When we first came to the Decameron many years ago, there were free cigarettes on the bar and at every meal, the tables had tablecloths, linen napkins and appropriate cutlery and glassware for the meal. The food was quite impressive and I found the staff everywhere to be amazing. It was truly an exemplary experience!!!
But that was then; this is now.
(TL;DR - don't waste your money here. Lots of much better options just to the south on the same great beach.)
This was our 23rd visit and the decline in the past years has been nothing short of astounding and, almost unimaginably, this resort has approached Cuba levels of yuckiness.
Unlike the colourful, vibrant and exciting buildings depicted by management photos on this page, they have been painted a boring beige which is now peeling and flaking off in many areas. You might as well be in Florida, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Cuba or the Dominican as it looks tedious and no longer instills a sense of coming home. I think this is the worst decision management has ever made. While I understand that some rooms have been updated (and not in the best way) our room was pretty much the same as it was in the last millennium, although clearly showing its advanced age, except the old window shaker AC unit has been replaced and we have a flat screen TV. I have no idea when the blue chair cushions disappeared.
The food selection and quality is quite dismal at the lunch and dinner buffets with the infrequent surprise of a hot and tasty item...but that doesn't happen very often at all. Breakfast buffet was actually the treat of the day as you could get eggs made to order and there was generally a good selection of fruit available. Beef, pork and chicken was consistently overcooked and dry and somehow frequently cold. While I contemplated how meat could possibly be cold on a steam line, it became crystal clear when a fresh batch of baked chicken came out of the kitchen...stone cold. We experienced a similiar thing with cold french fries coming out directly from the kitchen. Unbelievable. Of our many weeks there, I don't even need all my fingers on one hand to count how many times we had a really good and special meal. Of the a la carte restaurants we booked, the Mexican was truly disappointing as three meals came out cold and the fourth one was piping hot...how does that even happen? And the staff at the Mexican were clearly not up to the job with their poor task prioritization and the quite memorable surly conduct of a particular staff member. The one true bright spot was the Piccolo restaurant which was excellent on each of our three visits to it: the food and the staff were simply brilliant! But, one fine evening, resort management had to do a dog and pony show for a group of travel reps who were seated and fed before the paying guests; at the end of the meal, we were told we had 5 minutes to leave.
From our previous visits, we knew housekeeping could be sketchy doing the absolute minimum or it could be really great. One day at lunch, I observed one of the best staff members working on a second floor balcony. She was cleaning the table and chairs, wiped down the two big glass windows and then swept and washed the balcony floor. As it was well into our third week, I inspected our balcony door and lo and behold, our fingerprints were still on the window and sand was on the deck and it was quite clear the balcony chairs hadn't had a scrubbing in quite a while. Speaking of housekeeping staff, one would think they could take the initiative or even be obligated to report deficiencies within the resort. My balcony door handle and lock was literally falling off so I repaired it with my multitool...but hey, if she never goes out to the balcony to clean, I guess she wouldn't know the handle was broken. I also removed and cleaned the shower head to get some semblance of a normal shower which she should have known was faulty if she actually cleaned the shower stall. Additionally, when the sink hot water tap is turned on, it leaks through the faucet fitting and leaves a big puddle on the floor. Is it low standards or do they simply not care? For the housekeeping staff in public areas, do they not report serious maintenance issues? The men's room by the Royal Restaurant was missing a toilet seat for at least 20 days and the ladies loo at the Piccolo was deficient of a toilet seat for at least 15 days which is when we noticed it and took pictures. Somehow though, they were both replaced on the same day just before Christmas. This is true Cuba levels of incompetence and lack of concern.
There are a few staff remaining who we know and they truly seem to enjoy their jobs. But there are many who are inexperienced, some just incompetent and the rest just don't seem to care. Very sad what has happened here.
As we were on our way to Mexico, there we were cruising at 39,000 feet with a ground speed of 600 MPH and 179 of my friends and I were all connected to the blazing fast wifi each doing our own thing with nary a hiccup. And then at the Decameron, it's like you time warped back to 2010. Pretty sad wifi with slow connections, frequent disconnects, failure to auto reconnect and oddly, "can't locate IP address". A Firestick couldn't even be used to watch a hockey game. In the grand scheme of things, it would be relatively inexpensive to upgrade the system but it seems quite clear management is just not interested in doing so. I believe the reason is that the huge influx of nationals all have their own data plans and don't use the wifi.
Let's talk about entertainment: music around pool 1 is extremely loud and quite often with vulgar language. One fine day, when some rap stuff was screaming over the speakers, most people got up and left the pool area and then the staff were left wondering about doing their next activity. It's quite easy to spot the staff and there were usually about 9 or 11 of them hanging around pool 1. But oddly, when you wanted to get something, they were nowhere to be found as they were ALL on lunch break. Just incredible!!! And if you take the iguana tour and want a good laugh, just fact check what they tell you. LOL!!! Anyway, we never worried about attending the night shows as we could quite easily hear them from our room. Sorry guys, I value my hearing. And in the high sun and heat of the midday, it would have been nice to play foosball or pool in the disco but that request fell on deaf ears....probably a good thing as one of the emergency exit doors was nailed shut!!!
Everywhere you go, the infrastructure is failing. Whether it's the tiling in and around the pools and the thatched roofs of the bars, it seems any maintenance is an afterthought. We watched one fella replace some tiles of a small 2 square foot area that didn't even come close to matching and not 10 feet away, a tile was missing and the mortar was all chipped away; but I guess that wasn't in the 5 year plan. And on the topic of maintenance, why would the staff be spraying, washing and scrubbing around pool 1 with water lines and suction hoses at 6 o'clock in the evening when folks are going to the buffet and maybe want to check out the wares of the vendors? You guessed it, quite questionable management decisions.
And finally, at one point in our trip, we found ourselves locked out of our rooms. We approached the airline rep who went to the desk for a bit and then returned to tell us to go to the main lobby. We explained our issue to a dour, expressionless automaton who, without a word, took our cards to a backroom and she came back and handed them back to us. No apology, nothing.
At the end of the day, the decline of this Decameron has been staggering and it only falls on one group. The managers.
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing.
Decameron management is failing miserably on both counts. They do not care, they will deny everything and they will accept responsibility for nothing.
DO. NOT. GO. HERE.
Note: Management response is pointless as you have nothing but empty words. Don't bother.
MX
CA
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