Hotel Riu Palace Paradise Island — Hotel in New Providence

TL:DR, I would not recommend staying at this hotel.||I'd been to this resort four times previously (2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019) and had beyond-lovely experiences each time. I recommended it to my group of girl friends who were looking to take a getaway trip (February 2025). When I arrived, I was embarrassed that I was responsible for suggesting the Riu Paradise Island. It has gone downhill in multiple ways, which I will detail below.||1) Lobby – upon walking in, there is a stench of sewer that I know comes from the water on the island, but how this has not been addressed is beyond me. ||2) Rooms – from the moment we opened the doors to our room, the room never felt “clean”. I could see streaks of cleaning residue on the furniture (and the room smelled strongly of it) but I could still see what I am assuming were feet-grease marks on the floor from the previous tenants. The rooms are very damp—when we woke up in the morning, our floor was actually dew-y wet. Like, when we stepped on the floor with only socks on, they would get wet. How gross? I’m unsure if that is just the condensation from the air conditioning of the rooms below us, or the buildings inability to de-humidify properly. To pile on to the mugginess feeling, our swimsuits and cover ups that we hung in our rooms never dried... in the 4 days that we were there. We put them into our suitcases to head home, damp. In addition to the general feeling of uncleanliness, half of the outlets in our room did not work. Our safe had no instructions on it. Luckily I remembered how to operate it from previous stays, but otherwise it would have been unusable without instructions. ||3) Staff – my memories of the Riu from previous trips were of happy workers, always looking to make your stay special and smiling/almost over-serving us. On those previous trips, I was so happy to tip them generously and thank them for their hospitality. This trip, the servers were no more interesting in making sure we had what we needed at mealtimes than the man on the moon. We had to ask multiple times for breakfast coffee/cups, drinks at dinner. One time at breakfast we were told they were “out of champagne” but then saw other servers bringing mimosas to multiple tables near us. Upon following up, champagne magically appeared and we were given mimosas. Just overall a strange experience, especially when having told my girl-friends “be sure to bring cash for tips, the waiters are excellent and over-accommodating”. ||4) Transportation – I am a Riu Class Member and was offered free transportation to and from the airport. However, despite following up the day of our arrival AND the day before our departure to make sure we were booked on a return bus, the bus never arrived. The bus was to pick us up at 5 am and take us to the airport, and at 5:30 am, the doorman at the Riu told us we should go ahead and get a cab because we were risking missing our flights. Why offer free transportation and make us go through the trouble of booking the transport if it would not show up? ||5) Pool – if you are looking for a relaxing beach vacation, the Riu pool is not for you. It reminded us of spring break for 21 year olds – overcrowded, loud, water gets pretty gross towards the end of the day. We were actually drinking quite a bit on our trip and do enjoy an afternoon party vibe, but even then could not convince ourselves to get into the pool… ||6) Beach – amazing, the men working the beach chairs and umbrella were extremely nice and helpful at setting up chairs. The beach itself is lovely and the water is the most beautiful I have ever seen. ||7) Reservations at the restaurants – upon checking in we found out that we needed an app to make dinner reservations at the restaurants. We also found out that the restaurants were fully booked… upon check in. How is one to get reservations if the reservation system is inaccessible until check in and then by that time, it is too late to get one? Very frustrated by this point. We had to beg the front desk to assist us in getting reservations. Then (here is where it gets wild) we walked into our restaurant at the time of our reservation to be seated in a 70% empty restaurant! We looked around at all the empty tables and asked “why in the world was it so hard to get a reservation here?” It was clear to me that they open a very limited amount of tables for dinner at the restaurants. To me, this greatly diminishes the Riu experience… Why not offer your guests the best food via dinner reservations? The buffet was ok but no one left a buffet meal saying “that was good”. Our feedback after buffet meals was “that was ok, thank goodness for the pizza slices”. ||Although this review might sound snobbish, I can assure you that I am not. I travel pretty frequently and this was the most disappointing stay I have had in a while. I would not recommend this resort to a friend and am embarrassed at having done so and having my friends spend their money to travel and stay here. |Sincerely, a former big fan of the Riu...

