Amsterdam Manor Beach Resort Aruba — Hotel in Oranjestad (city)

My wife and I spent 4 nights here in January 2020 as part of a trip to the ABC islands to celebrate our anniversary. Amsterdam Manor far exceeded our expectations from the moment we arrived until we departed. Hands-down the best beach resort I have ever visited.

The facilities are beautiful, our room was well-appointed and had a cool design plus was extremely comfortable, location is perfect (it’s literally RIGHT across the street from the beautiful Eagle Beach), parking was easy, and the staff was so amazing. They wowed me so many times!

After a friendly welcome at check-in that included rum punch welcome drinks, the bellman David assisted us with our luggage and then gave us a brief tour of the resort. He also helped us with restaurant recommendations. He was so genuine and non-rushed. The front desk staff was always glad to help with any questions, but I especially appreciated Julio’s help with arranging a late check-out so that we could enjoy a few hours at the beach before an evening flight back to Minneapolis. I felt like every AMBR employee I encountered really valued my business and was genuinely welcoming and wanting us to have the very best vacation possible.

Regarding the beach, you should understand that it’s literally a 60 second walk across a 4-lane street and you’re there! I’ve stayed at Marriott resorts in Cancún and Puerto Vallarta that are “on the beach” but the beach is 4X farther from the hotel rooms than this one. Consider this resort de-facto “on the beach”. As an Amsterdam Manor guest you will her towel cards which grant you access to towels, loungers, palapas, foam beach chair pads, and importantly a team of friendly and energetic beach attendants from the resort who will help you with all of this and help find you a great spot and get it set up! The hotel also has full bar service, a restaurant, and bathrooms on the beach.

Very nice beachside bar, casual dining area, pool bar, and breakfast buffet. All with very friendly service and a fun vibe.

A few bonuses: On site self service laundry for $2 per load wash / $1 dry, plus air drying rack provided in room In-room espresso and coffee maker Easy and free parking 3 happy hours per day between the 2 bars, all of which are 2-for-1 any drink no limitations On-site “mini market” had plenty of basics Multi-color mood lighting bar above the very comfortable bed! Breakfast buffet was quite good and fairly priced at $20 per person The bartenders on the beach were AWESOME. Great cocktails at fair prices. We had plenty of mojitos (my favorite) and Miami Vice (wife’s favorite) at $11 each. They were STRONG and not made with cheap alcohol.

Worth every $. We can’t...

Overall, a mediocre experience. Arrival was great, got a dixie cup of some rum punch stuff. Staff welcomed us and got us situated right away and very professionally. Room was average at best. We got the manor studio and certainly not much too it. A few inoperable things in the room that we didn't have a use for, but wanted to try (some LED light on top of bed, air purifier).

There is a Caffiety system brewer in the room. Could not figure out how to use the darn thing, only brewed 2oz at a time. Still, nice to have.

Didn't use the pool because it opened at 8 AM and closed at 8 PM. Those hours are pretty poor in my opinion, La Cabana next door, Hyatt, Barcelo, Embassy, and Raddison nearby all had pools to use into late evening hours. Certainly missed this from Amsterdam.

Location was probably the most negative aspect to this hotel. Two reasons: smell and street noise. The resort is immediately downwind to Aruba's wastewater treatment facility and you can clearly smell the feces/waste. Reviews from 2022 note the smell as well and the resort's response note that the country is investing money to fix this. More than two years later and nothing changed, means that is not true and/or someone in City government simply got rich. The street alongside the hotel and in front of the resort is apparently a popular spot to street race/rev engines/squeal out....very disrupting into all hours of night. Not sure they have Polis that care enough.

5/5 for the staff though. Very nice and helpful. Great team there.

In front of the resort, on the beach are numerous huts for guests and most of the time they were occupied by other tourists or locals. We could not get a hut several times and just setup in the open sand. They don't enforce this apparently as we watched staff walk by and nothing. They also do not provide service to the huts despite a sign on the huts saying otherwise. Beach is dirty. Trash, cigerattes, plastic, rope etc.. I stepped on broken glass in the water in front of the Manor's beach--fortunately, it was sharp side down.

Me and spouse have traveled to several tropical locations over the past 5 years now and this [Aruba in general] ranks dead-last. Expensive, dirty, a desert environment, smelly, and everything is ala carte, imported an flat-out expensive.

Beer here is in 7oz bottles and about $7 at 5% ABV making this a very poor deal, walk to the Super Foods and buy 'em for about $2/bottle there.

We would not return here mainly because it smells pretty bad and the street noise made two nights pretty tough. Our room was on the corner of the main drag and this side...

Pros: Location: I can’t imagine that the location gets much better than this. We could see the ocean from our couch. Our son had his bed in the living room and woke up each morning and could see the beach from his bed. This particular part of the beach is amazing. There’s a grocery store wishing walking distance. If you need an ATM, there’s one at the resort next door (La Cabana). Amenities: The pool was decent. The food at their restaurants were very good. The price was relatively high but so is every other place in this area. They have a bar restaurant on the beach during the day that you can walk to as you are hanging on the beach. They can just bill your room. Very convenient. At night the restaurant sets up tables on the beach. I mean, it doesn’t get much better. Imagine, eating high quality, fine dining food at a table on the beach at sunset, torches burning, beautiful calm ocean water, white sand, friendly servers, perfect temperatures. The Staff: were all friendly and helpful. Whenever you need a taxi, they’ll call one for you and taxis arrive quickly usually. Their concierge helped book a day trip to La Palma Island which was a lot of fun. The cleaning staff went above and beyond. When they saw that we had bought some extra coffee at the grocery store, they left us a big pile of the hotel’s coffee which by the way was very good coffee. The Beach: This kind of goes under location but it deserves it’s own section. This is tied for us with the best beach we’ve ever been to. Siesta Key beach is better in some ways but worse in others than Eagle Beach. So, this place is on Eagle Beach which Trip Advisor just listed as the 5th best beach in the world for 2022. In the world!

We enjoy, smaller, boutique kinds of resorts to the high rise, party all night kind of place with hundreds of people. This fit the bill just right. It was quiet, unique, beautiful.

Cons: The smell. When you are outside your room, walking the property, you smell a sewer like smell. The first day, I noticed it a lot. In subsequent days, it came and went. I mostly didn’t notice it. The good news is you really don’t smell it when you’re on the beach which is where we spent most of our time. Also, you don’t smell it in your room. And, when you do smell it, it really just comes and goes. Apparently it’s caused by it’s proximity to a nearby wastewater treatment place or something like that. This affects other nearby places too. It would have been nice to...