Ocean Varadero El Patriarca

We spent two weeks there. The personnel is incredible. The views are wonderful. The hotel is great and big. Is perfect for a romantic scape

Nice place, Yamilia from customer service helpful providing a lot of information. Love the beach there and pretty relaxing.

Our experience at this hotel was extremely disappointing. Below are the key issues we encountered during our stay: Lack of Basic Amenities: There was no open buffet restaurant available, as advertised at all. The rooms lacked basic facilities such as a phone and a functioning air conditioner, No umbrellas were provided to guests during inclement weather. Transportation Issues: The hotel provided no buggy service to transport guests to their rooms, which were located far from the lobby. We had to walk under the rain with our luggage to reach our room, as the only buggy was broken. Poor Management: There was no responsible manager available to address our concerns, leaving only a concierge to assist until 5.00pm . After that time ,just the receptionist. We were offered to move rooms three times in three days, which was highly inconvenient. Safety Concerns: The door locks were unreliable, raising concerns about security. The room key's were not working in a day we had to run to the lobby to set up again. It is definitely not a 4.5 star hotel as it is advertised.

The hotel advertises minimum of 5 restaurants including buffet that are available. Only 1 restaurant was open. No buffet. No options. Pretty much the same every day. I would have eaten better at home. Asked for a king room on booking and was given a room with 2 single beds. Despite the hotel having only 60 people there, was told I had to wait until the next day to “find” another room. Also asked for my son’s room to be in the same section. He was placed in a completely different block with different access privileges. Drink bars…. None had any soda options suck as coke or Diet Coke. Despite saying they were open until 5pm, the pool bar closed at 4:20. Same for beach bar. The staff are lovely and they work hard. Completely disappointed with Air Transat who sold this vacation because the location did not have any of the restaurants or bars open that they mention in their description. 100% false advertising . This is only day 1. Tried to get hold of air transat but no luck. 9 more days of this to go….

We were at El Patriarca May 14-May 21. We booked the Alegance upgrade because some of the reviews said it was a must. The check in was fast (after all it was only us and another couple). In the lobby the screens behind the check in desk were advertising all the benefits of having booked in the Alegance. It was around 8 pm when we arrived and we were supposed to get a welcome drink( we didn’t). In the room which was clean and we were supposed to find a welcome gift( we didn’t, we asked for it and got it the third day). But the most shocking of all was the food. It didn’t matter where you ate, it was the worst of the worst . We’ve been in Cuba many times and we always lower our expectations when it comes to food. We go there because of the beautiful beaches and hospitality, but this time the only food available was pasta, rice, pork everyday and twice we had chicken and above all a stinky, smelly black fish that nobody would eat , not even my husband who loves fish.No buffet, (it was closed) no bread, no butter, no vinegar or oil, very little or no fruit. When you asked for anything they would say that they didn’t have any and then they’ll bring some out. We gave up on the Alegance “offerings” and thought to try the breakfast served for the rest of people in the resort. If you were early enough for breakfast and lunch you would get some fruit. There was no beach bar, you had to walk to the snack bar to get a drink. The Alegance Bar had good choices, the pool on the other hand was dirty and slippery on the bottom. I almost fell when in the pool and after we complained they sort of cleaned it. The other pool didn’t have any use by the looks of it. There was nothing and nobody in that pool and of course the bar there was closed. The entertainment: they have a disco, it was not open during our stay. Entertainment only a couple of nights an a guitar guy for the third. Now someone might say that is because the situation in Cuba is not good right now and they have a lot of shortages, but asking the other people from the neighbouring resorts they said they had”repeatitive food but they had bbq, burgers, pizzas, fries and so on. So my guess would be this resort didn’t have a good planning in place and definitely a non existent management. When complaining to one of the girls at the consierge I pointed out that it looked like they weren’t wishing for people to come back to this resort because it looked like no effort was put into making this vacation an enjoyable one for people there. I would give a shout out to Ian, Lili and Rachele. Thank you! This resort is a 4.5 star on Air Transat website. Do not believe it! I don’t know how they grade the hotels but the most I would give is 2 stars and air Transat should downgrade this hotel based on the reviews of people that actually had been there. PLEASE DO NOT BELIEVE THE 4 or 5 STAR REVIEWS!!!