This was my 19th visit to Cuba and I have stayed at 2.5 to 5 star resorts. The price was awesome, & on the whole I was happy with most things. But there are certain basic things I expect in any resort, no matter the rating – security, maintenance, & food service being basic expectations.
The food was absolutely delicious turkey, roast ham, roast pork, and the usual Cuban fare – a person would never go hungry here, unless very picky. The huge problem is that they have increased the number of rooms, but not increased the capacity of the dining room. Several nights there were line ups just to get in the door of the buffet – and this was around 8pm, not early!!! This situation really needs to becorrected!! Most meals we had to go get our own glasses, water & cutlery – I found the dining room staff not very friendly or helpful – maybe just too much to do. The other problem is not the fault of the hotel – but too many people would take 10-15 pieces of bread or whatever food they wanted ,for their whole table, and then monopolize the toaster or the grills , so nobody else could have access – this would cause huge line-ups wherever they were hoarding food for their whole table. So, yes there were line-ups at all meals, but not only because of the fact that the staff grills one thing at a time – but because of greedy & impatient tourists who would not stand in line for their own food like the rest of us. It is Cuba, and I do not ever expect ever fast food, but these tourists hoarding food just compounded the problem of line ups in the buffet. Shame on my fellow Canadians – do you not have food at home!!!? ( I also might mention that these same people would order 10+ drinks for their tables at the Lobby Bar at one time, and create huge line ups of people waiting for their one drink, while the already busy bar staff had to make all these drinks at once).
The other thing I found very concerning was the security at the resort- it was minimal or non-existent. Within an hour of arriving there in the afternoon, I had my sunglasses stolen right from under my nose in the Lobby where we were sitting waiting for our rooms to be ready. This should have set of the warning bells right away! I have NEVER had anything stolen in Cuba and always feel comfortable leaving my things near me or on my patio. Two nights later I had a pair of water shoes stolen from the lounger on my patio overnight. Now that does not make me feel very secure to know that someone was lurking right outside my patio door while I slept ( And the next day I realized that one of my patio doors did not even lock- they screwed it shut that night, only after I insisted)! The night security that I did see was usually hanging out at the pool bar viewing the women in that area, and even dancing. There are many pathways and areas of the resort that are not lit - never did I see security patrolling the grounds to make sure that guests were alright and there were no problems. During the day many people, who were not from Cojimar, would walk up and down in front of our rooms, even up on the area between our patio and our loungers where we were sunning. They would be eyeballing our doors and anything we had outside with us. Again, no security present to question them as to why they were walking along within 3 feet of our rooms, and not down on the beach. At other resorts there is security at both ends of the beach.
We had requested Ocean View bungalows, but they had been under renovations the week before arriving, so the first night we had the new chalets. The reservation manager, Eddwin was nice enough to arrange for us the ocean rooms we wanted for the next morning, & Yosef at Recepcion ,thanks for your help in making that happen the next day. These bungalows were great; location on the ocean was perfect – quiet and beautiful. However, there were a quite few maintenance issues in our 3 rooms that took days to fix or were never were resolved. One room had no electricity at first, no dresser with drawers, the refrigerator would not get cold, no remote to adjust the air conditioner temperature, had to use tweezers to play with the patio door lock to make it lock, no remotes or signals on the TVs, one safe did not work ( the whole week) & room had no hot water. After many trips, several times daily, to the lobby to report our problems, they were written in the book, some were resolved and some were never fixed. We received most of our help for these issues from the Supervisor of the room cleaners, who was so helpful, pleasant & apologetic, and also from the construction workers building the new sidewalk out front of the bungalows ( being able to speak Spanish was a great help at this time)– not sure if the technicians who look at the “report” book in the lobby ever even dealt with any of our maintenance issues. We realize that we requested & got put into these rooms by our own choice, and maybe renos weren’t completely finished - so we did not push these issues, and after day 3 we gave up complaining to reception to just have it written in the book and ignored. We were there for vacation & not to spend our days running back and forth complaining about things that needed fixing. It did help us that I speak Spanish and was able to get help from workers for some of our problems. I am not a fussy person at all, but maintenance should be stepped up to a basic level and at least have things fixed in a reasonable timely basis.
Having said all that – I must praise some of the awesome staff at the resort: Orlando, Arangel, Alicia, & Sergio at the Pool Bar . They were always smiling, helpful, friendly, and continually made us laugh while giving excellent service at the Bar! We will miss you all. And especially Anisladis, who made the best Jamon y Queso Paninis, served with a smile at the pool bar every day – she was a wonderful person and we loved her!!! And Tony at the Lobby Bar was so friendly and wonderful -just a pleasure to talk to first thing in the morning when getting our coffee! And Julio the gardener always had a great conversation for me whenever I saw him, lovely man!
In conclusion, this is a beautiful clean resort, great basic food, and friendly staff – a good value for the money; we had a great week, as we did not let the negative things affect our vacation. But for the same amount of money I can go back to a few 2.5 star resorts and feel safe, know that if there is a problem in my room it will be fixed without repeated asking, and not have to deal with tourists who hoard food for their tables like they have never seen food before. I am sorry to say, I will never go back to Villa Cojimar, unless there are some very big improvements on the issues of security, maintenance, & food service that I experienced there.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
