"Not Terrible, Not Great..."
Riu Palace Aruba — Stay Review (August 23–29, 2026)
We stayed in a Jr. Suite, Room 703 (ocean view) from August 23–29, 2026. I want to give direct, honest feedback because there's real potential here, but several things need attention.
What worked well:
The property itself, post-renovation, was genuinely impressive — clean, spacious, and well maintained. Our room matched that standard. The pool area was also spacious and well kept. On the physical property alone, you're doing a good job.
Check-in and orientation:
Check-in was quick, but that was the extent of the positive. Staff couldn't confirm whether the king bed I'd requested was actually available in my room. More concerning, we received zero orientation on how the resort operates — no information on restaurant hours, reservation policies, bar locations, or pool service. We had to figure everything out ourselves using the RIU app after arriving at our room. A basic verbal or printed orientation at check-in would fix this immediately and shouldn't be optional.
Food quality — this was the biggest problem:
I've stayed at numerous all-inclusive resorts (Iberostar properties in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica), and this was by far the worst food I've experienced at this tier of resort.
• The buffet was repetitive all week — the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner selections day after day.
• Live cooking stations were understaffed, leading to crowding, long waits, and food that came out undercooked.
• Buffet seating was chaotic and poorly managed.
• The à la carte restaurants were worse, not better. None of them had air conditioning, which made an already underwhelming dining experience genuinely uncomfortable. At the Italian restaurant, my girlfriend and I ordered the chicken parmigiana, took one bite each, and sent it back — it was inedible. We watched other couples do the same thing that night.
• We gave the resort a second chance at the Asian restaurant the next night. The food was subpar, and our server poured wine so sparingly it was barely a taste per pour.
• After two restaurant disappointments, we gave up and started eating off-property for the rest of the trip — not something a guest should have to do on an all-inclusive stay.
Drink pours:
This wasn't limited to wine. Alcohol pours at the restaurants, pool bars, and main bars were consistently weak and small across the board. I'm not a heavy drinker, but I'd like to actually taste the drink I ordered.
Beach palapas and pool chairs — a real problem:
There aren't enough beach palapas, and the ones available were being claimed as early as 5 a.m. — both by guests camping out before sunrise and by staff reserving them on guests' behalf. As a direct result, we never once got a day to actually sit and relax on the beach under a palapa during our entire stay. For a week-long trip, that's a significant failure.
The same issue existed at the pool. Lounge chairs were in short supply, and we personally watched one group hold the same six chairs for the entire week — clearly unused for large stretches of each day but never freed up. With no available seating, we had nowhere to put our belongings and ended up stashing them on the floor next to the bar.
This needs a real policy: enforced time limits, staff actively clearing unattended chairs and palapas, or some system that doesn't let a handful of guests lock down shared space for a full week while others go without.
Summary:
The property and rooms are excellent and clearly a real investment. But food quality, beverage pours, guest orientation, and beach/pool seating management all need serious attention. Right now the operational side is significantly behind the physical renovation, and it undercut what should have been a great week — to the point that we never got a single relaxed day at the beach, which is a basic expectation of an oceanfront resort stay. Moving forward, I believe I would not recommend Riu Palace to anyone for the above reasons and if I ever consider returning to Aruba, I will most likely take my stay to another property on the island. I hope this review is helpful in improving future guest’s experiences. Also I am open to fully discussing any of this information in more depth if need be.
Cheers
