Royalton Hicacos Resort & Spa — Hotel in Cárdenas

Our initial impression were good, but with each day we became more and more disappointed. We were members of diamond club, which gives us privileges such as faster check-in, later check-out, we can eat in certain areas of the restaurants, we can go to the diamond club and drink exclusive alcohol at any time, etc. The base of the hotel is huge, there are a lot of restaurants, bars, sometimes animators and program that entertains people. It is good that the hotel is only for adults. We had a few incidents that were quite disappointing. For example, we once found a piece of glass in our guava juice, which is very dangerous and absolutely unacceptable. Another time we went to the Italian restaurant for breakfast and sat at a table outside that was not cleaned after the previous people and while we were waiting for it to be cleaned we went to choose food from the buffet inside. When we returned to the table with full plates, it still hadn't been cleaned. We waited a little longer, but no one bothered to clean it or give us forks and knives to start eating. So I went and got three sets of cutlery from the cupboard a few tables away from us. We started eating. After some time, a waiter comes and asks: where you did you get these?! I show him where we got them from, he starts arguing that we should have waited. I asked him if it is normal to wait 30 minutes with full plates at the table for forks to be given to us, or is it better to eat with our hands?! At this point he starts asking us to pick up our plates so that he can wipe the table (while we are eating). This was a rather unpleasant start to the day. He then offered us menus and something to drink, but we politely declined as we were already disappointed. Another incident is when in the middle of our stay I go to the diamond club to get a drink and greet the staff, they also greet me and smile at me. I start pouring rum into a glass, while the woman who was on shift (by the way, she checked us in the first day, showed us around the resort, we say hello every day, she asked us several times if everything is okay) watches me pour and slightly arrogantly asks me: what number is your room?! I answer her and she says: ah yes, I remember. Like I'm going to go get drinks at the diamond club if I'm not a member. I was a bit offended first that she doesn't remember me and second the way she asks me which room is like i am stealing her alcohol. Another incident from our last day is that I go and sit on the beach in the diamond club area. A person in charge of the beach comes and starts asking me in Spanish where my bracelet is. I take it out of my bag and show it to him, whereupon he continues to yell at me in Spanish, even though I politely asked him to speak in English. Then he left. The truth is that the bracelets very easily fall from the hand and it is possible to lose them. They have fallen from our hands more than once and we have looked for them around the complex. Luckily we found them. Also the room card is attached to the wristband and is very uncomfortable. I don't see a problem with carrying it in my bag and not on my arm. And for 7 days no one had yelled at me about the bracelet until that day. We were satisfied with the international restaurant where the staff were very polite and the food was good. Our dinner at the Italian restaurant was also good. We were disappointed at the Cuban restaurant where the hostess talked to the people in front of us for about 15 min before seating them, then seated them and continued the talk at their table while we stood at the front waiting for someone to come and seat us. We were on the verge of leaving and missing our reservation, but just then another member of staff came out from inside and seated us. After that, we waited quite a bit for each dish as well. A foul smell wafts around the main bar. Also in the rooms at night it smells bad. The service at the main bar is very poor, quite a long wait and it is better to go and order at the bar yourself. You should also have a dollar on each...

Honeymoon I'm going to try and be as chronological as possible and as honest as possible. Which means that some of my negatives may seem minor but are just observations that we made.

What a beautiful location; the drive up wasn't as extravagant as some we have been to but once in the hotel it is truely stunning in my opinion. The welcome was okay, we were greeted by the man at the desk who gave checked us in, gave us a glass of champagne then said "Your butler to take us to our room." and literally no other words and continued to type at his computer. We were a little unsure whether there was more or we stay there. So I asked do we wait here and he said yes he will be here in a minute. Awkwardly we then waited for a about 5 mins, while this man just typed away, drinking our glass of champagne. We were then taken to our room with the butler pointing out key things like where to change money and to make reservations for the restaurants.

The room was a good size and had a very Caribbean feel (not too modern). Although we are relatively young who like modern at home, we liked this as it felt like we were in the Caribbean rather than anywhere else in the world. This was the only time we saw our butler and still have no clue what they do. We did ask for a plug converter as we didn't realise the plugs are different from Havana. Havana use USA type plugs - two flat pins and Varadero uses European - two round pins. The butler service never got back to us even though they said they would. We also asked if we could have diet coke instead of the full sugar coke - this didn't happen either, until we started writing a note on top of the fridge with a tip attached. Apparently, they can make reservations reservations for you but we didn't know or do this.

The pools looked nice, but if I'm honest we rarely went in these as we couldn't resist the beach. Some parts were oddly shallow - but this was just an opinion. The pool bar was alway full with the type of people that like to chant their countries name - something I will never understand, as never felt the urge to chant UK, UK, UK. But this was very tame I think I was a little hyper aware of it as it was really bad in Mexico, it isn't that bad at all here, so take this criticism with a pinch of salt.

