Westin Playa Bonita: An excellect choice for a relaxing week vacation spot

This is a very nice and new hotel, grand lobby and all the staffs are trying their best to please. However, most of the staff do not speak English. Do not expect anything good from the beach though, if you are a beach person then you will not be impress with the beach at all. Overall a very nice experience and WiFi works everywhere including at the beach. Location is close enough to Panama city. I would recommend it if you have never been to Panama before.

Grand Decameron Panama: Not disappointed

This was our third trip to the Royal Decameron in Panama. Hot weather, as expected, good service and food. Beach is fantastic, water very warm and pleasant. I was disturbed to see horses on the beach relieving themselves on the shore and onto the sand (where children play). I did write this in the evaluation given at the end of our stay, and hopefully something will be done to remedy the situation, as the idea of swimming with horse shit is repulsive. Our previous two stays there were no ho [... read more]rses on the beach, and this time the two horses rarely brought any business to the owner.

Grand Decameron Panama: Awesome weather and a very clean resort!

My husband and I have been to the Royal Decameron Beach Resort in Panama many times. Having the new airport open so close to the resort was an amazing experience. The grounds are impeccable and the staff are friendly. The addition of the waterslides is awesome! We will be back soon for sure.

Bijao Beach Resort: The Standard Sheraton Experience

We thought it was a good resort for the price paid. There wasn't anything to complain about. The pools and beach were great. The rooms were clean, the service was friendly and helpful but not over the top. We enjoyed the a la carte restaurants. The buffet was good but too busy at times. There was a nice variety of activities and the recreation staff made them fun (especially volleyball). The tennis courts are in great condition. It would have been nice if the non motorized water sports (ie kayak [... read more]s) were included. Overall we had an amazing time and I would recommend the Sheraton resort to others.

Grand Decameron Panama: Well-run resort

We had an excellent week at this resort. It is well run, the staff are really pleasant and professional. The facilities are fine, if a little worn around the edges in areas. Beautifully-maintained grounds and pools. Great room, ocean view - a bit noisy at night if there was a show in the outdoor theatre near lobby 1. The food was fine, not exceptional but pretty good for buffet style. The a la carte restaurants were variable in food quality, but always excellent service and ambiance. All-in-all, [... read more] excellent value. One negative...buyer beware on the tours sold in the lobby; we were badly shortchanged on our Canal excursion. Really be careful in terms of ensuring the specifics are adhered to.

Grand Decameron Panama: Nice big resort

Public area and the pools of the resort are clean and the personal friendly and ready to help. The staff was speaking almost only spanish. Just a few could answer a litlle bet on english The food was not to various but ok.

Grand Decameron Panama: Nice resort

This is a nice resort with a long beach, close to the Rio Hato airport. The food was not to various but ok. Public area and the pools of the resort are clean and the personal friendly. Unfortunately, just a few of the staff are speaking English.

Grand Decameron Panama: Good resort

The public washrooms in the beach bars were pretty dirty. The outside landscape was beautiful. The rooms were always well cleaned and cold. The staff was very friendly. The food was decent, but the snack bars were the only options for food without booked reservations.

Grand Decameron Panama: Great resort

Overall a great resort - pretty big, rooms are nice and clean, buffets are great, a beach is good. Car rental facility is fair in price and right in front of the entrance. The staff is professional. The whole check in and out process is very well organized. The la carte restaurant food is lower level than expected. A bit weird policy in regards to drinking water - feels like there is a shortage of it and you have to refill the bottles in the bars or lobbies. Most of the staff doesnt speak E [... read more]nglish, but it's not a big deal. Water motorized rides and tours are quite expensive - just keep in mind. But overall we spent great time there and we liked it a lot.

Grand Decameron Panama: awesome

This resort was amazing. Good food great people nice rooms and hot. Close to a town. Excursions to book. Pools were clean and big. Would recommend this place to everyone. There are shuttles to take you around the resort

Grand Decameron Panama: nice

very clean lots to do good food great pools beauitful beach lots of activies to do day band night service could of been better with more staff knowing to speak english and understanding the beach very clean and white

Grand Decameron Panama: November Vacation

We thought this hotel was great!! Very large, & a lot of walking, but beautiful & well kept. Food was excellent, never had an issue with quality, & we tried quite a few places within the resort. Staff were great also. Learning a bit of Spanish goes along way in Panama, since there really is no second language, English is not spoken by everyone.

Riu Playa Blanca: Not amazing , but very acceptable , considering we travel to most .

This resort was very clean , staff were very respectable , knowledgeable and courteous . food was good , although the menu never changed while we were there. I would go there again , although my wife might not, and the reason she wouldn't would be the dirt , not so much at the resort , which was kept in pristine condition , but the beach which was ugly . very bad indeed . The beach had so much garbage , which was mostly washed up , tree limbs etc , it wasn't pretty and considering we a [... read more]re beach people , left a lot to be desired . and if you went on any outside trips , left one with a bad taste about the general garbage everywhere. The resort could have made SOME effort to clean up there portion of the beach , instead of nothing .

Riu Playa Blanca: ok resort

Clean resort good food but not a 5 star basic service and basic property. Was ok for the price but not organized at all .did not give us a good impression of the riu hotels. There's no info about restaurant closures. Pool closures. Activities are not posted .rooms are made different avery day sometime its stock sometimes you're missing half the stuff . definitely not a 5 star resort as they claim .now about sunwing all they're trying to do is sell sell sell .been to many many trips never seen th [... read more]is they start as soon as you sit in the plane.and at the resort too.if its not one of there tours they are not interested. We like discovering the area we stay in .but not too helpful.so overall the decameron hotel next door was better for us bigger and easier too get around panama on your own.

