again.

Kind of dissapo

When we got there the rep showed us to the bus but once we got to hotel nobody greeted us. Then we went to room and we had only 2 single bed. We were three. We taught we were getting king beds. We had to wait the next day for the other bed. The rep. She was kind but only want to sell us excursion. The room staff was great but the staff at front desk, buffet room and bar by the pool was very rude. They wouldn't serve us at the pool bar. They were pushing us to buy rum and got mad because we wa [... read more]nted beer. We had enough by Thursday. Our trip was from Monday to Monday. There was a lot of sand fleas and I had a allergic reaction which spoil the rest of my vacation. The food was OK. We had a few nice waiter at the bar upstairs. Beside being anxious to leave our flight was delayed by 2 and a half hours. Found the server rude on the trip back. Very tiresome vacation. Did not like resort.

Amazing resort.

This trip was my birthday gift from my husband and the trip was to go to Varadero so we can go to see the Tropicana Show. We bought the Tropicana Special Trip, which included the Day tour of Havana. A must see show. Very colorful and all the dancers wore a smile on their faces all the time and showed their gratefulness to the audience with so much passion even while performing. Our trip to Havana started at 8:00 am. The tour guide was very help full. She explained very clearly and her Englis [... read more]h was excellent. No problem with the bus driver. Bought freshly made pina colada on the way to Havana. Lunch and dinner was included in the price of the trip. The show started at 10:00 pm, finished at 12:00 midnight, reached at the hotel a little after 2:00 am. And no, no one was drunk coming home on the bus from this trip. Very respectable people of different culture and race on this trip. The beach was very clean. We spent a lot of time at the beach, pool was beautiful. Had no problem with any worker concerned with this resort very humble and polite people at this resort. They did what ever they could to make us very comfortable. However a little problem with the washroom door, but was solved around 15 minutes. We didn't have a problem with food. Lots of variety to choose, so we made do with what there was for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our trip, my husband and myself would definitely go back and we have family members and friends who want to go and visit Hotel Playa De Oro, Varadero where we stayed. We had a fantastic and very enjoyable holiday also I must say a most heartfelt THANKS to my wonderful husband of 43 yrs of Happily Married Life together for also making this Trip a life time of memories for me.

We got very sick on our trip!

This was our first visit to Cuba (but not our first all-inclusive). Not sure if we will be heading back any time soon based on our experience, summarized below: Good: - The beach was absolutely beautiful, one of the best we've been to. - Some staff were nice and friendly. - Weather was good (not a lot of rain, we went late June) Bad: - We got very sick eating the food at the resort. They should try to cover up the food (from flies and also from birds picking at the food). We were ta [... read more]king turns in the bathroom, starting from the 2nd day of our 7 day stay. For the last 2 days, we did not eat any food from the resort, and did not drink their water, it was not pleasant at all. It should be noted that: we did not get any new water bottles during our stay, we used the original water bottle they gave us and were asked to fill up at the bar; when we went on day trips and ate at the outside restaurant, we did not have any stomach problems. - Bars at the resort did not offer certain drinks: we were asked to walk back to the lobby from the beach most of the time. - We also found some staff or guides there to be rude (to us and we witnessed towards others).

Beach and Location

Lives up to name..golden beach. Ocean perfect for swimming. Good supply of beach chairs. Grounds well kept by gardeners. Food mediocre..lots of fish, mostly pork otherwise...beach restaurant enjoyed most. Cafe bar a treat. Smaller hotel, easier to meet new friends and more compact. Staff mostly somber....few exceptions ..animation team, Yunier, waiter and Wilfred, bartender at pool bar. He was always smiling, friendly, high fiving and genuinely loved his job and people! Hotel in dire need o [... read more]f maintenance and restoration. Shower leaked every time, door warped, hard to open, water leaking in halls, pool bar ceiling, even in closet with the rain. Air only one setting, advised thermostats don't work. Can tell it was pretty special in its day. First visit to Varadero and goal was to visit Havana and Tropicana Club and enjoy the beach. This was accomplished!

Lovely Resort

The resort was very well kept. All the staff were very friendly and most of them spoke very well English. Pool was beautiful and warm. We would recommend to anyone. It was their low time so it was nice to not have a lot of people there. The beach was beautiful. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there. Can't wait to go back.

Great vacation time

Playa De Oro offers maybe the best beach that we have ever visited!The flat and turquoise water, the powder like sand, the amazing sunsets are just a few to mention. The staff also adds to the whole atmosphere of making it into a very comfortable place to stay. The room was disent and air-conditioned. One thing that we were totally caught by surprise was that we had many different TV channels in the room including american, canadian, french, italian and cuban. This little treat allowed for more [... read more] relaxing time at night. Our whole trip was organized by West-Jet and I am using this opportunity to give them a big shout out for the excellent service, starting with the flight then the extra excursions and the whole package - great job!