The Copacabana Palace Hotel, as it was called before it became part of the Belmond group, is one of the most famous hotels in the world and the grandest of 5 star hotels in Rio de Janeiro, located on the equally famous Copacabana beach. It has hosted all the A listers you can think of, including the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  I have really enjoyed the experience at Belmond hotels in the past couple of years (Le Manoir, The Cadogan) so I really felt strongly that I wanted to stay at the Copacabana Palace at the start of my multi-centre Brazilian bucket list holiday in April 2022.  I booked my four night stay through travel club PK’s List, one because I like them and two because they arranged great room upgrades for us at the other Belmonds. I booked a room I actually wanted to stay in, rather than hope for an upgrade from a room I didn’t want. It was a One Bedroom Ocean View Suite at BRL16,272 B&B in total (about £2600).  We had booked a hotel car to meet us at Rio’s international airport, which went fine, except I was surprised the driver didn’t speak English.  It later transpired that the hotel subcontracts its car services and the fare is not transferable to your room bill. You either pay the driver or pay the hotel’s Concierge desk (with a 15% markup).

When we checked in we were told we couldn’t have an upgrade because they were quite full, and we also encountered some non English-speaking staff, so we went up to our booked suite on the 2nd floor.

Our suite was very comfortable and attractive. At the entrance we passed the wardrobe space and walked into the lounge area. This was simply but attractively furnished in neutral tones, with a sofa, armchair, writing desk and chair. We had a pay mini bar and a coffee maker. A large TV was on the wall, but we didn’t make much use of it.

The lounge had access to a very narrow Juliette balcony, from where we took in our first views of Copacabana beach.  All hotels on Copacabana (and Ipanema or Leblon, for that matter) are set back from the sand, behind a busy road.  The huge bay of the beach was flood-lit every night, supposedly to allow people to play beach sports like volleyball or football, but the reality was that hardly anyone was playing such sports, so it seemed like a lot of electricity was being wasted.  BTW the main road did not cause us any noise disturbance at all.

Off the lounge was our bedroom, which was also simply but elegantly furnished. We had a very comfortable superking bed, some bedside tables, an ottoman and a tall table with a TV above it.  The bedroom had a window but no balcony. There were separate aircon systems for each room, which I find useful.

The bathroom was a feast of marble, with twin wash basins, a fitted bath tub, toilet and a rather small shower (just over a metre square). OK that’s not too small, but when there’s a big monsoon shower head I do like the space to step out of the monsoon now and then when I’m washing myself.  The hotel used Brazilian branded toiletries which had an acceptable gender-neutral fragrance.

 

That first night we just went down to the hotel bar, which is at one end of the swimming pool, for a night cap or two. That’s when we first saw how busy the hotel was, with primarily Brazilian guests.  And boy are happy Brazilians noisy when they get together!

Breakfast is served each day in their all-day restaurant called Pergola, which makes use of a large indoor seating area as well as tables outside by the pool.  A large cold buffet is set up inside but there’s also a separate ‘egg station’ which prepares warm a la carte options. Warm dishes, hot and cold beverages are served at your table by a waiter.

Each morning I had a self-serve mix of muesli, granola, yogurt and fruit to kick things off, along with a cappuccino and a fresh fruit juice.

Service from the ‘egg station’ was chaotic and inconsistent; maybe because they were so busy, or maybe because too many staff were new or not well trained.  During the Covid shut-down Brazil didn’t have a furlough scheme, so it seems many staff just left the city to return to their families.  Coupled with the fact that so few staff spoke English, I got the impression the hotel was struggling to recruit the right calibre of staff to cover the post pandemic surge.  On our last morning, when we were in a great rush to check out, we waited 20 minutes for my egg Benedict, which was overcooked when it finally arrived, and because of the lack of English spoken we had great difficulty explaining we were in a hurry.

The hotel has two other restaurants, each with 1 Michelin star: Restaurante Hotel Cipriani (that hotel in Venice is part of the Belmond group, and it serves  modern Italian cuisine) and Mee, an East Asian restaurant. Both of these are reviewed in my Restaurant section.

Directly opposite the hotel, on the beach, they have a simple pop-up beach club which offers guests sun loungers, parasols and fresh iced water.  But one relies on passing hawkers to bring other drinks and food.  I have to say that Copacabana beach, for all its fame, is rather disappointing.  It’s a huge man made public beach on the edge of a 6.6mn population city, and it’s rather grubby. There’s a lot of litter, including broken glass, a lot of homeless people (some of whom try to earn a few pennies by collecting the recyclable litter), feral pigeons, and so many hawkers of tatt.  We were disappointed that the hotel beach club staff didn’t keep the hawkers away.  Another disappointment is that strong rip tides make swimming in the sea out of the question for all but the strongest swimmers or lunatics.  But on the bright side we didn’t get mugged!  Rio has a bad reputation for muggings; I had bought a Swatch watch to wear instead of my Omega, and I noticed that less than 10% of people wore a watch.

One highlight (for me) right opposite our hotel was a statue of Brazilian hero Ayrton Senna, standing on the top step of a podium. So sad guys like me can stand on the second or third step to have a picture taken, wearing my McLaren hat!  One other interesting oddity about the beach is the flocks of petrels and vultures riding the thermals overhead all day long.

With the help of a charming English-speaking member of the concierge team we arranged a tour with a private English-speaking driver to take us on a tour of Christ The Redeemer, The Botanic Gardens and Sugarloaf mountain.  I’ll cover that in my Experiences section.

Overall we thought the Belmond Copacabana Palace was a very good luxury hotel, but we were surprised how few staff spoke English. Even if you speak Portuguese you might struggle because the various Brazilian dialects are so strong.  We didn’t like being hounded by hawkers on the grubby beach, but we didn’t feel comfortable at the hotel pool because of the amount of noise being made by rich but unsophisticated Brazilians.  Also the pool is surrounded on three sides by the hotel and an apartment block, so it’s not a very good sun trap.  8/10