Mar Palace Copacabana Hotel — Hotel in Região Geográfica Imediata do Rio de Janeiro

The good: The rooms look nice.

The shower is awesome.

The roof had an awesome view, a pool and a sauna.

It’s only a 5 minute walk to the beach and an abundance of places to eat.

There’s a supermarket and pharmacy right around the corner.

The bad: The walls are VERY thin. So thin we could hear our neighbors turning their showers off and on, talking, their TV. Etc.... If you’re a light sleeper, like me, I would highly suggest another place.

The majority of the staff are unpleasant. Examples: One night my wife called the front desk because at 11PM our neighbors were blowing whistles. The same night at 1AM the upstairs room was moving their beds, so the sound of wood scraping on wood was echoing in our room. I called the front desk to see if they could call the room above us. My exact words were “could you please call the room above us and ask them to stop moving furniture, it’s keeping me from falling asleep.” The front desk clerk started YELLING at me so loudly that it woke my wife up. He accused my wife of lying earlier when she called about the whistles and refused to do anything about the upstairs room making noise.

A few days later we were at the beach with a friend, and told him he could come back to the hotel so we could order some pizza and get ready for our next stop. The manager refused to let our friend come upstairs with us. Our friend is a geeky physicist from Luxembourg. I’m not sure what they thought the problem would be with him coming up, but I find it ridiculous that we had to change plans because of this.

The wifi: Literally slower than dial-up.

The complimentary breakfast is “meh” at best. This our fifth hotel we’ve stayed in over the past two weeks and it has has the worst food BY FAR. Almost all of the food is stale.

Finally: We checked out of our room 4 hours early so we could go to one of the local museums. The hotel wanted to charge us R$25 per bag to put them in the closet for a few hours while we went out. When my wife told them that after how we were treated here, it’s ridiculous that they would expect us to pay for this, the manager said “Just use your husbands debit card to pay, then it will be around $6 USD. Zero decency from the hotel staff here.

For a “fancy Rio hotel” it’s incredibly disappointing. I actually can’t wait to get home from vacation here so I can get some sleep, and that’s the exact opposite of how one should feel about their accommodations, especially one that’s a block from the beach in a tourist city.

I can say with zero exaggeration that this hotel and its staff ruined our trip to Rio. Not being able to relax in the hotel room after a day of being out and about is just the worst feeling, especially when the staff doesn’t seem to care about the guests being disturbed by...

We stayed for a total of 6 nights at the Hotel Mar Palace and found our stay to be top quality . We are a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 children aged 9 & 11) from Ireland. We arrived early into Rio and our guide collected us from GIG so we knew that our rooms would not be ready. We went for breakfast and once we finished Carmella advised us that our accommodation was ready. We cannot thank the housekeeping enough for a prompt turn around, as you can imagine with 2 young kids and after a long flight we appreciated how quickly we were sorted. Pablo was fantastic, very helpful and arranged taxi for us to go see the Aquarium on our second day as it was raining. There is numerous shops nearby such as C&A, restaurants, McDonalds, supermarkets and no end of pharmacies. We were less than 5 minutes walk to Copacabana Beach, and there was a local market on Sunday morning which gave us a taste of Brazilian delicacies, what an experience and eye opener. The front desk staff were always helpful and courteous and helped with electric adapter issues. Our room had the most amazing views of Christ the Redeemer, it was perfect for our needs. Bed linen changed daily, mini bar fully stocked, clean towels, hot water at all times. The small pool on the rooftop was ideal for our boys, it had fantastic views. The breakfast buffet selection was plentiful and catered for Irish needs. Carmella and all the staff are doing an excellent job, they are helpful and courteous, tending to customers every need. Before our trip we read some of the reviews left on this site and they left me unsure of what to expect, we can tell you it was totally the opposite experience we had. 10 out of 10. ||When you are visiting the attractions ,you have to be careful and vigilant at all time like every other large city, but the hotels proximity to the famous beach is ideal and the short walk from the hotel to the beach is safe. Thank you Carmella and...

Really disappointed by the hotel and the service. Caveat that we stayed here on NYE so it was their busiest time, and I’ve put * next to things that might not happen at another time of year. We are 2 couples in our 30s under separate reservations, we stayed for 4 days. PROS: The AC works, the rooms seemed clean enough, rooms looked liked the pictures. CONS: You hear a lot of noise from the hall and other rooms, we were in a nonsmoking room but the cigarette smoke from other smoking rooms came into our room through the bathroom vents, the wifi stopped working entirely for a day* [hotel claimed it was a regional issue] and did never worked in the 12th floor room, the breakfast was not good, they stopped stocking it 30 min before the end* and ran out of plates and cups at various points, the water would not get hot enough for a comfortable shower on 2 separate days, our rooms were not ready for 2p check in (one was ready at 2:30 another at 4p), the full-size bed was two single beds pushed together, the staff was totally unhelpful with these issues- at one point when we needed to make a local call to a tour guide and asked for help using the lobby phone, they said they were “too busy” to help [there were no other guests at the desk].** They give you one key per room which would normally be fine except that you need a key to push the elevator buttons to get the room where your wife has the key. Hotel in general is not very well maintained… Would...