Renaissance Wind Creek Curacao Resort — Hotel in Curaçao

Overall, my favorite beach resort after all these years of travel. Absolutely will be back soon.

I tried booking directly through my Marriott app but the room type I wanted was no longer available at the time of booking, so I ended up booking through a 3rd party site. This is going to be a longish review since my review on the 3rd party site got cut short, probably should have waited until I got home rather than trying to type on the plane.

During booking, I put in my reservation that I would like a room away from the elevator and my initial room was nice clean and quiet.

I was tired after a rough arrival where someone took my luggage and I had to wait hours at the airport for it to be returned. So the first thing I did was pass out on top of the covers for a nap before I went out for dinner. Woke up to thundering footsteps and screeching kid in the next room. While the door to the balcony had good soundproofing, the door between the adjoining room was unfortunately not. After suffering for 15 minutes and hearing no improvement or discipline from the parents, I went downstairs for a room change.

The front desk was very accommodating after I told them what happened and that I’m sensitive to noise. Michelangelo at the front desk sent the doorman with me to check out another room. I was able to stay in there and listen for a couple of minutes before the doorman helped me move all my luggage over. Thank goodness I haven’t unpacked and my friend wasn’t arriving until two days later, so the room change and move was very efficient.

Housekeeping did an amazing job and our room was spotless all week. My friend and I returned to the room every day greeted by a cute little towel animal Angelique left us. There were a couple of minor issues with the water tank and sink that engineering quickly fixed when we were out for dinner.

The photos attached were mostly from the first room with the two beds. The second room only had 1 king sized bed and pullout couch, my friend and I still had plenty of space and she thoroughly enjoyed her birthday trip.

The infinity beach and pool was just gorgeous. Not sure how they engineered it but the man-made beach had real seawater, minus the seaweeds. Water was crystal clear and the beach was not crowded most of the days during my stay. With the constant breeze the rain never last more than a few minutes the couple of morning when there was rain. It’s near a fairly busy port, so I saw quite a few vessels go by every time I’m at the beach. There’s a cruise ship dock that can be seen from the beach as well. The temperature on the island was between 80-88 all week. Comfortable enough for short walks and tours outside.

There’s a small l casino right next to the lobby with a few table games and machines. I mostly only play blackjack and there were 3 blackjack tables between $5-25 table minimums. During the day, only the $10 table is open. I actually won a few hundred overall when I was tallying my cash, enough to cover a few mice dinners during our stay.

My friend and I each got some souvenir tshirts from the shops downstairs. We booked a tour of the blue Curacao distillery and bought some mini bottles to take home. If you are planning to buy the Curacao liquor as souvenir, it’s less expensive at the distillery. I bought 8 bottle sets for about $30 each set. The same sets were priced around $50 each at the duty free shop in the airport.

For those who suffer caffeine withdrawal headaches like I do, there is a Starbucks on the second floor of the hotel right above the lobby, and another Starbucks among the shops on the ground floor.

Whether you like the sun, beach, warm weather, shopping, dinning or gambling, this resort has something to offer to everyone. My friend and I split up to do different things some days before meeting up for dinner.

The last day before we checked out, I actually saw a rainbow on the beach after a short burst of rain. The perfect end to this vacation. Looking forward to my next visit as Curacao has now officially surpassed Aruba on my...

INTRO-

For context, we are lifetime platinum members with almost 700 lifetime nights over about 15 years at Marriott branded properties for both work and leisure.

We have been to Aruba many times and visited GCM, Jamaica, St. John, St. Thomas, etc among others. We wanted something new so settled on Curaçao.

As our first visit, we debated between this property and Marriott Beach resort a bit further north. Very happy with the Renaissance decision.

Prearrival, Riangelo was very helpful providing more details about the property that weren’t easily accessible online, such as menus for the hotel operated restaurants, and what was included with all-inclusive. For your convenience, I’ve attached a few photos of that stuff.

