Nativo Boutique Hotel — Hotel in Hicaco

Staffed mostly (but not all) by unfriendly and quite lazy workers. Don't bother. Go somewhere else. They're never busy, there's no excuse for their poor service. It's not a surprise they aren't busy... people don't return. I see on their Google reviews they're defensive when people leave bad reviews, so here are some real examples of my experiences...

Example 1: I walk in and stand at the bar. One staff is making a drink, 2 staff doing nothing. Nobody serves me so I go and sit down to watch the sunset. I am there for over 30 minutes, nobody comes, I had to go back to the bar. Lazy.

Example 2: I'd often sit on the decking. The chairs have comfortable cushions which are taken in when it rains. But they never put them back out. Even when they see people sitting there they don't come down and give you a cushion. They aren't busy, just sit there and play on phones. Lazy.

Example 3: I was on a work call. I'd finised my tea so I asked for a glass of water. The staff had nothing to do because I was the only customer. Instead of getting me a glass of water they pointed to a water jug (that I hadn't noticed) at the bar for me to go and get myself. Then they went and sat back down. Lazy.

Example 4: On the times I ate (three times)... once they brought me the wrong drink, another time the wrong food, and another time they didn't have the dessert I requested - but it took them 15 minutes to tell me they didn't have the dessert. I was the only customer eating. Lazy.

Example 5: I arrived and ordered a good 5 minutes before happy hour finished and they would not honor happy hour because "By the time we make your drinks happy hour will be finished". I said "Well charge me first". They said "No". Pathetic. So really happy hour should be advertised as finishing 5+ minutes before it actually does.

It was convenient to where I was staying but after a few weeks I stopped going because it is always so, so disappointing. Go spend your money somewhere else.

My husband and I stayed at Nativo Boutique Hotel in Santa Catalina for three nights while spending our days scuba diving. It's a pretty hotel with a small infinity pool overlooking a beautiful bay. It is about a four minute drive to the main road where there are several scuba shops, a market and some restaurants.||They have a hotel bar and restaurant serving three meals a day. The food was good, not great. There was no seafood for the three days that we were there… No ceviche, no fish, etc. We ended up eating hamburgers and quesadillas and breaded chicken fingers. ||The air-conditioned room was clean, and spacious and our bed, bedding and towels were comfortable. There was a large TV mounted in the room. Nice quality shampoo, conditioner and body gel was provided along with two bottles of water. The shower area of our room was spacious although it took some finagling to get the shower water hot, which we were able to do.||The room (Liria)did NOT have a security box, a little fridge, a closet, dresser drawers nor a blow dryer despite the fact that reviews seemed to indicate that blowdryers were included. Luckily someone in reservations had a spare blowdryer that I could borrow.||I would not recommend this hotel for anyone with mobility or balance issues because there are quite a few steps and sloped walkways to get to most of the rooms. If you could find one of the rooms closest to the parking lot, you could avoid the steps. No one offering to help us with our baggage.||Julio was accommodating to us and we enjoyed petting the 2 house cats who appeared to be well cared for.||I think if management put a little extra love into their rooms with a refrigerator, and some dresser drawers and someone offering to help with the bags… I would have rated the hotel higher. We enjoyed our stay at Nativo, but I felt like with a few extras, it could have been a better value, particularly since the raised their prices not too long ago.

I stayed at Nativo from Nov 28 through Dec 1, 2024.

The good: The service. The staff was super helpful, we needed to reschedule our reservation from the beginning of November to the end of November due to a tropical storm in the area. This was accomplished without any trouble, throughout our stay the staff was genuinely interested in solving whatever issues we had.

The bed was comfortable and the A/C worked flawlessly.

They have a beautiful pool, very clean, and a deck to see the sunset also very pretty.

The bad: Stairs, all over. As the property is built on a hillside, there are walkways and stairs everywhere. The walkways and stairs are lined with broken tiles as decorations, these, when wet, are slick and quite dangerous. There are very few handrails. The property is not suitable for guests with mobility impairments of any sort.

The hot water never worked. We reported it multiple times, the staff was very worried about this but they were ineffective. My wife was lucky one night, me, I was never able to have a hot shower.

The roof of the room is made of tin with no sound deadening, when it rains it is quite loud.

The terrible: The food. The restaurant is only appropriate for breakfast. I ordered a ribeye, medium rare, the steak came completely overdone and stiff. Another night I ordered shrimp with creole sauce, this is a staple of the coast in Panamá. The shrimp came with a sauce that came out of a can. The rice was overcooked. Stay away from this restaurant, there are many many options in Santa Catalina where you can eat very well and at reasonable prices.