Iberostar Coral Holguin: Very nice resort

Small resort with beautiful rooms. Fantastic pool. Everything is very close except for the beach. Perfect size for us as we could be sociable but still have private time when wanted. Closest beach is very shallow which would be great for people from the selection side that have young children, but not great for adults from the Coral side. Main beach is nice but further away than I’m used to. Neither beach nor pool ever seemed crowded and never a rush to go early to reserve a spot. Fantast [... read more]ic staff. Our Butlers Laritza and Junior were fantastic, handling meal reservations and always checking to see if we OK or if there was anything they could do for us. Carlos the entertainment coordinator was very active and trying to involve guests in activities. He has a beautiful voice and often played his guitar and sang songs requested by guests. All staff very friendly and helpful. Servers in buffet and restaurants always smiling and service great.Beach towels in room and they were exchanged every evening, along with other towels in bathroom. Also, for the first time in over 20 years of visiting the Caribbean, face cloths were provided and exchanged with towels morning and evening. Hasn’t been a big deal as we learned early to take our own, but since they have never been provided before, I felt this was worth mentioning. Note: while not part of my review, I would like to encourage guests to not use Canadian loonies and toonies for tipping. These can’t be used by workers as Cuban banks will not take them. The down side of this is that workers are stuck with this useless money, unless guests will exchange then for Canadian bills.

Iberostar Coral Holguin: exceptionally comfortable

The Iberostar Holguin Coral was everything you need for a relaxing, comfortable stay in Cuba. Comfortable, spacious rooms, excellent room staff, beautiful pool right at your door, thoughtful administration staff. Wait staff and bartenders were courteous and quick (with most times a smile, in spite of how busy they all were). The beach was just a short walk, or an even shorter cart ride away, and was clean and beautiful. (both the large and smaller beaches were beautifully maintained). This yea [... read more]r the Coral side enjoyed our own entertainment (aquatic team, saxaphone or mirachi band at supper) (daytime - water aerobics, afternoon guitar player). Nice fresh fruit at both breakfast and lunch. Would recommend.

Playa Pesquero: Excellent service

Love playa pesquero, went for a week, stayed in the premium hotel adults only, excellent service fantastic food, i couldn’t ask for more my second time at Premium, beautiful beaches nice and clean, pool super clean, staff always so happy and willing to please you. Thanks for beautiful week

Aston Costa Verde Beach Resort: Very nice

Beautiful grounds and the rooms were very clean and comfortable. The service is great. The food is ok always found something to eat, they do their best. The employees are very friendly and go out of their way to make your stay enjoyable. Beach is beautiful and so are the pools. Will be returning.

Aston Costa Verde Beach Resort: Fair value for low price

Visited Aston Costa Verde in late April/early May. Beach was highlight of our trip. Amazing snorkelling, crystal clear water and no waves or seaweed. We had club upgrade. Rooms were very clean with plenty of hot water and fresh towels daily. Staff service was excellent. Club restaurant and VIP lounge both amazing. Lobby bar was even better with extensive cocktail menu. Had a few drinks and all were most excellent. Unfortunately buffet and snack bar were both big let downs due to severe food sho [... read more]rtages. Filtered water was also problematic (weird taste and smell). Minimal entertainment during our trip. Cuban musicians on a couple of evenings. However can’t really complain given very low price with club upgrade. If you are low budget traveller with minimal expectations this resort may be perfect for you.

Sol Rio de Luna y Mares: Good Resort

We had a wonderful trip as always. Great beach , The staff is amazing. There's not a large variety of food but always enough to fill your needs. We go there mainly for the beach and people so there's everything we need. This was our 15th trip.

Gran Muthu Almirante Beach Resort: Great Resort

This is a smaller resort, with everything you need. Pools,beautiful beach, friendly staff, a few restaurants. It is easy to find your way around due to the smaller size. The property is lovely - very clean and well maintained. The pools are clean, not that we used them. We spent our time at the beach. You do have to get up early to get beach chairs, but that seems to be the case everywhere you go. It is not a huge expanse of beach, enough for a short walk. The food is okay, you can alw [... read more]ays find something to eat. Nobody goes to Cuba for the food. The pina coladas are great! If I were to have a complaint, it would be that there were no hooks in the room. Make sure you go to the dollar store and pick up a few clothing hooks. I would recommend this resort for families, friends, or couples.

Playa Pesquero: Great resort

Worth every penny, service was great in the rooms & dining area. Clean & customer relations is very hospitable, beach area is clean, selection of alcohol is excellent, food items are acceptable, will definitely go back!

Sanctuary at Grand Memories Holguin: Cuban Resort

This resort is fairly big....separated adult and family....1.30 minutes drive away from the airport....but could be 2 hours depending on the traffic. Food wise....shortages are recognizable but always something to eat overall..... alcohol was fine.... canned beer all week. entertainment was fine.....3 pools..... middle pool being most active.... Beach was fine.....not as good as Santa Maria but overall good.

