Itz'ana Belize Resort & Residences — Hotel in Stann Creek District

We had pros and cons about this resort. One big con. The room had mold and made my entire family sick. I am still getting over it. My wife is better now. At checkin, they took us to the wrong room and had to figure out what was going on. It was a late checkin and night shift may not have been prepared for our arrival. Not a big deal, they got it figured out and moved us. We smelled mold after walking into the room. My wife opened the cabinet door and saw mold on the inside, particularly on the inside of the doors. The began cleaning everything. We could not get rid of the smell, and we began to cough. The next day, we thought we would open the doors to the patio and air it out. We didn’t want to run the air conditioning when the doors were open so we turned it off. The concrete floor and walls started sweating water, so much water and it was completely wet. We closed the patio door, turned on the air conditioning and set the dry function. All the water went away, as long as the air conditioning was running with the dry function on. Knowing this, I think that this room gets really wet when guests are not present, the air conditioning is turned off and the water returns. These would definitely cause mold. I don’t know how they are going to fix this, but it is a problem. We got sick from it. The next con was the complimentary breakfast menu. We had 1 option, and not the best option. The sister resort in San Ignacio was much better and I did give them 5 stars. We stayed 5 days, we should have had better options for complimentary breakfast. Restaurant staff were great. Hotel check-in was okay and staff were friendly. The hotel needs more active management. Some guess set dirty dishes and glasses outside their rooms and they literally sat there for 3 days because no managers were walking around, checking out the property and directing the staff. They need to improve this.|The pool was beautiful. Access to the beach was great, but the water was choppy during our stay, not their fault. We loved the cocoplum trees. We loved the iguanas and agoutis living on the property. We loved all the trees. We didn’t swim in the sea but had a great time chilling on the beach. |Improve the menu at the restaurant. Improve the choices for complimentary breakfast, this is a pricey resort. Managers should walk and check the property to make sure things are being maintained and remain clean. I am not sure how you can fix the mold problem in the rooms, but something needs to be done about that too. Guests are not going to be happy, if they walk away from...

Itz’ana has no place calling themselves a “luxury” hotel. We had issue after issue here and I can only assume it’s due to poorly trained front desk staff. I am also pregnant and have been dealing with pretty bad all-day sickness, so having meals delayed only makes that worse (important context for these critiques) Here we go… Breakfast doesn’t open until 7am (even though their website says 6:30am) which is an issue already due to many having early morning excursion pickup times, but the biggest issue from this arose due to us buying food to cook for breakfast since we had a stove in our room. Come breakfast time, our stove doesn’t work. We ended up having to order room service and they messed up our order. When we got back from our excursion, we were upgraded to a much nicer room that had a working stove and they comped us dinner that night. I was hoping this was the only issue and we could at least give Itz’ana a 4 star review. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only issue. At our comped dinner, they were very accommodating and allowed us to order food that they only serve during lunch since I’m vegetarian and their dinner menu is seriously lacking with vegetarian options. This was great, but the next night we were told they don’t have those things so we couldn’t order them. Very inconsistent service. We placed a room service order for lunch one day and after not hearing confirmation from them for over 50 minutes, my husband just went down to order the food and they said they had shift change so the information was never relayed. This is absurd for a “luxury” hotel. They did comp this meal, again, but we’d prefer things to be done correctly the first time and not waiting 2+ hours for food due to poor staff training. For two days straight, they were out of bananas for smoothies. Bananas grow in Central America… how are they out of bananas? Upon checkout, they tried to charge us $80 for a shuttle service that we never used. More minor but was actually the first thing that stood out to me when we first checked in was that they don’t provide bathrobes. I’ve never stayed at a 4 star resort that doesn’t provide robes.

John at the restaurant seemed to be the only staff member who knew anything about hospitality.

Overall, it seems that Itz’ana believes that because they have a beautiful location on the water that they can provide subpar services. But there’s millions of places in the world that you can travel to with just as nice of views and better service. If we return to Belize in the future, we won’t be staying here and don’t recommend...

The hotel in itself is beautiful and so is their private beach. But that’s about it. It’s clear that once they put together the beautiful grounds and design, they thought the work is done. The only reason we ended up going to the hotel even is because we couldn’t eat the cancellation costs which are pretty damn high. But I’ve never experienced such completely lack of compassion or empathy on part of any business, let alone a “luxury” hospitality group. Someone close in our family had passed away a couple of weeks before our planned trip to Belize and most of the hotels we had booked agreed to cancelling our often non-refundable reservations given the circumstances. But not Itzana. Not only did they refuse to refund us or even let us change dates despite multiple calls to their front desk to explain what had happened, the “manager” or director who made the final decision (as told to me by one of their staff members) refused to come to the phone even to explain her decision. Every time I was told she was “unavailable” to come to the phone but would call me back. That never happened. I was just coldly told “that’s the final decision.” I understand wanting to make money but t try having some basic human decency while you’re at it.

Once we got there, we thought things would get somewhat better. But the service is absolutely awful although some of the staff members are super kind and genuinely want to help but just doesn’t know how. The first night we had dinner, our 2 simple cocktails took 45 mins and once we ordered the food, it was finally brought to our table 2 hours later!! No apologies, no one came to check in or give us an update. We just waited until it was past 10 pm and we sat down at 8….when the food finally arrive, it was so poorly cooked, I couldn’t even finish it. Similar instances continued throughout our 3 day stay during which we tried to not spend time or our money at the hotel as much as we could. Anytime we asked for the smallest thing like a towel they’d nod, say yes and then never come back. When we asked for a toothbrush, they said it’d be an extra charge and charged us $11 USD for it. LOL This entire place is just a scam with a heartless and soulless management who do not care at all whether you’re having a good time or not. they just want your money and then you’re on your own. We went to several other hotels like Turtle Inn and Mariposa around in Placencia which were both amazing and I’d highly recommend instead of choosing this absolute money grabbing operation...