This is a 3 stars hotel in Boa Viagem, Recife. It´s a very good location, near the beach, but the beach isn´t very nice. They provide towels for the beach, but not umbrellas. Breakfast is included, it´s average. The pool is in the roof, very small, and up to 7 p.m. The rooms are normal, no king size beds, just twins put together. If you go with car, keep in mind that garage is very small, and you´ll probably have to park on the street Boa Viagem. Service is good, people are kind and friendly, but they don´t speak spanish or english. The wifi is good in all the hotel and is free.

Thanks to some greedy entrepreneurs, Recife has lost almost all of its enchantment over the past decades. The boom times of the seventies and eighties are over. Money could be made much too easily during this period, so hotel complexes popped out of the ground like mushrooms. When recession struck in the nineties, their budget did not allow for remodeling or modernizing the properties any more. So many of them are quite run down now, especially those at beachfront. If you want a decent hotel room in Recife, you are better off if you look for a place located a few blocks backward. Since the local hotel industry did no longer adhere to international standards, the number of foreign tourists decreased drastically over the years. Nowadays, Recife caters mostly for Brazilian tourists. Foreigners are barely tolerated, but you will never feel really welcomed by the locals. On the other side, many Brazilians who have traveled abroad are familiar with international standards now, so even they will not take everything for granted as before.

At the three-star rated Jangadeiro Hotel, there has been visibly A LOT of patchworking done. I booked a “luxury” room for a room rate comparable to that of a four-star facility. My room was quite what you can expect from a three-star hotel. I had a loose toilet seat and some minor imperfections like stained bed sheets and temporary hot water shortage. Many of the Brazilian tourists however complained about their standard rooms. Staff was friendly and quite cooperative. I would not recommend their dinner buffet, however. If you like soggy pizza, just go for it. Otherwise, there is a nice dinner alternative at Galetus just a few blocks away, or at Plim, which is located inside the Shopping Center Recife, also within walking distance. Breakfast buffet at Jangadeiro was quite acceptable, only at the beginning of my stay all their coffee cups were dirty. The dishes are very small in size, which may be a policy of the management in order to keep their guests from eating too much. Of course, this does not look very generous. My stay at Jangadeiro was overall satisfactory, but much too high priced for the hotel category. Not really a good value for the money! If you don’t mind walking or driving a few blocks, you are better off if you stay at one of the newer hotels, some distance away from the beach.

As I stayed already 4 times in Jangadeiro, I booked this year again a hotel room for 4 nights. Unfortunately it seems, that they changed the owner and it's just getting worse. I ordered a kingsize bed, there was no kingsize bed, but two single beds. After I asked for a kingsize bed, they gave me a key to a room with 4 single beds. And it was not because they didn't understand me, I'm a nativ portugues speaker. The bathroom was dirty and obviously not cleaned befor we checked in. The breakfast was just miserable. Not even fresh fruit juice was available, you had to take it from a machine. This was the last time I stayed there, and I would never recommend this hotel. Even we had bad service there, they were not interested to convince us from the opposite. The only good think is that the hotel is really good located and if you have a room with sea view it's very nice view.