Club Amigo Atlantico Guardalavaca: Beach is Amazing!

Overall if you travel to Cuba without having high expectations, you'll love the resort for the value being spent. Pros, front desk staff are so accommodating, beach is so amazing, and cleaning staff for the room was top notch!!! Cons, Unfortunately we went at a time where the resort was at it's slow time (April 19-27'24) so half way thru our stay, the 24hr snack bar was shut down for renos, room beside us was being renovated and the resort opened up to the locals, which is fine, but they seemed  [... read more]to take over the resort and the wait time for breakfast was 45 minutes in a line up to get an egg/omelet, very frustrating. Also one thing to be concerned about the bartender received dirty glasses, some with beer still in them and she reused them by topping the glasses up with beer to new customers, very unsanitary. FYI bring your own thermos cups to drink out of. No complaints about the weather blue skies and sunshine every day. That was a bonus for sure.

Aston Costa Verde Beach Resort: Clean hotel, friendly staff

Pros: my room was spotless, very clean, new beds. Never saw one bug and never got any bites, after spending every day at the beach. Staff were excellent, always friendly and smiling. Cons: the sound system is too loud! If you weren’t deaf when you arrived, you will be when you leave. The sound bounces off the walls of the buildings and you can’t try to sleep until 11:00, when they shut it down. Not great for young families, or older people who want to sleep around 9:00.

Brisas Guardalavaca: Lovely Oceanview Resort

I was at Brisas April 22 (2024). I was in the villa section and had a beautiful ocean view villa. The villa section is tranquil and has its own pool and is next to a beach front bistro serving breakfast and lunch. The hotel ocean views are above the pool. Even if you don’t have ocean view in your room or villa, you can see the ocean from almost anywhere in the resort. The beach is beautiful, and you can walk a couple of km - past the neighbouring club amigo and all the way down to the local mark [... read more]et on it. Unless you are looking for a big hotel (this has about 400 occupancy if full) or must have a five star, this is a wonderful resort. I wholeheartedly recommend it. For families or people who want more action, I would choose the villa section - or especially a mini villa suite -for the little bit more they cost.

Gran Muthu Almirante Beach Resort: Great Resort - Very Nice Beach.

New hotel with nice gardens and pools. Clean and spacious restaurants, good food in Cuban style! Beautiful beach. Negative: By 6am most beach chairs are "taken" - Nothing new on resorts but hotel could try to take some 'action' to minimize this!

Brisas Guardalavaca: Beautiful as Always

Brisas Guardalavaca never disappoints. The people are the very best, the beach is perfect and despite some negative reviews we’ve read recently we found the resort to be just as nice and inviting as always. The food is good, we prefer to eat at El Patio near the beach during the day as we love the view and table service. The pasta and stir fry stations in the buffet are nice as well as the fresh fish and chicken/ pork/beef daily. And the fresh breads and ice cream of course. We have been going t [... read more]o Brisas since 2008 and look forward to our next visit.

Paradisus Rio De Oro: Beautiful resort

This was the nicest resort I have stayed in in Cuba. Smaller resort with rooms with large sleeping area with living room attached. Beautiful bathroom. All buildings in centre of resort so right was to lobby, buffet and left close to pool and beach. Food was ok, only one day there was no eggs but always a large variety of food for every meal. Staff were very accommodating. Could always get a beach or pool chair any time of day. Adult only resort, found the majority of people 45-70 age grou [... read more]p. Would definitely go back!

Sol Rio de Luna y Mares: Sol Rio de Luna

As we have just returned from 21 days at Sol Luna I feel I can give a fair and honest assessment for this resort. This is our seventh trip to this resort and our 14th to Cuba.First of all the staff and grounds are one of the best in Cuba. There are some serious issues in Cuba surrounding shortages The poor staff do what they can to satisify but even their frustration shows at times. Examples are no bread for days, no eggs for days ,no bacon for days, limited watered down juice. no mixed drinks e [... read more]xcept rum punch. At the A La Carte restaurants it seems to be the same old products just renamed.Example soup in all pretty much the same but renamed in each.Water issues for a few days resulted in some frustration. 1 day no water for 8 hours 1 day no water for 4 hours 1 day no hot water... We feel that we are fair and try to understand the problems Cuba is having however as we are paying good money for the trip we don,t expect to have these ongoing problems.Conditions were much worse this year than 2023. I have no issues with Trip Central and certainly will be using Jenn Black in the future.Unless things improve in Cuba i would not recommend any resort in this country.

