Grand Memories Santa Maria All Inclusive — Hotel in Caibarién

This is not my first visit to Cuba — I’ve stayed at many hotels in the Santa María, Santa Lucía, and Cayo Coco areas. I have enough experience to make comparisons, and here is my honest review based on this stay.||||Hotel Misrepresentation||||The hotel description is completely inaccurate. It claims to have two à la carte restaurants, but in reality, there’s only one. The second has been converted into a snack bar that doesn’t operate 24/7 — it’s open only when the main buffet is closed. The photos online are years old, heavily edited, and misleading. Some don’t even belong to this hotel.||||Hotel and Area||The hotel grounds are very old, with lots of broken furniture. Even when there’s no wind, the entire property often smells strongly of sewage. The pool near the lobby is so dirty that the fish living in it are swimming in their own waste. The theatre is out of service, so all evening shows were held in the small, stuffy, smoke-filled lobby. There are tons of bugs and mosquitoes everywhere, and no regular fumigation. In two weeks, I only saw two weak mosquito fogging attempts.||||First Impressions – Disgusting Room & Construction Site||||Upon arrival (we were three people), we were given a room with only two beds and a strong, lingering smell of smoke — like being constantly next to a bonfire. One of us had to sleep on the floor. The next morning, we went to the front desk to request a room change. That’s when the nightmare began:||- They told us no rooms were available and to come back in the evening.||- Later, we waited an hour in the lobby for someone to show us another room.||- The person couldn’t find the keys.||- In the end, no one helped us move our luggage.||||Two days later, when we finally moved into a new room, the hotel began renovations in that same building. So basically, we ended up living on a construction site — with constant noise and the strong stink of fresh paint.||||À la Carte Restaurant Scam||As mentioned, there’s only one à la carte restaurant, and access to it is a joke. According to the Nexus representative, we were entitled to two à la carte dinners per week. However, the person managing the reservations (Dmitri) refused to let us book in advance. We had to come on the exact day it opened. When we did, he told us it was fully booked — despite the reservation list being empty. When we asked how that was possible, he gave no explanation and clearly expected a bribe. After a frustrating discussion, he finally rolled his eyes and gave us a spot.||||The second time, I was only able to book a table after involving both the Nexus rep and the hotel manager — and magically, three spots became available. It’s clear Dmitri won’t help you unless you pay him. Absolutely unacceptable and very unpleasant.||||Buffet – Terrible Food and Poor Hygiene||- The food was awful — mostly rice, beans, overcooked chicken scraps, boiled bones, and fried bananas.||- In two weeks, they offered a seafood grill once and a chicken grill once — the rest of the time, it was just the same fried rice.||- No cereal, no yogurt, no milk.||- No desserts for children — just two small plates of cake per dinner service, gone within 30 seconds and never refilled.||- Most of the food was cold due to broken heaters under the trays.||- Before the buffet opened, staff would take photos of the food for their reports — then not care about it for the rest of the service.||- Nothing improved during the entire two-week stay.||- The buffet area was full of flies and birds eating off guests' plates when they stepped away.||- The waiters focused only on tips. If you didn’t tip immediately, they would ignore you — no water, no cutlery, nothing.||||24-Hour Snack Bar – Another Lie||The so-called "24-hour snack bar" was mostly closed. Even if they said it opened at 3:00, it sometimes remained closed until 4:00 or later. The staff inside were extremely lazy and refused to cook anything other than sandwiches, despite having all the ingredients for pizza. When forced to cook, they would burn the food on purpose — I ended up with a pizza that was mostly charcoal.||||Room Service – Nonexistent||- Cleaning was done once every 2–3 days.||- Bed sheets and towels were NEVER changed during our entire 2-week stay.||- Toilet paper and bottled water were often missing — we had to go beg the front desk to get them.||||Beach & Facilities||The beach was the only highlight — beautiful and clean. However:||- Most beach loungers were broken and clumsily repaired with wire.||- In two weeks, we saw the beach lifeguard only twice — both times drinking beer at the beach bar.||||Entertainment||Animators were lazy — they sat in the shade announcing events without trying to get anyone involved. There was no real effort to entertain guests.||||Return Bus Ride – Unsafe and Unprofessional||- Two buses came to pick up guests for a Montreal flight, but the drivers kept the doors closed under 32°C heat because they were confused about the passenger list.||- They were searching the arrival list instead of the departure list.||- During the ride, our driver hit a motorcycle with two people on it — they flew into a ditch — and he didn’t even stop to check on them.||- We made an unplanned stop at the driver’s village so he could pick up lunch from his wife, making us wait.||- At the end, when no one tipped him for his "driving," he opened the cargo hold and turned his back to us, forcing guests to unload their own luggage.||||People literally applauded as the bus left the hotel — that’s how happy they were to be gone.||||Summary||The beach is amazing. The rest — especially the service and staff attitude — was shockingly poor. The hotel is run-down, the people are lazy and money-hungry, and the experience fell far below anything I expected when booking.||||Extremely disappointed....

Ok I hate giving a bad review, but here it is...

Location 100% amazing the beach is gorgeous you can walk out into the water and it's nice and shallow. The rooms are basic and need updating.

You think you are paying for an upgraded experience. Don't waste your money. And all of the things you will want are on the memories side.

