Divers Paradise Boutique Hotel — Hotel in Bocas del Toro

I felt torn about writing this review because I know that it could hurt this business, however, people should be warned about where they lay their head to sleep.

360° review - the hotel is lovely, likely one of the nicest ones in Colon. It is in an area that’s not too busy yet central. The staff were friendly, the room was clean and they had sparkling wine!

After our first night, I started getting bites and I thought it was mosquitos. The second night (my birthday) the bites were worse and the patterns were indicative of bedbugs; clusters of bites next to each other and trails of bites, evidence of where the bugs crawled on my skin and fed on me. We flipped the mattress and to our horror the corners of the mattress had the telltale signs of bed bugs; speckles of blood on the corner of the matters. The mattress cover also had bed bug droppings that look like tiny little ink drops.

At this point it was past 10 PM, we asked the maintenance person to call the manager so I could show her what we found. They kindly offered us another room. They walked us to our new room because I wanted to inspect the mattress in front of them and to our second surprise -same thing only worse: more speckles of blood on the underside corners of the mattress. At this point there wasn’t much that we could do; the island is small and this is one of the nicest hotels I wasn’t hopeful about going to another hotel. We ended up staying there one more night. We slept covered head to toe and took the first flight back to Panama City.

We were looking forward to a relaxing vacation in which we celebrated my birthday, but instead, I ended up with bedbug bites which do not heal quickly. I hope that this hotel is able to resolve this problem and this helps YOU make an informed decision on...

We loved everything about Divers Paradise, but most of all we loved the staff. Thank you for making our stay memorable and for taking such good care of us! From a super easy and super early checkin, to storing our luggage for us, to welcoming us every morning and every evening (and again when we missed our flight and showed up at 10pm needing a room!). They also made sure our friend had a special surprise in his room to celebrate his birthday, what a lovely local touch! The open-air restaurant has a beautiful view and a nice shady breeze, and the staff were also tremendously accommodating for our late night meals every night. There is also free filtered water available 24/7 in the restaurant (and I believe coffee and tea most of the day), and the food is discounted for guests.||The location is a bit off the main path, but less than 10 minutes walk to anything you need to access (including the airport). So it was super quiet compared to some of the other places we had considered staying, which was a bonus. The decor is very cool--so many subtle diving touches everywhere. Beds are comfy, AC was nice and cold, and the seaview rooms have great views!||You can also lounge on the back deck and go snorkeling using their free gear. We didn't get a chance to check out the free SUP or bicycles but it was a perk we were looking forward to! We went diving one day, and could not have loved our instructor more. Extremely patient and very fun, and of course took amazing care of us! We would definitely...

Good hotel, poor problem solving skills! Hotel was good, room was clean and air con worked a treat. Also really good they had back up generator so when the Caribbean weather struck, you are never without power which is a delight!

However…the hotel at the time of our stay had a problem with the water. We had maybe 5 minutes of water per day for 4 days of our stay. Every time we told the front desk (for the first 2 days of no water) they would pick up a radio and as soon as we turned our backs they would put it down again. They were obviously aware no rooms had water but did nothing to solve the situation temporarily for guests. At the very least they could have offered us a drum of water to flush our toilet and wash our hands!!! I appreciate there are always things out of the control of the hotel but when nothing was done to fix it and no explanation was given it was a very frustrating stay!

We only found out that the pump was broken after 2 days of no water by the engineer (noteably not the hotel staff) when he caught us telling the desk we had no water for the 13926 time! He explained what was going on as the rude woman behind the desk just rolled her eyes. They put a sign up after day 3 of no water saying “no water in hotel rooms sorry for inconvenience” Honestly it was a fairly disappointing stay and I would have given the hotel 4/5 stars if it wasn’t for this poorly managed situation. In which no apology/compensation or even...