Hotel Regina — Hotel in Região Geográfica Imediata do Rio de Janeiro

I had booked this hotel for a longer period because of its overall “Fantastic” rating at online agencies. This was a huge mistake!||||The only thing “fantastic” with this hotel was the huge variety of fresh tropical fruits for breakfast. Other positive aspects were the relatively fast and stable WiFi internet connection, the big fridges in the rooms and the overall cleanliness in this hotel. ||||But everything else proved to be nothing fantastic but just disappointing. ||||To the details:||||The hotel is located close to the Flamengo Beach and Flamengo Beach Park, which are both nice, but as Flamengo Beach isn’t at the open ocean but situated at the Guanabara Bay, which is notorious for its severe polluted waters and strong stench from sewers, you very often have this stench in your room as well, depending on the wind conditions. ||||Hotel rooms have no balconies and no views. No matter in what room you are you’ll stare against a wall of a neighboring building. ||||The whole hotel is very basic and quite old. The rooms are small, dark and nothing charming. The installations are old, particularly the old air conditioners which are simple window appliances that make a hell of a noise. It’s impossible to sleep with these rumbling air conditioners.||||Rooms are also poorly soundproofed; you literally hear every fart from your neighbor.||||Bed mattresses are old and saggy and also too short for tall people, they appear to be only 1,80 m long. The pillows were full of disgusting sweat stains but they couldn’t arrange clean ones for me.||||They also don’t provide a real cozy blanket to sleep under; there was only a simple thin cotton sheet which isn’t suitable for colder nights.||||There weren’t other bath room amenities than hand soap and shampoo, no coffee or tea making facilities in the room, no free daily drinking water like its standard in many other hotels and destinations around the world. There was also no hand shower in the bathroom.||||TV-channels in the rooms you can also forget. There were around a hundred channels, but 90% were in Portuguese. There was only 1 English movie channel! All other non Portuguese channels were boring News channels. Furthermore there were many TV channels without sound but the hotel couldn’t resolve this issue.||||Walking through the hotels corridors is a very strange experience. Those corridors are completely dark and very narrow. Lights only turn on by motion sensors, section by section, when you start stepping into this complete darkness. ||||The advertised “Gym room” is a bad joke. It’s only a tiny room with 3 treadmills and nothing else.||||What I found really annoying was the whole breakfast situation:||||For most people a good start in the morning is a good breakfast, right? But having breakfast in this hotel was more like a torture for me, because the staff totally exaggerates with the air conditioning and cools down the breakfast room to such a degree that it seems to you to enter a cooling chamber. It’s freezing cold in there, every morning!||||My requests to raise the temperature were completely ignored. ||||Once I opened a window to let in warmer air but right away a waiter showed up telling me to close it because “The air condition is turned on”. I said “Yes I know that. And that’s exactly the reason why I opened the window, because it’s far to cold in here!”. The waiter didn’t care and insisted that I close the window again. ||||After 3 days or so I gave up complaining about it and started to wear a warm jacket, socks and long trousers every morning but even though it was already too late. I became sick from these daily temperature shocks. I got a severe cold which lasted around 10 days. The cold in the breakfast room spoiled my whole stay in Rio! ||||Something else that I found very annoying was that they turn on TV for breakfast, every morning a Brazilian news channel. So hotel guests are already for breakfast nicely confronted with the daily horrors which occur in Brazil. Every morning for breakfast you’ll see and hear solely news about violence, killings, shootings, murders, assaults, assassinations etcetera, things which are totally common in Brazil. What a perfect start in the morning! Come on; How about playing some nice mellow Brazilian music instead of showing horror news on TV?||||They also serve breakfast only until 10am. In other Rio hotels the breakfast is served at least until 10:30 and in some even until 11am. ||||The breakfast buffet consists of mainly cakes and sweets, even the toast bread was sweet but Brazilians seem to love this. There wasn’t decent bread or salty dishes except scrambled eggs. But these scrambled eggs weren’t properly stirred and also not fried enough. They had a watery and disgusting appearance. I couldn’t eat those eggs. There was also no salt and pepper on the tables, only sugar.||||Overall I can’t recommend this hotel and will definitely not stay...

This was a great location. Close to the beach (they say don't swim in the bay, but it's nice to walk by), close to the metro, close to the grocery store, close to a few decent restaurants. Probably a 30 minute walk to the Lapa neighborhood. ||||We were able to check in early. Our room was clean, had a double bed, and a small patio that faced the street. The safe was operable, the wifi was pretty consistent, and the room otherwise had standard amenities. The room was already fitted with adapters for US outlets so we ended up not using the adapters we brought. The bed was fitted with a sheet and a thin blanket, but there was an additional blanket in the closet and I am sure the staff would have given me another one if I had asked.||||The people who worked there definitely made the experience special. The staff was very accommodating and provided recommendations for activities and food nearby. They spoke Portugese, some Spanish, and some English, and were more than happy to call a cab for us when we requested. Whenever we asked for anything (extra toilet paper, towels for the room) the staff was quick to bring them out.||||The breakfast was a pretty big buffet with a lot of fresh fruit, a lot of pastries, deli cheeses and meats, and a selection of probably 8 or more juices. I drank the detox juice every morning because it was gingery and delicious (I would love the recipe!). The staff was quick to restock any foods that ran out and the only day we had to wait to enter the breakfast area was our last day. Even then, the wait was not very long, and there was still plenty of food. The Pao de Queijo was the only thing I wasn't able to get that morning, but I probably ate too much of it during the other five days...

We booked this hotel because it's good reviews, but don't be to thrill by the them.||First of all, the reception and management are not really welcoming, and most can't speak English. They are the worst of all, they din't give me information about the breakfast time or any other tourist related information, not even an explanation of the souring area. They just give the keys to the room and that is it. ||The room are okay, i would say it's under the 3 star standards and are old. There only give you a few amenities, only one small shampoo pack per room for a 2 person. They also forget to put 2 towels in the room.. The blanket is like just nothing, it was just a very thin piece of white sheets. You're better off without one. The Air-condition are loud, but it was alright for me.||The breakfast was normal.||The lobby sucks, there is only 2 seats for waiting, no living room space.||Most of the guests here are from south America and mostly Brazilian.||They are not kind and helpful to tourists at all, my advice is to stay far away from this hotel. DON'T EVER COME. You better stay in a hostel or anywhere else then here.|The worst hotel I been to in my 2 Months traveling through South America. ||I think if you are here for business it should be okay, they have good wifi. But thr TV are old and small.||OH, one more thing is that the guard and bell are nice, and welcoming people they also speak better English then some of the reception, hahaha.} ||This is my advice, take it if you wants a good place to stay and don't make the...