DELPLAZA Marabá São Paulo

For $50 a night and a central location, it's hard to beat such a value. The hotel is situated close to the red and yellow lines of the subway which seems to be about a five minute walk. There is a park you can walk through to admire the general splendor. As we got off the bus to go to the hotel, the bus driver warned us about pickpockets in the area. It's an area with many homeless people and pedestrians, but keep your valuables close and be aware of your surroundings. The hotel is very large and easy to spot, and the lobby looks very classy. The front desk staff was the least friendly out of all of the hotel staff. You will have to learn some Portuguese because there might not be an English-speaker or even a Spanish-speaker available. I believe there was only one front desk staff member who spoke English out of the eight people we saw. When we told them the name of the person who made the reservation, they seemed confused and took some time to find the name. Our room was on the 4th floor which had lights that came on when motion is detected. I think the hotel is very eco-friendly for this preservation of energy. The hotel room we booked was clean, had a safe, and had plenty of towels. Two bars of soap, shampoo, and conditioner were also provided. By American standards, the room was small. As long as it's clean, I don't mind the size. In order to turn on the lights, you must first insert your key card into the slot. The room also came equipped with a nice air conditioning system similar to what you would find in Asia. The AC can make the room very cold, so don't set it so low at first. I was very happy to see that a safe was provided with our stay where we were able to store important documents and expensive electronics. The power outlets were universal and required no adapters to use. I really liked the bathroom because it had a bidet, but be careful of the high water pressure. The sink also had very high water pressure, and the shower water got hot very quickly. The best thing about this hotel is the breakfast which is from 0600-1000 every morning. The breakfast area has plenty of seating, and the staff works hard. There was such a large variety of pastries, pineapple and guava jelly, local fruits, teas, juices, etc. The bacon and eggs were delicious! If you get hungry at the hotel later, they also have a restaurant there that will charge the meal to the card that paid for your stay. We had a charming waiter who was very friendly on our first night there. Despite our lack of Portuguese, he was in good spirits and tried very hard to understand us. Housekeeping would often be in the elevators and would greet us every time and hold the elevator doors. The reason I give this hotel three stars is because we had a few situations that were difficult due to the language barrier. Our keys would work and then suddenly stop working. We had to go down to the lobby twice to get them to work again. Our safe suddenly stopped working and couldn't be opened. A staff member helped open the safe, but he didn't solve the problem of the safe not closing. The worst issue we encountered was one night, at 2 AM, someone tried to go into our room. Thankfully, we used the extra lock and they were unable to get in, but it was frightening. The rattling of the door woke us up, and we called the front desk. Someone picked up, I asked if I can speak to someone who speaks English, and he said please hold. Another man spoke and told me to wait, and then he just hung up on me. It didn't make me feel very safe. The same thing happened again hours later, but the person still couldn't get in. The front desk staff allowed me to leave my bag at the hotel because my flight was leaving so late, and I didn't want to carry my stuff. When I came back to get my bag, the man who helped me asked if I needed him to call for a taxi. The stay ended with a good note of hospitality, but it was an overall average stay due to our situations.

I give it three stars because the staff were really lovely and sweet. The only challenge was the language. Majority of the staff did not speak English. I tried to order room service but the person in room service didn't speak English, so I had to call front desk to have the staff come up and take my order. The reviews were all quite positive regarding the room. There must be two sides of the hotel with different types of rooms because my room (316) while generally clean, it was not the greatest. The window inside the bathroom did not close properly so there was always a draft. The window curtain inside the shower was moldy. I asked them to change it but they never did. Some of the light switch in the room did not work properly. The housekeeping staff is not very consistent in their service when it comes to towel replenishment. One day I only got one bath towel, then there was another day where they completely forgot to give me bath towels and then there was a day where they just dumped the towels next to the sink. I travel quite a bit for work and have stayed in hotels all shapes, sizes and price point. This was the first hotel that I stayed where they did not have any coffee / tea amenities or tea pot to boil water.