Grand Memories Holguin: Great Memories in Holguin

I have to say that I was very hesitant to go to Cuba for our family vacation this year. We had heard many things about the food shortages and hotel conditions. We were flabbergasted by the fantastic resort! Beautifully spread out...your choice of 3 pools, plenty of bars, food / snack bars and great music entertainers! The room was in immaculate condition. The room service was excellent, our room maid was so particular to ensuring our room was clean with a lovely flower and towel animal surpri [... read more]se on the bed or counter daily! We were on the ground floor right near the pool, so I was afraid it would be noisy. Not at all! The loudspeaker only goes on at 10am with soft meditation music. The loud party time is from 3-6pm and by 8pm, it is a ghost town. No rocking disco to keep you awake all night. The entertainment was fun and clean. Good dancing lessons. Beach was immaculately cleaned every morning. Great yoga on the beach. Massage was good and the Spa was so serene! Gym was very modern and new equipment. Thank you Beth for suggesting this place. We were very pleased!

Grand Memories Holguin: Great Memories in Holguin

I have to say that I was very hesitant to go to Cuba for our family vacation this year. We had heard many things about the food shortages and hotel conditions. We were flabbergasted by the fantastic resort! Beautifully spread out...your choice of 3 pools, plenty of bars, food / snack bars and great music entertainers! The room was in immaculate condition. The room service was excellent, our room maid was so particular to ensuring our room was clean with a lovely flower and towel animal surpri [... read more]se on the bed or counter daily! We were on the ground floor right near the pool, so I was afraid it would be noisy. Not at all! The loudspeaker only goes on at 10am with soft meditation music. The loud party time is from 3-6pm and by 8pm, it is a ghost town. No rocking disco to keep you awake all night. The entertainment was fun and clean. Good dancing lessons. Beach was immaculately cleaned every morning. Great yoga on the beach. Massage was good and the Spa was so serene! Gym was very modern and new equipment. Thank you Beth for suggesting this place. We were very pleased!

Grand Memories Holguin: Did Not Live Up to Expectation!

SUMMARY – we were there Apr. 10 - 21, 2024 and are unlikely to return. When considering this review, we are mustard people, not Grey Poupon. Cuba offers exceptional value for the price. We have been to 5 Cuban resorts in the past 2 years. 3 of the 5 we would go back to. SANCTUARY – did not live up to expectation and some of the advertised claims were not provided or available. Principally, we were told to go early Sunday morning to book a la carte reservations for the next week which we did [... read more]. All times around 7:00 p.m. were already gone. Our butler never approached us to book reservations as others seemed to get. CHECK-IN – very easy and our room was ready. RESORT – very well taken care of. I saw staff cleaning railings three times. ROOM – quite roomy and a nice layout. Air conditioning would stop / start erratically. STAFF – unlike previous resorts, we really did not connect with staff, but the service was very good. BEACH – important to us, this beach was disappointing for us considering the coral starts about 50 feet from the shore. Bring lake shoes if you go. All other aspects were fine. This beach ranks last out of the 5 we’ve been to. By example, Grand Aston Cayo Paredon Cayo Coco where most of the beach is powdery sand which extends way out into the ocean including sandbars. You can walk for miles along the beach. POOLS – all fine other than the lounge chairs are horrendous. FOOD – for the most part, typical Cuban spread. We were pleased with the a la carte restaurants. Buffet had eggs 2/3 breakfasts, bacon rarely, bottled water rarely, wine always. Shortages are a Cuba issue, not the resort. WI-FI – excellent! Login details were good for the duration of our stay. TIPPING – we live by the belief that Cuban people need some help and that if you take care of people, they take care of you. We bring lots of stuff to hand out and tip as well. Do not bring coins. Buy coins from the staff, tip with the coins, and then buy the coins at the end of the stay. MISC. – mosquitoes were a non-issue. FACEBOOK GROUP – it was apparent that there are some people who are passionate about this resort, and Cuba. At one point, it was over-the-top when one FB member criticized another’s FB post. The FB post wrote that the resort did not deliver as promised, twice, for a 6-year-old birthday cake. The FB member told them they should go to the Dominican Republic. Please consider that one person’s experience / expectation may not be the same as yours. Never discourage people from going to Cuba! Think about the amount of your all-inclusive cost, and tips, that one person going to Cuba puts into the Cuban economy. I struggle with Cuba, and Sunwing nonsense, but still want to go with our next trip scheduled for the Fall.

Playa Pesquero: Great vacation!

We were there for 8 glorious days. The room was very clean and comfortable, the staff were pleasant and helpful, the pool was really nicely laid out and the beach was absolutely wonderful. We had been warned not to expect too much in terms of food and that would be the only iffy thing about this trip, however we were impressed with two of the à la carte restaurants. We really enjoyed our add-on excursions: Blue Adventure (snorkeling), Jeep Safari (back-country driving, horseback riding, speed bo [... read more]at) and Deep Sea Fishing. We also highly recommend taking the Bye-Bye Holguin Tour. We would definitely go back.