Did a super pleasant 3 night stay there in August.
First -- so many positives about the stay: With wildly varying rates for the 3 night stay, I booked 3 separate reservations and they handled them well. I found staff to be uniformly friendly and excellent. That includes waitstaff in the breakfast room, bellmen, pool bar staff, cleaners, and desk staff. I can't remember but most spoke some decent English; (I also speak Spanish when in Brazil if I can't use English and really have almost no issues, so it's not something I notice if people can't speak English).
Rooftop pool on 39th floor is, absolutely, gorgeous. I spent every day up there around 3-5pm, before the Gold/Diamond Happy Hour, which is in a small lounge off of the lobby area. Happy Hour always had some decent snacks and maybe one or two hot items so isn't a huge spread. Drinks were serve- yourself on some days, and on others a waiter would appear to offer top ups. Maybe just a staffing issue. I prefer breakfast in the restaurant, so it was nice that there isn't a lounge breakfast. The restaurant breakfast is on the 4th floor and is quite a good spread, a typical 4-5* Brazilian offering. Nice staff helping out.
Very easy to get an Uber to SDU airport and also to Ipanema Beach (I like Posto 8-9) :P
The negatives are pretty obvious in that this property is quite old and showing its age. For the prices that Hilton is asking, it REALLY helps that the service was excellent. Actually everything in my room (37th floor, top floor for rooms) was in proper working order even if it was old-- so it's not terrible, just not new.
My main issue is with HHonors pricing: look for even ONE NIGHT at a standard award. Nope. Not in September, October, Nov..... all the way to June 2019-- zero award nights at a standard rate. Premium Rates? EVERY NIGHT is available. Could be a glitch, but unlikely. There are some possibilities I can think of-- the hotel has several airlines and soccer teams staying there- I wonder if they "sell out" their standard rooms on contracts like that?
Yet also interestingly-- while rates are very high (many nights are US$200-300/night or more), on a couple days before travel, every night had rooms available for around US$119 but only on 3rd party Travel Agents like SnapTravel. Nearly impossible to do a Best Rate Guarantee-- why? Because they aren't selling their "standard" rooms on Hilton.com.
So while I totally recommend this hotel, I wish HHonors would look into this practice, OR reprice the hotel to the Award Level that it has become.
View toward Copacabana Beach from the 39th floor
On the 39th floor pool deck with Leme Beach (end of Copacabana) and also Sugar Loaf mountain behind.