The buffet in the sanctuary side is loaded with cockroaches in the evenings. You will see them running on the food. It was the worst experience we have had in Cuba this was our 8th trip so we knew what to expect flavour wise, and brought condiments (this is a must and not to be forgotten bring condiments!) But this was next level. The memories side buffet was only slightly better but had more selection and didn't notice as many roaches. Also, when you were eating, you would see them scrambling across the floor, and I had one on my leg one evening. Freaked me right out! They ran out of milk for the coffee and would put some weird lumpy stuff in the milk. I'm not sure what it was, but there were white hard things in it. Not to mention, the coffee was being served cold. Further to this, the alacart restaurants were not what they said they were. When I say this let me clarify, the Mexican did not serve Mexican at all and served the same food as the Italian (where they had no pasta and it was the same food as the international) this went on for 3 days exact same menu all 3 restaurants. I will say that I did enjoy the "fried" fish. The food was Luke warm, not hot at all. OH AND BRING SPOONS THEY DON'T ALWAYS HAVE THEM. They ran out of beer on the whole resort for 1 day when we were there, but 5 days from what I heard from friends who were staying at the same resort after we left. The pool was full of green algae for 4 days when we arrived at the resort, and people were saying that a few ladies got urinary track infections from swimming in it. I'm so glad we are beach people. I have attached photos of the green pool. Some of the people we met said that if you stocked your fridge with beer you bought of a different brand, they would not stock your room fridge with their beer, which caused some sticky situations for them. Not all of the butlers are built the same. We had 2 who were quite great frank and Ricardo and one who was subpar Lester. Frank and Ricardo would go above and beyond to make sure you were taken care of, but Lester didn't want to do his job and would have you do the work for him. I ended up speaking to management about him it was so bad. If you wanted to change you pool towel good luck the hours were very sporadic and random it was like playing a game of craps to see if they would be there to make the change and there were a couple fo days we couldn't change our towels. Good thing for us, it wasn't the end of the world, but if this is important to you, keep this in mind.

If you are someone who wants access to wifi, there were days it was not available in our rooms and you could only access in the main building area and it was quite a small zone you had to stay in. Also if you have difficulty walking far distances they do have golf carts that come around we found they had far more on the memories side and not as many running on the sanctuary side going to the memories side. We were averaging over 20k steps a day.

The bars were consistently running out of things, so if you like certain drinks, you may not get them. For example, mojitos

In the evenings during dinner (when you were heading to dinner), they would fog the whole resort with bug fog, and it was gross hopefully not too harmful to us.

I added the photos of the fried fish that was quite good.

The views and weather were spectacular.

We did have another friend who went to varadero the week after we were in Cuba and they advised that the shortages were not nearly as bad.

After this trip honestly we don't know of we will ever go back it is very undecided at this time, which is unfortunate as we have always loved our trips to Cuba it has always held a special place...

I have learned not to expect much when travelling to Cuba but the professionalism of some departments at this resort pleasantly surprised me. When we got to the hotel lobby for check-in, we were impressed with the check in process. There was only one person, but she was extremely well prepared. I have never seen such fast, systematic and professional service before and we have been coming to Cuba since 2012. The staff who helped us with getting us and our luggage to the room were also very professional.. Even when were were checking out, they were very professional in showing up at our rooms at request and handling our luggage with care. (the way this individuals carried themselves, we have not seen in all the years we have come to Cuba.) Lisandra our SunWing rep was great. She provided all the guests with all the necessary information for our stay at the resort in a clear, precise & professional manner. Leirys at (front desk/lobby) always had a smile on her. She was always pleasant and professional in all the interactions my spouse and I had with her throughout the week. The buffet staff Yander & Gedlumeiby were awesome. They were attentive & ensured that all guests who sat at their section were well attended to. The 2 BeachBar staff were great & very attentive to all their guests. They were always pleasant and professional. Now for the issues Nobody ever goes to Cuba for food, there is always food, but never expect what you get at the other Caribbean countries. It is out of their control. The low capacity also meant less variety of food. The food at the buffet was only mildly warm. Do not waste time with the ala carte, the service staff are very slow, they tend to stroll and what you order is not what you get, the servers do not communicate accurately what they have. They always had pork, most days grilled beef (not necessarily the correct cut of meat and certainly not marinated) There was fish most days but they did not have any seasonings or marinate other than salt & pepper. If you do not eat Pork & Beef, this resort is not for you. Between the month of April & June (low season) the mosquitoes & another type of insect that bites brutally are excessive due to the weather. All the guest tried a variety of bug sprays but none of it worked. The resort fumigated 2 to 3 times a day, and that did Not help too. I was in Cuba 3 weeks earlier in Holguin and it was the same. It is really bad at the lobby and swimming pool area. We could not enjoy the events at the lobby because most guests could not handle the bites. Everyone slapping themselves silly; hilarious but not funny. Unless you and your family can handle the bites, April to June is not for you or your family.

The last day became the Worst day. They could have mitigated it, given that it was their low season and were only at 20 to 30% capacity by allowing their guests to stay in their room with their families until 4 pm for a 7 pm transfer.

The animation team was non existent Sunday through Tuesday. They were scarcely available on Wednesday and present Thursday through Saturday. When they are there, they are always an hour or more late. They have a Pizza shed, which is supposed to be "open" 5pm to 1 am. We waited twice each time and 1 1/2 hr for us to place the order. It is their low season, so there was only 1 Pizza guy who had to run out to the kitchen to get, plates, cheese other ingredients constantly in addition to making pizzas for the invisible "premium order" & he was also bitten extensively while trying to work in the heat because everyone waiting was relentlessly slapping ourselves as we were mercilessly attacked by biting insects. The washrooms connecting the buffet and ala carte restaurant was always dirty, wreaked of urine and mosquito infestation. At the lobby, the female toilet was locked the 8 days we were there. The male washroom was used by everyone, therefore, very dirty, wreaking of urine and constantly running out of...