Riu Playa Blanca: Clean resort with friendly staff

The resort was clean and the staff were friendly. Donny at the beach bar was exceptional in his service. It is a great resort for a one week stay. My wife and I stayed for two weeks and found that the lack of things to do around the resort was trying. There are three a la cartes, which is two few for a two week stay. The Italian and Steak House were good, but the Asian with its buffet only style left much to be desired. The buffet was quite good as well. It is a small resort with one walkway fro [... read more]m the main building to the beach. There was no where to walk except along the beach. However, you could walk for hours along the beach if you wanted. There is a lot of sand between the beach lounge area to the ocean, though it is a dark sand rather than the whiter sand of the Atlantic/Caribbean beaches. And it is hot--both the sand and the weather. This resort has no palapas but instead relies upon the palm trees and a beach style patio umbrella to keep the sun off the vacationers. It doesn't work well. The umbrella is a mesh that allows significant light. When it rains it also offers no protection, unlike the palapa. If someone is looking for a small resort with good food and good staff, doesn't mind the beach umbrella lounge area, and is going for a one week vacation, then this is a great resort.

Riu Playa Blanca: Great Panama Holiday

The Riu Playa Blanca Hotel was amazing.The staff was great,they actually changed are room 4 times till I was happy and no complaint.The maids were amazing,the rooms and balcony were kept very clean. The pools 4 in total were great,however there were no bathrooms close to the pools. the swim up bar I did not go to,seen people in there drinking from 9:00am until after 12;00 and never got out to use the bathroom so to me that pool was definetly off limits YUCK. the meals were okay being a vegeta [... read more]rian and my husband a meat lover it was very hard.The steak house which he loved only offered meat,the side were 2 pcs of broccili and 1/8 cob of corn.We loved the pasta restaurant the best it had a little bit of everything.The nightly entertaiment sucked.

Riu Playa Blanca: Beautiful Resort

This was a well maintained resort with very good service and food. However, I felt that it was geared for accommodating families and children and not adults. Their guest communication requires some more work as activities and changes to their restaurant schedules were not well communicated with me. The entertainment requires also some work, as they used the same band and entertainers every night and it became boring after three nights.

Playa Blanca Resort: Not a 5 star resort

The hotel is located in Rio Hato, on the Pacific Coast of Panama. While the hotel is kept clean and the staff work very hard, this hotel certainly cannot be considered 5 star by any measure. The food, while plentiful, is largely inedible, especially at dinner. The meat is overcooked and dry and becomes tedious after about day 3. There are similarly no amenities in the rooms such as shampoo, conditioner, bathrobes etc., only 2 bars of soap and a refillable soap dispenser in the shower stalls. [... read more] The towels are seriously in need of being upgraded and the pillows on the beds are the tiniest pillows I have ever seen. Panama is very humid and as a consequence, the air conditioner needs to be kept on constantly in order to avoid the rooms from becoming wet. In the first room we stayed in, room 5048, the air conditioning unit could not really be turned up to make it not as frigid, therefore we needed to keep the door open which resulted in wet floors and walls. In addition, this room is right above the disco and the theatre where the nightly entertainment is, as well as the 24-hour sports bar, so it is very noisy. This is not a good choice of location for a family suite. The room was so noisy that after 2 days of being kept awake until 2 am each night, we asked to be moved to another room on the opposite side of the hotel. This room, 6037, although quieter and with a better functioning air conditioner, was located just below the air conditioning fan unit on the roof of the hotel. As such, it was noisy with the constant whir and hum of the motor. The beach and ocean were fine and would likely be better visited in the Canadian winter and not during the Panamanian rainy season as the ocean was quite rough and we therefore couldn't swim in it. There is nothing to do at this hotel, there is limited entertainment, especially for people travelling with tweens and teenagers. There was no games room, no movie night, only very lame poolside entertainment by the Riu staff. Also, the area around the pools should definitely have been kept cleaner as the tiles were very slippery when wet and people frequently left their dirty cups and plates by the poolside and they were not removed by the cleaning staff until much later.

Playa Blanca Resort: Riu Playa Blanca

This is the newest hotel in Rio Hato and as such has no real issues. There is the usual buffet(s) with pretty much the usual fare. Most of it bland, very little of it Panamanian. We stayed in a family suite which is two rooms in one. The first suite (5055) was right over the theatre and it was hard to sleep when the disco kicked in. The second suite (6038) was in the opposite end of the hotel but we had the air conditioning units overhead on the roof and there was a steady "thunka thunka" from t [... read more]he motor. Check in was very well done and the front desk was responsive to all our questions and requests. There are four pools, most of which are treated salt water. There is always something to do, but not too much for older kids. MiniRiu club runs to age 12 at best. It would be nice if there was a games room, somewhere to view a film, something for teens specifically. The rooms are clean and spacious but offer little other than towels and soap: no shampoo, no moisturizer, no pen, no paper, no information that you can take home. The gift shop has some pretty ugly t-shirts and very little "made in Panama" souvenirs. The staff is not knowledgeable about what they sell and is often rude. Minuses: the keys had to be remagnetized every day, sometimes twice a day the beach is lovely to walk but you can't really swim in the ocean - too rough! You will never see a green flag, only yellow if you're lucky. nothing to buy in the gift shop no ATM no place to really walk around you either went to the pool or the beach, nowhere for "strolling" no real entertainment other than the show. How about musicians in the lobby? performances by the dancers? outside people brought in to perform and/or sell things? like everywhere in the Caribbean, there is a smell of mould because of humidity. A little far from everything, no place really to walk to outside of the hotel. Plusses: new hotel, spacious rooms, super clean, lots of staff.

Riu Playa Blanca: GREAT RESORT

This was our first visit to Panama we had an amazing time at the Rui this is a great place and resort very friendly staff and beautiful resort the food and atmosphere are very nice would recommend this resort.