Pousada Marabella

The price is really good, and the staff are excellent and friendly. The rooms are good, and the food is decent, though not great. This is my second stay, and apart from the location, it suits what I'm looking for perfectly. The beach right outside is quiet because the hotel is away from everything. That's ideal if you want a peaceful stay in Macaé, though in Brazil you might want to see people on the beach. Getting to any decent restaurants is a hike, and the location is the main drawback for me.

I spent three weeks here, and it was a bad experience. The restaurant is best avoided: the food isn't good and the wait takes forever. The rooms show wear that hasn't been repaired, and you can hear too much through the walls. Staff didn't seem very concerned with making guests' stays go smoothly. Meal trays were left sitting in the corridors for a long time.

After the first night, I told reception about the noise and was kindly moved to another room right away. That room was clean and soundproof, and I could spend the rest of my stay relaxing. The beach directly in front of the hotel wasn't crowded, and I liked that it was away from Macaé's main beach. Breakfast choices at the hotel restaurant were okay, though I don't usually care much about breakfast. I'd booked a sea-view room for four nights in a row, but the first room I got wasn't very clean and had no soundproofing, partly because of the connecting door. At check-in, the staff member seemed busy with something else and wasn't very friendly. I could hear the Austrian man next door talking to his family back home. German is my native language, so I understood almost every word, including the child's endless, bone-piercing cough.

The location isn't ideal. It's farther from Macaé's main beach area, and other hotels are better placed. My room on the first floor had a window facing a wall with a post in front, so there was no sea view at all. The window was locked and couldn't be opened for air, and there was no balcony, unlike the other hotels in the area, even though this hotel faces the sea. The face towels were stained, and the replacements I asked for were stained too. The pool water was cloudy. Receptionists were attentive and polite, but the service still wasn't good: I still hadn't received my invoice, and the booking site was buggy. At dawn, nobody answers the phone. The Hyatt booking site shows all rooms with sea-view windows, which wasn't the case for mine.