kdinino

I thought it would be helpful to the community to share a brief review of my take on the JW Marriott Guanacaste Resort/Spa in Costa Rica as my wife and returned from our honeymoon a few days ago.

I valued the reviews on here as I used it as a basis to book some hotels. We made sure to stay at three different hotels in 3 cities during a 14 day stay. our first stop was the JW Marriott. For the room rate of $330/night, we received a beautiful ocean-view room with a great patio overlooking the ocean. Very happy with the room and the access to the beach -- seems like most people were hanging in the pools vs. hopping in the lovely Pacific. Wife and I laid out on beach club chairs and swam in the ocean just fine. The pools were nice as well and service was attentive.

The property is definitely in a remote part near Tamarindo. The ride from the air strip (saying airport is a laugh if you've flown Nature Air or Sansa into this town) was a hoot --dirt roads, with potholes for a mile or two but you're lucky to hit 20 mph. From the main road, it's a solid 4-5 miles of winding paved roads to the JW Marriott. Great if you like remote, not great if during a 4 day stay you want to move around or take a cab into town for $30 each way.

Pros: Price of room, beach/Pool Acess, Remote (pro and con)

Now the cons...

Cons: Food, price of drinks/food, remote, nothing "Tico" about here.
I'm trying to be as objective as possible here. Now I know it's an American chain hotel, but hanging out with hundreds of other Americans (an HR conference was in town) just took a bit of the "beach resort" luster off. The resort's food was downright boring, bland and obscenely over priced. $10-12 cocktails, $18-20 lunch sandwiches, $29.95 per person for the breakfast buffet...everything here was massively overpriced. I can handle the prices but the food just plain stunk. The poolside beach restaurant and the Sushi/Karaoke bar being the main offenders. However, thanks to TripAdvisor we discovered Lola's, a 30 minute walk on the beach and a great little beach restaurant/bar with fresh local food (great food!) and about 1/2 of what we were paying at the JW. We lunched at lola's 3 of the 4 days there.

Our other two stays were at Arenas del Mar in Manuel Antonio and Nayara in Arenal. Both of these indy properties blew the pants off of the JW in terms of service, food and amenities.

I'd give this property a 6/10 and an overall "Meh" ...