Morena Resort

Front desk staff was helpful with checkin and sharing local tips. Property was clean. Apartment was perfect for sleeping after a day at the beach or sightseeing. Just a five minute walk to the beach.

El lugar es muy lindo acogedor y el personal es muy amable se esfuerzan por hacerte sentir como en casa

Rustic, spacious, private. Beautiful nature setting with lots of tropical birds.

Nothing

Clean, seemed relatively new. The staff was friendly and helpful. The room layout was good, and the outdoor space was large.

The whole “eco” thing seems performative or a way to cheap out on certain things. Having to press the button on the shower every 30 seconds to keep it on was annoying.

Lovely resort near the beach. Staff are helpful although there were some issues with the beach towels (they were either out or hadn’t arrived yet).

Fuego restaurant

Our room, the distance to the front desk, spiders, mosquitoes, cleaning each 3 days, light inside the room (like a jale), pillows don’t allow to sleep or take a rest, towels really old and small, tv size, old furniture, beds separated for a couple….unbelievable !!!

A lot of mosquito into the roll , even a spider into my bed . The pillow was awful, it’s not a resort for a couple , they don’t have married bed !!!!!!!! The tower was child size !!!! Only 2 beds with different cover . Not a romantic place , it couldn’t be worse experience

Lovely stay. Simple but adequate villa, a bit dark on porch and inside. Pool areas are lovely and even at height of season the resort was quiet and peaceful.

We stayed at the Morena Eco Resort in December 2023 for what was supposed to be a relaxing week. Well it wasn’t relaxing and we couldn’t make it a full week at this place. When we were three days in, I went to the front desk and told them how unhappy we were with the accommodations and asked them to book us a taxi to another resort right after Christmas. I know the hotel will write some sort of “response” to this review, but quite honestly, when we were there they did NOTHING to rectify the situation and they actually made it worse after they knew we were leaving early. Firstly, let me say that we are Americans. I researched the resort and the island before we went but was not prepared to be the only Americans at the resort and they make you feel very excluded while you are there. We didn’t understand the language and none of the signs or menus are in English. They also do not have regular American electrical outlets at this resort. When we asked for help getting a converter for our devices, they gave us an old one that they acknowledged was likely broken, but that was all we had. It shorted out my phone and one of our tablets so now we have that expense when we get home. By comparison, everywhere else we went on the island had english menus. Hotel staff was barely courteous, but hot helpful or welcoming. They also seemed to have a different answer every time we asked for help, or not know what was going on themselves. Here is a breakdown of the good and the bad at this “resort”. We stayed at the Aura Apartments: 1. The bathrooms: Water is heated by solar panels. We had no warm water in the evenings for showering. The shower faucet is operated by a push button nob that only stays on for 25 seconds at a time. They only give you 4 hand towels for an entire family of 4. They do not provide a single bar of soap in the unit, not even for hand washing. When I complained about the lack of hot water, they made it clear that it was my fault for not telling them sooner about the issue. Fine, that’s on me. They eventually fixed it after a guy being at our unit ALL day, but when we finally did have hot water, we had no towels. On the taxi ride to the other hotel, the other guests confirmed they also had no hot water, but the hotel was so bad, they just thought it was normal. Maybe it wasn’t entirely my fault after all… 2. If you request extra towels or pillows, they tell you they will get it to you eventually. That usually means a 12-24 hour wait and then when the items are ready, they text you through WhatsApp and you have to walk yourself to the front desk to get them. (Even though the staff have golf carts). 3. The bedrooms look like tiny prison cells and each has 2 tiny cots with rock hard pillows. The rest of the unit has rock hard patio furniture that is dirty. 4. The “TV” was a 15 inch computer monitor mounted to the wall that barely worked and the picture was green. 5. Although they advertise “free” beach access, that’s not entirely true. You have to pay to sit on the beach - $5 per chair no matter how long or how little you sit there. There is no place to even lay out your own towel if you want to avoid that extra expense. 6. They tell you it’s a 5 minute slow walk to the beach. It’s not. I measured our walk on Google Earth and it was 0.54 miles to the beach. For most people, that’s at least a 10 minute walk and slower if you have children. The walk back is all uphill and it’s a dirty, busy road, covered in trash with potholes in the sidewalk. The map of the resort and surrounding areas was not readable (see photo). 7. The unit we stayed in was clean upon arrival. They were supposed to come and clean every three days. They never came once. Upon our early checkout, I mentioned this to them and they said –“We come every three days”. My response was – we were here 5 days and you never cleaned. I got a blank stare in response like I was delusional. 8. There is no A/C except for small window units in the bedrooms. There are signs that tell you you must keep the bedrooms at 76F which is pretty darn hot. The bathrooms, kitchen, living areas are basically outside. The windows have no screens so bugs are everywhere. Even with constant use of bug spray, both of my kids were eaten alive. My daughter had approx. 50 bites when we left. 9. The pool and pool furniture were dirty. My son wouldn’t even get in the pool because he said it looked gross. 10. For an “Eco Resort” – it felt like we lived in a tiny city. You could hear golf carts buzzing by your door every 10 seconds and loud truck sounds all day. The golf carts would run over the lizards and there were dead lizards on the walking paths with their guts spilled out. This was hard to see over and over again when they are supposed to care about the environment. My kids would get upset every time we saw one. 11. You basically have to live outside. This sounds okay at first. But everyone else has to as well and your neighbors are above or below you and right next door. There is no privacy. You can hear your neighbors showering and in the bathroom. Financially we were not in a position to forfeit the remainder of our money and spend an additional $1500 to go somewhere else for the remainder of our vacation. But this place was ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. They didn’t even offer to cover the taxi to get us to the other resort, which was only $40. We ended up going to the Renaissance Wind Creek which was great. I’ll write a separate review for there. By comparison, we had one meal there and we had to wait 45 minutes for our food. We didn’t complain but they still comped us ½ of the meal. The best part was that the front desk person made us feel SO WELCOME when we arrived with a smile and to let us know if she could help in any way. Words we never heard at the Morena. I don’t know what the business model is at the Morena Eco Resort, but making guests feel welcome or admitting their mistakes are not part of it. Thank you Morena for almost ruining our vacation, but completely ruining our budget. I hope you were able to rerent our room that we already paid for to someone else and get an even bigger profit.