Hotel Estelar Playa Manzanillo

The property is beautiful, clean, and well maintained. The main problem is with hotel staff and a complete lack of information about the facilities. The check-in time is rigidly enforced at 3:30 pm, despite the fact that many travelers arrive early in the morning on overnight flights. This would be okay if there were an indoor, air-conditioned space in which to receive hotel guests; however, guests have a shaded waiting area in which to pass the hours in the baking heat, including children and the elderly. We offered to pay for an extra day to be able to access a room earlier, but the front desk receptionist was condescending. Every day, we saw guests and their luggage stack up waiting for their room. If the hotel weren't booked so full, this might alleviate the problem. Our room was lovely but packed a hair dryer. We notified the concierge who made note of it and did nothing about it. We also notified the housekeeing of the situation, but they did not know what to do about it. Three days later, after more requests, we were finally given a hair dryer. The air condoning in the rooms is weak, which is on par for the region in general, but at the height of summer, we felt cooler rooms would be better overall. The property has 3 pools, but one is exclusively for adults. The pools that allow children often host DJs with music loud enough so that keeping ears on splashing children becomes difficult at best. Finally, the QR code to hotel information leads to a 404 page.

We planned a family reunion that had been postponed several years due to the pandemic. Hotel Estelar Playa Manzanillo was the perfect location to meet our families again. The location is very quiet with beautiful and colorful gardens. There was a swimming pool for adults only, one for babies and 2 for families. They provided good towels and the beach had plenty of seating(with umbrellas for shadow). The sand is dark with glittery specks, no rocks, very pleasant to walk barefooted. Children enjoyed looking for seashells. There were only a couple of local vendors, very respectful and with beautiful crafts at a very reasonable prices. The sunsets were beautiful ( local regulations don’t allow access to the beach after 7pm). The food was very good. For breakfast, we enjoyed freshly baked bread and tropical fruits. My youngest child discovered “granadillas” and Balkeys and other staff were so observant and kind to bring her a full plate of her new favorite fruit every time we ate at the buffet. Lunch was at the buffet and there were plenty of delicious options: from local dishes to international ones. For dinner there were usually 3 restaurants available and we sampled fresh fish and delicious seafood. Carlos and his team were great, explaining the food options, accommodating our big group and food allergies. For excursions and activities in Cartagena, we received help from Noemi who provided great recommendations. This hotel is Highly recommended!

Traditional, relaxing hotel. Beautiful location with a nature environment and access to the beach. Staff is very friendly and helpful. The hotel is very close to the center and a small plaza at the street entrance. Beautiful pool, great food and drinks. We had a great time as a family! Big thanks to Dylan, Sebastian, Jesus, Luis, Albert, Kelly, Nestor and the rest of the staff :) for making our stay more comfortable, safe and fun

We had a good time at this resort. Thankful for the two front desk person Dilan and (I can’t remember his name) who spoke English and who were able to help us with check in and solve any issues we had with our stay. Dining options were limited and some of the food was not very tasty. We were confused one night when the buffet was closed and we were told we needed to have a reservation for the other 3 restaurants but few of us went to the front desk and our concerns were speedily addressed and we had reservations in 20 minutes. The pool and the grounds were nicely kept. Rooms were cleaned daily but the rooms were huge with sparsely any furniture. Limited supply of bottle water in the room especially for family of 4, we were given 2 small bottles each day. 1 night we had half of one bottle left. They only replaced 1 bottle instead of 2 bottles. Neomi from Gema tours was excellent. She assisted us with our excursions and checked in on us the day of and even after our tours to ensure we had a good time. Would be helpful in the future if there is a list of nightly events/shows that will take place.

It was a bad experience to get to the property after a long flight and find out the reservation is not there because it did not go through even when expedia charged my credit card. They did not have enough rooms for us to stay and my family was already staying in the hotel. Please expedia next time make sure the reservation is there.

A nice family style resort designed mainly for Colombians. Food choices and amenities were fairly good but a little too limited for my liking. Quite disorganized and slow on check in so first impression was poor but things improved over the course of the week.

The hotel is adequate to what it is advertised. Simple rooms, good food, nice facilities. The service can be better, as they were sometimes slow (with the check-in process, and at the restaurants) or forgetful about some drink orders, but we will be objective and blame this on the pandemic, adjustments needed for guidelines and protocols, and the slow restart of operation for the tourism industry. In overall, my family and I enjoyed our stay and the facilities offered.

The stay was beautiful, the staff is friendly and attentive. I loved the 2 pools, loved the beach setup, the activities and the shows. The drinks are fresh with fresh juices (you can opt to not add additional sugar) really the quality is amazing. The staff does not all speak perfect English so take that as an opportunity to learn a couple to words in a different language. The front desk staff English was great so if all else failed we were able to get what we needed. There is a shuttle that runs to the city which we took advantage of and was perfect. we are 30's and have traveled all over the world over about 10 years and i honestly say that the bad reviews seem very entitled and culturally ignorant. Also, we had a junior suite and the beds are hard for my liking, i packed a cheap Walmart mattress topper and it made all the difference.

The resort was pleasant. The bar and children pool area had to many stinging bees due to the delay in cleaning of drink cups and plates but beside that overall stay was quiet and tranquil.