We decided to go all-inclusive (which is rare for us) and glad we did. $140 pp/per day includes breakfast (do the buffet), lunch, dinner and unlimited of the included drinks. I’ve attached that list for you. :)

OVERALL-

4.5/5 The property and staff were generally excellent. Food was good. Drinks were excellent. The location was convenient to mall, walking bridge and such. The best beaches were a solid 30 minute drive away (rent a car). Overall, a great place to stay! The only reason it’s not 5/5 is a number of issues that popped up, but Riangelo was incredible and took care of it!

DETAILS

I want to mention and thank a couple staff members by name. Rinagelo was exceptional prior and during our arrival. He deftly resolved a few things for us. I also want to say thank you to several excellent bartenders: Angelo (inside lobby bar), Rai (lobby bar) and Nassir (5 o’clock bar). Those 4 were fantastic.

We visited in early December. Checkin was a breeze, and staff happily brought us more toiletries, extra towels, etc. Clean, spacious oceanfront Majestic suite. The bathroom was exceptional. Oversized soaking tub and nice sized separate shower. Also had a huge living room that we didn’t utilize much. One note: the corner location and direction of room means the room is very warm unless you keep a lot of shades down and do maximum AC. To be fair, this probably impacts the large majestic suites way more than other rooms.

The food was generally good. We had room service, food poolside at Infiniti and some snacks in the lobby. We had a lot of red snapper and steak, and expresso martinis and a lot of rum and vodka drinks (absolut, stoli, Bacardi, captain included in AI plan).

The man made Infiniti pool was very nice. the water, the lounging chairs, the sand, the service at the beach. All are perfect. I would say it wasn’t busy so the chair situation would get tight if it was a fuller hotel.

We really annoyed the nice casino. Friendly and fun times for evening entertainment.

Will say housekeeping was very average. We had to nag to get service, then ignored do not disturb signs and then skipped us all together one day. Just our experience.

Non hotel related, we drove to multiple beaches. Cas Abao was easily our favorite, with playa Porto also very nice. Mambo beach was crowded bud not lively so certainly overrated imho. Bottom line: if you are in doubt, go to cas abao. Snorkeling is great and it’s work the drive. $6 USD for two chairs all day. Awesome.

Thank your wonderful staff and we are very grateful. Kudos to the management for running this resort so well!!!

We will...

Staff was very friendly. However, we often had to ask for the same things multiple times - water, towels. When it was requested in the app, it says it was "fulfilled" but never actually got fulfilled. We also had to request room cleaning and remind them. There just seem to be a lot of disorganization among staff, especially for a Renaissance property. It did not appear to be a staffing issue either - there were multiple people around for each job. I am glad they were nice and seem to care about us having a good stay, just wish they would communicate with us better about things and us not having to remind/complain to get things we needed.

The Wifi here was terrible - completely unreliable and slow even when working. Sometimes the wifi point completely disappeared. We asked the front desk and they said they would look into it but they never got done. It was difficult, especially since we had to rely on our sim card which we weren't prepared to do.

Also the front desk seemed a bit unhelpful and less than knowledgeable regarding local attractions. We tried a few public beaches they recommended - but they were very crowded and not very kid friendly (no available bathrooms- the ones at Grote knip were closed off, no showers, public changing areas). We specifically asked about these and they weren't sure - we ended up having to find out the hard way. (We also couldn't look it up without wifi)

There was also a lot of maintenance occurring during the day- painting, fixing, lawn care. Usually these are done early morning or night (if not noisy). it almost every other hotel I've been in so that it doesn't bother guests. It was a bit irritating how much we ran into it. Also they added an automatic closing door by the elevator and it almost slammed on my daughter's fingers. We couldn't get it to stop and thankfully my daughter pulled her fingers away at the right time.

Our toilet was terrible. The handle is slippery and if it "slips" it won't do a complete flush and you have to wait like 5 minutes in order to be able to flush again.

The beach (not a "true beach" - just an enclosed artificial lagoon) was really nice and beautiful. It was never too crowded and really felt like you could relax and could have some space to yourself.

I still would consider coming here again. The hotel is very nice and beautiful. Just wish the staff was more organized and better communicative. The worst thing is coming to what you expect to be a clean room...and...