Santarena Hotel at Las Catalinas — Hotel in Tempate

We were influenced by convincing marketing and a very misleading article in a certain "French sounding" US travel magazine, into believing we were going to be staying at hotel in a quaint small beach town. The problem is that it isn’t a quaint beach town, it’s a planned resort community which pretends to be a town. It's all a big, artificial somewhat soulless place, started in 2006, owned by 1 company, with a few noncompany owned businesses, that work as concessions within what is really a resort.|If you like early 2000's pastiche mediterranean architecture, you will love it. Personally, I think it feels more suited to Southern California outdoor mall architecture, than something that should have been "plonked" into a pretty Costa Rican bay. Why did they have to build this here ?||Interestingly, although described as a "mediterranean" town, we also were told that it was inspired by Cuban, Colombian, and Moroccan architecture, so it really is a bit of a "mash-up".||The Marketing is beautiful, really clever photography that show the resort finished, I just looked at the photos again on the website it gives no clue of the huge next phase of construction which is happening in the hills behind the hotel. Construction seems to go from 6.00am to 8.00pm 6 days a week by the way.||The first thing you see when you drive down the hill entering the resort, past the other hotel, the very attractive (modern ?) Chameleon Hotel is the construction spreading across all the hills to the right of the property.|There are traffic monitors in orange vests with STOP/GO signs, to allow the huge construction trucks and water tankers in and out between the guest's cars. You actually meet the trucks earlier on the narrow winding, steep road that leads into the resort / town, typically in the middle of the road, heading straight for you, let's just say it's an "interesting" experience !||Once you park your car, you then get to understand that great Mediterranean experience of cursing your wheeled suitcase as you try to navigate the stairs and cobble stones on the way to the hotel entrance, this part is truly reminiscent of the genuine 800 year old Spanish-Italian town experience.||We stayed in the best room in the hotel, luckily you couldn’t hear the construction noise, but I'm sure you could from many of the rooms. |There were 2 great balconies, fantastic views, but no furniture ?. I asked if we could get 2 chairs sent up, we never received them and never heard anything back about our request, so I "borrowed" some chairs from the elevator lobby, several other people did the same thing I noticed.||The room was large and attractive, good bed, but had strange badly positioned lighting, particularly in the closet area, you couldn’t see a thing. Nice bathroom with a huge shower, but with just one rain shower head right in the middle, weirdly designed, the towels also need to be replaced, they are thin and scratchy. ||Everything starts closing down at 8-8.30pm at the resort, restaurants, bars, even the market, this is made worse by the total lack of any room service. We had to go downstairs to get hot water every morning to make tea, not terrible, but not what you expect when paying $600 a night for a room. There is a 1 cup "pod" coffee maker, a jug of water and a tiny empty refrigerator in the room but that’s it.||The grounds are very beautiful, the beach is pretty but a bit "scrappy" definitely not the best beach in the area, and if you want to sit on a chair on the beach, that's $25 per day to rent a folding chair, not a lounger, it’s a chair that cost $39 on Amazon. |There is a tiny rooftop pool with 4 loungers for the 45 rooms and chairs to sit around under a shade cover. The pool bar is 2 coolers with beer and water and the poor guys who is stationed up there has to run downstairs to get your drinks and food.|The marketing photos of the pool are particularly spectacular, very cleverly shot, makes it look way more impressive than it is. ||We ate at several of the restaurants, most of the food is good, not great, and overpriced. The breakfast buffet is rather "hit or miss", I'm still trying to forget about the awful grey scrambled eggs. There are 3 or 4 independently owned restaurants which are better than the "company" owned restaurants, call out to Pots & Bowls which was excellent for breakfast. The hotel bar is also excellent and everything we ate from their small plate menu was excellent. ||The Hotel staff are a group of wonderful hard-working people, many of them worked from 6.00am until 9.00pm, everyone we met was polite and helpful. We had great conversations with many of them, but you got the feeling they too.|thought the place was a bit "odd".||I'm not going to say we didn’t enjoy our stay at the hotel, we did but it wasn’t what we were expecting, and we enjoyed it despite many of the hotel's shortcomings. The property might not want to seem like it's in Costa Rica,|but luckily, it's still surrounded by that magnificent and interesting country with its great people. If you do stay here is highly recommend visiting the cool and quirky town about 2-1/2 miles...