We stayed at Hotel Riu Palace Paradise Island 12 years ago. We only stayed 4 days and this time we stayed a whole week. The Riu is exactly as we remembered it. Everyone at the resort was wonderful, friendly, and helpful. There was one issue that was never resolved; but didn't impact our stay. Okay if you must know the toilet in the room was not tightened to the floor so it wabbled...lol...we told them 3 times at the desk and it was never fixed. Not a big deal. The room was clean, the young lady who took care of our room the whole week we were there did a wonderful job and left us with a surprise most every day. It was a delight to see what it was going to look like when we returned to the room in the afternoon. A gentleman who worked there brought her some Dr. Pepper, a six pack, because they don't carry that on sight. Wonderful staff!!! Can't say enough good things about them; housekeeping, dining, pool, bars, spa...they were all superb individuals with great personalities. We had a great time at this resort. |The food there was top notch! I don't believe I had a bad meal there. Because of the limited things I eat for breakfast, I had the same things for breakfast everyday; but the other meals were great. We were able to secure a reservation for the Bahamas Steakhouse and Krystal Fusion restaurants both were fantastic! I definitely recommend making sure you book these two restaurants, you won't be disappointed. We ate at the buffet for the rest of the evenings we were there. I am a truck driver and drive all over the U.S. eating out over 300 days a year. This causes one to not want to eat out. I was never pleasantly satisfied with the food every meal I ate there. Not once was I wishing I was home cooking for myself as I am most of the time. ||We did a diner sunset cruise on a catamaran and had a blast. Crazy but the food was good there as well. We did the Pirate Jeep Tour, also had a great time. And we utilized the spa. All were enjoyable.||The entertainment: I would only give about 2 stars for. The Michael Jackson show was a disaster. The entertainer who portrayed him didn't lip sing half of the time and when he did move his mouth he didn't know the words. It really wasn't a good show. The other shows are very similar as they have the exact same people performing. So it is almost like the same thing over and over with different costumes and songs. The music is much too loud for the room it is held in...louder is not better. The pre-shows however sometimes are local talent and they are good. I wouldn't miss them. In my opinion they should simply hire more of the local talent and instead of having them do a half hour or hour; they should just have them to the show for the evening. I think it would be much more entertaining and enjoyable. The Riu dancers are good; but there really should be a better variety. If I was to suggest something; it would be hire more of your local talent to do shows each week; and try and see if you could get a comedian to come out. I would ditch the dancers though if it was me; or maybe just use them a couple nights a week. We would play for 4 hours at the clubs. That would go over much better. Everyone would love a Michael Jackson show....but find someone who cares about the show and does a good job. We were at the Riu there in Jamacia, they had a great MJ impersonator, put on a fantastic show...it was the best one we saw there. If you could find someone like that you would have something. Just my two cents. ||Word of caution to my U.S. brothers and sisters. If you purchase more than $800 per person you will need to declare it at customes. The U.S. government will charge you what came out to be about a 6% tax on everything over the $800 duty free limit. If you purchase jewelry worth more than your duty free limit make the jeweler put the amount you paid for the piece. We didn't know what was going to happen and we paid a tax on an amount more than we spent. They want to make you feel like you got a great deal so if you pay $1000 for something their paper they give you may say $1500. You will pay the tax on the $1500 not what you spent. Just an FYI. ||I highly recommend Riu Palace, Paradise Island, Nassau, Bahamas! The beach is great, the food is great and the people are wonderful! I don't believe you will regret staying there. Oh...try and get the 14th or 15th floor when you go. Trust me, it will make your stay much...

I wish I could leave 0 stars. We stayed at this location 02/20/25-02/24/25 for my best friends bachelorette party. From the moment we arrived I knew we made a grave mistake booking this hotel for our stay. The staff was beyond rude and unprofessional. They had horrible attitudes and to be frank, flat out nasty. We are a group of young mothers who don't get many opportunities to go away on trips like this and so we were really looking forward to this vacation. The bar staff at the pool would curse under their breath, roll their eyes, would not give us the time of day. The man working at the towel station was extremely rude and clearly miserable every day. The beach is filled with outside vendors constantly harassing you to buy products or go on excursions. While I know it's most likely due to being a public beach and beyond the control of the hotel, it was uncomfortable to constantly have to explain why we were not interested in what they were selling. It was aggravating to the point that we would just leave the beach even though we wanted to lay out by the water.

The pool with the bar was disgusting, while standing at the bar it wreaked of what smelled like vomit. The next day it made sense because a hotel guest was throwing up in the pool. When they got her out all they didn't even clean up after her. They continued to serve her alcohol and she proceeded to throw up all over the pool deck. The staff didn't seem to care or try to help that situation. However, when my group went inside for brunch we were told we were not allowed in the buffet. We were dressed the exact same we were when we were there for breakfast. We had out cover ups and shorts on. We were mortified by the hostess and then the manager came over and told us we were fine to go in.

Making reservations was a joke. When we arrived we were told we needed to make reservations as the restaurants fill up quickly, only to be told over the phone when we called that they had nothing available for us aside from the buffet. Then we tried to be proactive and book our reservations for the remainder of the weekend, only to be told again it was too far in advance and we had to call the morning of. When we walked by the restaurant we wanted to go to later that night it was completely EMPTY!

We booked an ocean front suite and when we got to our room there was a CONCRETE WALL right in front of our balcony. We couldn't see anything!! When we called to explain the situation we were basically disregarded until we went downstairs and explained how much money we spent and what we were expecting per our booking and showed them our confirmation. It took an entire day to switch rooms.

Every day calling down for towels was impossible. We must have called over 30 times to get towels and no one ever showed up. e tried hanging our used towels to dry since we couldn't get new ones and the room (even when AC was shut off) was so frigidly cold the towels would never dry. It was exhausting. We had no choice but to use towels from our friends rooms which caused an inconvenience for the bride.

The tip of the iceberg was the multiple cockroaches we found on our last night. We ran downstairs to show them one that we killed and they basically jumped at the site of it. They told us they wouldn't move us to another room and did not have any sister locations on the island. All they did was give us an email to send our complaint for a refund too. They told us they would send housekeeping up to clean. When they arrived all they did was change our sheets.......We felt super uneasy sleeping in the room so we went down to the bride's room and 7 us us had to squeeze into one king bed. We had early flights in the morning and it was just a nightmare of a situation. After sending our complaints to the email address provided it took 20 days to receive what was basically a (Chat GPT) generic response. I know this because "Deborah F Jane" sent us all the exact same response. I am appalled by this "resort" and I write this once again in tears because my best friends dream bachelorette...