Arena Copacabana Hotel

Great location. Nice enough staff, very responsive to requests. Clean rooms, despite that they must fight all the nice sand that gets tracked in. Everything was in working order in the room, from security safe to shower to bed and bed linens and towels. We usually don’t pay for oceanfront room, but we did so here and so glad we did as it is fun to watch the happenings on the beach. Neighborhood felt relatively safe, used some common sense and had zero issues. Rooftop pool, sauna, patio, gym, bar, and restrooms are nice, sat up there a lot including after 12:00 Noon check-out, and was not crowded despite the small pool. Hotel was a fairly good value as compared to nearby options. Breakfast was good enough, some items nice, and some variety each day. My suggestions for improvement are 1. install new pool tiles soon as the pool looks grungy from the grime stain build up on the tiles, details matter and 2. find a better frozen calamari supplier, such a turn off paying a somewhat high price for rubbery warmed up food that looks okay but has no squid taste and is not tender, impossible to bite off a piece = bad calamari, after having that we said “okay let’s not eat anything else here except for the included breakfast.” Calamari is a bell weather offering, if you cannot serve reasonable calamari then your customers will guess none of your food is going to be good. Overall our experience here was very good and we’d stay here again if we can get a value price again next time. With some small enhancements I’d guess they could charge a higher nightly rate.

My friend and I had an extremely disappointing experience with this hotel. Due to an unexpected emergency, I needed to adjust our reservation by just one day, and I reached out five months in advance to make this minor change. Expedia advised me to contact the hotel directly, but when I did, they refused to assist, citing their "non-refundable" policy. They wouldn’t even consider adjusting our check-in date by one day, even though it was the exact same length of stay and there was plenty of notice. To make things worse, United Airlines was willing to offer a refund or reschedule my flight for up to a year, showing much more empathy and flexibility than the hotel. In contrast, the hotel offered no solutions, not even a conversation. When we arrived, we were delayed due to our flight and didn’t check in until 11:57 PM, just minutes before the next day. On the back end, we had to check out a day early on March 5 due to our emergency. That means we lost out on two full days of our stay that we had fully paid for, with no compensation or effort from the hotel to assist us. I even spoke with the manager in person before leaving, who said he would look into it, but we never received any follow-up, despite daily emails and calls. Their lack of communication, compassion, and flexibility was deeply frustrating. This is not how guests should be treated, especially during emergencies. Because of this experience, my friend and I will never stay here again, and I would strongly caution others to think twice before booking.

Location is great but the service is terrible!!! No matter when you get there, check in is 2pm. NO MATTER WHAT THEY TELL YOU! The rooms are small and dirty. Floors had a lot of sand and dirt. Towels had stains on them and smelled like they were just used. The pool is small and the location is awkward. Swimming while people are eating lunch/dinner around you. They only have 4 lounge/sun chairs for the entire hotel on the roof :/. The elevators are small and slow. Only 5 people at a time. Sometimes we would wait 10-15 minutes for an elevator because it would be so busy either on the way up or the way down.