My rating is for the hotel only, not the restaurant. There were 2 guys from the bar/restaurant that were amazing. Oscar and Luiz, they should be the ones running the whole place. We were there for a wedding, and if you plan on getting any sleep make sure you take earplugs! The fabulous wildlife (black birds and some tropical version of a blackbird) start screeching their songs at 4 am...its fine, that's nature. They had put us directly above the breakfast area/kitchen, which is also by the stairs and elevator. The middle is completely open all the way up, so it's a cylinder of echoes, and you hear every crash of the dishes starting at 5 am and also every drunk person laughing and yelling all the way to their room....so make sure you get a room away from there! I asked to move, there were open rooms, but they said they were full and would try. 8 hrs later they did get us moved. Not friendly hotel staff, aside from housekeeping who were always warm and kind! Our last night, after an entire week, we got back from a group activity arranged by the hotel and it was raining, this was around 7 pm. We were hungry of course, but since all the seating pretty much is outside they had no room. So we asked to order to go, they refused. The other 2 places there are to eat were packed as they are very small. So we were stuck. There is NOTHING close, so if you don't have a car and don't want to drive 30 minutes, plan ahead very well for meals. We had tipped well, spent a lot, my friends wedding was at this hotel, everyone spent a lot there and they seemed accommodating. But maybe it was because it was our last night, they couldn't care less. The bride, the brides elderly mother, and aunt weren't able to get food either. The manager who i believe was also Luiz, short guy, was super rude and walked away in the middle of talking! It wasn't until a random worker stopped us and told us he had a number to a pizza place that was close and would deliver. SOOOO many things to know about this place I wish I would have before. Its pretty for sure, just don't expect much aside from good bar service! To the American owner of this place, you should SERIOUSLY have some better trained staff if they are going to be working in the hospitality industry. We own a business ourselves, we travel all over the world, but if you gave me a week free I wouldn't come back. Though the tuna steak and gnocchi were amazing, and as I said Oscar and young Luiz who even spoke Portuguese to my Brazilian husband, provided the best service I've...

Complete rip-off. Worst hotel stay we've ever had - it failed on multiple fronts. We were not informed that there's construction going on everywhere in the immediate surroundings of the hotel, including just a few feet from our room. It is unbearably noisy all day, and the rooms are not soundproof, so inside our room sounded like a war zone - multiple saws going at once, hammers, dump trucks, construction workers yelling over the noise. It was so stressful and impossible to rest. The clanging noises from the kitchen also carried up to our room late into the night. The rooms, by the way, are bare: no artwork, no refrigerator, no water bottles, no coffee maker, not even a single water glass. The restaurants and beach area were quite crowded and beach couches were rundown. The food at the restaurants were grossly overpriced and the food itself was mediocre. The waiters were friendly but stressed, and it always took multiple requests to get drinks refilled, and for the check to be delivered. The attached sports center is also way overpriced, charging $70usd for one hour of inflatable standup paddle boards for 2 people (for contrast, in nearby Tamarindo we rented 2 higher quality non-inflatable SUPs for $30usd for the whole day). The narrow road getting to/from the hotel is also dangerous - we were nearly killed by a dump truck that raced around a blind turn and took the turn wide, and then again later by another construction vehicle that almost hit us head-on in the same manner. We talked with the front desk about the noise and danger, and our need for rest. They offered no remedy at all. Rather than suffering through an awful vacation, I said we'd be checking out early and asked for a refund for the remainder of our stay. They were apologetic but unwilling to refund us for checking out early. Perhaps they're hoping to dupe people into booking a stay by purposefully not warning about the construction noise and hazards, and when they get your money, they keep it. Worst hotel stay we've ever had in our lives (and we travel a lot). The sea is beautiful, the architecture is nice and the black sand beach is pretty, but none of it is worth the stressful stay at this overpriced, noisy hotel, nor the danger presented by the construction vehicles on the...