Kura Hulanda Village & Spa

It’s a beautiful setting, really has the feel of a historic village. There’s not much going on in Willemstad (e.g., stores closed all the time, only a few tourist oriented restaurants) but it’s good to have a short walk to the things that there are to do. Also, as we’d rented a car, the parking was a plus.

It’s rundown, literally falling apart, and pretty much a ghost town. Many areas of the extensive property showed signs of complete neglect and there was clearly no intent to fix anything that was broken. We had two rooms, one of them never had hot water despite several requests to the front desk and both had very poor internet. One of them had chunks of bathroom tile that fell of into the tub. The other had filth in the tub that eight days of housekeeping did not remove (the dirt, noticeably human in origin, was embedded in the surface of the tub). The only thing that made taking a shower with the body hair of a previous guest bearable was that the lack of hot water got me in and out of the shower in just a minute or less. The breakfast was unimpressive (though they had real eggs available which was nice) and the staff was unfriendly. This property has so much potential but they’ve obviously stopped making investments in it.

We were initially given a terrible room — no windows, dark, depressing, dated. We complained and were moved to a different part of the hotel into a much better room, which was still dated and not very clean, but much more spacious and bright. The best part was that it was located right in the centre of “downtown” so it was easy to walk around and take in the sights (that being said, there isn’t much to see in the general vicinity). We did take the free shuttle (in a beat up van with no air conditioning) to their other property in Westpunt for a day, which was probably the highlight of our time. It has a beautiful beach.

This hotel is a ghost town. It looks like it used to be a beautiful, well maintained property, but absolutely everything has fallen into disrepair and no one is working to make sure you have a pleasant stay. It seemed like the staff had just been hired for the Christmas season. Very few people were around; all of the restaurants, bars, pools were completely empty. Food at the breakfast buffet was the same each day and one of the worst breakfasts we have ever had. Everything was falling apart and had a grungy, unsafe feel to it. We found glass on the pool deck (where we were playing with our baby!), and several buildings were crumbling and abandoned. Unfortunately, the pictures online tell a different story and you are paying a premium for a very rundown property. We made the most of our time there, but it was not at all what we were expecting!