The beach is literally amazing! We walked the stretch of beach and the Royalton are either really lucky and have chosen the best part or they work really hard to keep it that way ( I imagine it is the latter). There isn't any rubbish, rocks or broken shells anywhere near it for you cut your feet on etc. Literally just soft white sand and warm sea. Don't expect the much waiter service but beach bar is amazing, so not really needed.

The beach hut for lunch, we had a issue with waiting one day then them saying that it was now too late order. But my God did David make up for this the next day. He gave us a table up stairs which normally have to pay for; gave us incredibly service and made us the best pizza. We went back for lunch everyday then.

The buffet restaurant had lots of variety and had food quality food, with lots of foods cooked in front of you. There is a culture of tipping the cooks but call me tight but personally I couldnt justify giving £1-£5 tips for cooking me a fried egg - so we didn't tip the cooks really, but in fairness we were still greeted with a smile from them everyday we went in.

All the restaurants we felt were relatively unique to others and enjoyed all of them, I personally think food is literally personal taste but we enjoyed all of them. The only one we didn't go in was the international restaurant.

Our main (little gripes): Butler: not sure what they do or we just had a bad one The front desk: they are very good at directing everything away from them, think their only jobs is check in and check out. Restaurant reservations (try and be there for 9am as there will be a queue). it was our honeymoon and not that we expect much but they did nothing or even acknowledge it apart from "it's your honeymoon...

DO NOT GO HERE. PLEASE PICK ANOTHER RESORT. My boyfriend has been to Cuba 2 times already but stayed at different resorts. He seen all the reviews and pictures of Royalton Hicacos resort & spa and thought it looked/sounded amazing for MY first experience to Cuba. It is also rated highly on Tripadvisor!! BOY was he wrong. The first night we arrived it was 11pm at night, pitch dark and we were helped with our bags to our room which was like a maze to find, I was tired and it was hot. Not to mention because our room was so far from the lobby because the resort is so big we got eaten alive by mosquitos. Finally we got our room and I noticed the air conditioning wasn’t working properly, I was sweating and the room was hot. I called down to the front desk/lobby and she had someone come take a look. The “ maintenance guy” took a look and said there was nothing wrong and all the rooms were like that. The ceiling fan was barely spinning ALSO including the broken air conditioning and the speed was so low it only spinned one speed it also looked like it was going to fall down from the ceiling because it was shaking while it spinned. So I decided to go back to the lobby instead of calling from the room. While me and my boyfriend walked to the front desk we got lost a few times, had no idea where anything was because we weren’t shown when we got there just brought to our rooms. So while we were in this maze because it was so big we were also getting eaten alive by mosquitos. Finally we found the front desk after 20 minutes. I told the front desk lady about the fan now barely spinning and looked like it was going to fall on us while we sleep she said “they were all like that it’s normal and fine” and she also made a remark saying “just because it’s wobbling?” She didn’t help us at all. So we walked back and when we got to our room the air conditioning was completely not working and the room was so hot. We got another room where the air conditioning was working and it was nice and cold in the room and we were relieved. That night I woke up at 4am due to feeling crawling all over my legs and feet ( I thought it was just the mosquitos because there was so many that night) so I went to the bathroom as I turned on the bathroom lights I was greeted by 10 cockroaches all around the toilet seat, and huge cockroaches on the shower curtain. I called the front desk again and told her our room was infested with cockroaches they were everywhere ! ! She said she couldn’t do anything for us until 9am when the manager came in so we had to wait in the room with a thousand cockroaches roaming around the room! Finally 9am came and I called the front desk again and they said manager wasn’t in yet so we decided to walk to the front desk instead and wait for manager as we didn’t want to be in the room any longer. Finally manager came because I demanded I wasn’t leaving the lobby till we switched rooms. I showed her the videos of the cockroaches I made and she apologized and gave us another room an upgraded room with diamond service. We finally got our new room and it was beautifully renovated and clean, no cockroaches and air conditioning was working beautifully. This was our room for the next 6 days. We got upgraded to diamond club service and the butlers were amazing. We got everything we asked for and our experience was better. They catered to all our needs. 5 days later I think we seen only 2 baby cockroaches in the new renovated room. I just wanted to write this review so people know that this hotel is invested with cockroaches. Also the food here is not good at all and they do not have starch foods at all, no potatoes no FRENCH FRIES!! all meat there is PORK and roast beef. we had to pay taxi to go downtown to eat at restaurants everyday or we would starve. Please choose another resort if traveling to Cuba . Even the 3.5 star hotels out there have better food as we talked to other people on the transfer bus to airport. Do not let tripadvisor...