I recentely attended a wedding held at the Hotel Parador in Manuel Antonio. It was a beautiful hotel with great views, well run facilities/amenities, and an overall cleanliness that was worth the amount my friends paid each night to sleep in the plush beds of the hotel.
HOWEVER, I will complain about the staff and their odd views on customer service. While there, I approached the reception area many times to ask questions and to make request for taxis and such. Often, the phone would ring as I was approaching or as I was making a request, and for some reason the staff member would either answer the phone right as I reached the desk or he/she would answer the phone in the middle of me stating a request; which clearly took his/her attention away from my request! I found this to be rude and not very customer oriented.
Another example is when my friends and I wanted to eat dinner together at the same table. We made a reservation for 10 people, but four extra people showed up a little late (about 10 minutes). The wait staff of the restaurant resisted placing our tables together and combining our two groups. The restaurant WAS NOT BUSY and had only six others (who had already been served) sitting in the restaurant when there was seating for at least 20 others. It got to the point where my friends had to say to the staff members something along the lines of, 'I'm here to have my wedding, I want to enjoy my meal with my friends and family, it doesn't bother me if the food comes out at different times and we've all switched seats, WE will manage the distribution of food, I just want to sit with them and enjoy our time together!'
My last exmple and most infuriating was on my last night visiting the hotel. The receptionist asked me if I was staying at the hotel and then proceeded to ask me questions, in a tone that was very demeaning, such as "how many more of you will be visiting the hotel?" and "how much more will you be stopping by the hotel?" after telling him that I wasn't a guest at the hotel, but a friend of the 14 plus guests that were staying at the hotel. I answered him in a very catty tone, in Spanish, "I don't know how many more times I will be by the hotel to visit my friends, and I don't know who else is here visiting the other guests of the hotel, I know over 14 people who are paying to sleep here and they have invited me to visit with them while they are here. Does this bother you?" With that remark, he told my friend (who was "escorting" me to the lobby until my taxi came by) that my taxi would honk for me and that we could wait on the other side of the lobby & not at the desk.
On a positive note, the cleaning staff was SO INCREDIBLY helpful and sweet. One woman went out of her way to look for a complimentary toothbrush for my friend b/c he forgot his somewhere. She offered with a genuine smile and seemed happy to be with her job at the hotel.
My summary of the hotel is that the staff that I interacted with the most were rude. I didn't feel that my friends and I asked too much of the staff nor were we the typical loud and obnoxious Americans that so many tourists tag citizens of the USA as being. We were all concious of cultural differences, my friends that were getting married, had lived just four hours away in San Jose for almost a year by then, and had made an extra attempt to be understanding of the staff's reasoning for answering phones BEFORE fulfilling a our requests. It wasn't until the night of the wedding when my friend slipped one of the waiters a $20 bill that all the wait staff was all smiles and our glasses were always full with wine or water.
If you'd like to hear more of my opinion about this place in regards to it's location to the beach, the food & it's prices, etc. Leave a comment for this entry with your question and I'll do my best to answer it.
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