Costa Rica Lodging

[Marthasor]

Hi! I am considering booking the Costa Rica ABD, but have a question about the quality of the lodging.

I am looking at doing either Abercrombie or ABD's Costa Rica trip. The ABD dates work better for us, but when I go on trip advisor, the hotels/lodges that Abercrombie uses are rated much, much higher than the ones ABD uses. We understand there are probably no 5 star resorts throughout Costa Rica, but would still like to stay in nice places, particularly since ABD is about $2K more for my family.

If anyone can comment on the Costa Rica ABD lodging, I would appreciate it.

 

[Kinembe]

hi marthasor,

i live here in puerto jimenez and have spent the last 8 years setting up custom fishing packages around costa rica.

i personally do not give much credit to tripadvisor or other boards of that type because alot of times the negative reports are unjustified posts by the type of people who are never happy no matter what. what i do go by is the feedback i get from my clients and the fact that i frequent all of the hotels i use so i am familiar with what they offer and the kind of operation they are running.

i have found that often times you miss out on savings when you use large travel agencies...they don't want to save you money, many of them work on commission so they look for the most expensive choices and book you there even though there may be another similar option for half the price right around the corner.

if you tell me where you are thinking about going or what exactly you expect out of a costa rica vacation i may be able to suggest some lodging in that area or suggest some places for you to think about visiting.

good luck with it
-Chris

 

[DrChuck23]

I'm not sure which ABD lodgings you are specifically concerned about but we recently stayed at the Arenal Manoa hotel (which is listed as one of the ABD hotels) and we loved it. It is set up as multiple duplexes that all overlook the volcano, landscaping is beautiful and there is a hotspring pool on site. The restaurant was very nice but our only complaint was in our "dinners included package", the available dinners were limited and never changed (I'm sure ABD would be different).
I will also echo the previous poster- you can definitely do Costa Rica a lot cheaper than the ABD package. My wife and I had a five night package including ziplines, canyoneering and white water rafting at arenal for $1000 (not each, total!). This included ALL of our transportation and most of our meals. This was a groupon pkg but frankly was not much discounted vs the travel agencies regular price. Having done it once, I also would say that it would be easy to book hotels there then "wing it" upon arrival as you could score some good deals on the fly.