Unfortunately we had an awful experience at the Grand Palladium Imbassai, Bahia, Brazil. We were there in October 2019, and have several issues:
1- Mold in our room: when we first arrived, hotel staff placed us on the first floor. We have two small kids and stroller, thus we were pretty pleased with that. However, as soon as we entered the room, there was this potent smell of mold. Because we arrived late at night, after a full day of travel, we decided to just sleep and talk to the front desk on the next day. The mold was so bad that both of our kids sneezed all night long. In the morning, we went to the front desk and explained the situation to the person in the front desk. She was not only not surprised by the mold, but also clearly stated that all rooms in the first floor would have mold issue. She asked if we wanted to move to a higher floor, and we said yes. But we were shocked that they were just hosting guests in moldy rooms, fully aware of the issue, and being unapologetic about it.
2- Foot, hand and mouth outbreak: As previously mentioned we have two small children under the age of 3. Five days after staying in the hotel, both of our children started vomiting and had a high fever. Because it was late at night, we decided to go to hotel Dr. in the morning. After an awful night, our youngest had a rash around her mouth, feet, and hands. We rushed to the hotel Dr. and he said it was foot, hand and mouth disease. We were quite worried because we were unfamiliar with it, but he calmly stated everything would be ok, and as a matter of fact, our youngest daughter was the 4th patient who was a guest in the hotel he had seen with the disease just that week. And indeed, after we were made aware of the outbreak, we noticed several other young children with rashes and looking pretty miserable. At no point there were warnings in the hotel common areas, and specially the kids areas, of the ongoing outbreak. Additionally, we never saw the toys and kid facilities being cleaned and disinfected. Our daughter was MISERABLE for ten days with a condition that could have been avoided. If there were any alerts or signs regarding the outbreak, we would have avoided the kids’ facilities and pools, and restricted ourselves to the beach or other locations. But we were never made aware of that. However, I MUST compliment Ms. Lita, who was responsible for our room service. Even though the hotel did nothing to prevent the spread of the disease, or notify the parents, Ms. Lita was exceptional in trying to make us feel comfortable. She went above and beyond bringing food for our kids, and never expressed dissatisfaction with having to clean our room and sheets that had been vomited by our kids.
3-Availability of Special Restaurants: Another point that surprised us was how hard was to get a reservation to dine in the specialty restaurants. the first day in the hotel we went to book our reservations but to our surprise, there were no spots available until the 5th day of our trip. Therefore, for the first 5 days of our trip we had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same restaurant (Agda), which was a buffet. It was very odd to us that the hotel group heavily advertises the specialty restaurants when access to them is quite restricted.
