Coconut Villa Hotel

This hotel is not trying to be anything special, but rather a comfortable, safe place for people that are visiting the city. Typical customers are foreigners looking for a safe and comfortable respite after working on one of the many projects in the city.||||Rooms are clean, but not fancy. Service is decent, but not elegant.||||The hotel is owned by a Haitian born German man named Hans and his siblings. Hans is an interesting guy and I enjoyed a couple of long rambling conversations with him. Staff is not fluent in English, but had enough to be able to get me a room and breakfast. I was desperately in need of laundry service and this was promptly and reasonable attended to.||||On my last morning in Haiti, Hans arranged for his driver to take me on a tour of PaP and to the Iron Market to gather some souvenirs for my family, which I appreciated.||||The grounds are well kept and manicure. All three mornings, I woke to the swish of employees using brooms to sweep up fallen leaves from the night before with tiny Haitian-made brooms.||||The pool was warm and clean, and generally unused (I can never resist a pool, but that seems not to be the fashion in Haiti - I have never seen so many ignored pools in my life).||||Don't miss the amazing carvings in mahogany scattered about the hotel (including the front desk). Some really amazing stuff.||||Breakfast was good and included in the room price. Other meals were nothing special but passable in a pinch. ||||WiFi works only near the lobby and restaurant seating. Hans says he is looking to expand service to the rooms.

The hotel is located in a quiet area of Port au Prince (from what i can experience)||||The rooms are very basic, but spanking clean. ||||The restaurant served me a great sandwich with very real lime squash. ||||Wifi and internet are not the best from some areas, but this is expected unless one spends much on that infrastructure. ||||The staff do not appear to be trained in what we can call "modern" hotel trades, but the welcome visitors in a good hearted Haitian spirit, and seem eager to help. They behaved more like home staff who are accustomed to the family.||||The swimming pool was squeaky clean from looking at it.||||And the furniture is all local , with pieces of artwork or paintings greeting you repeatedly. One piece had me do a double take as it looked so real

I have stayed at the Coconut Villa Hotel several times while in Haiti. The hotel is always a cool, relaxing place to wind down after a day in the city. The pool is refreshing and the trees provide nice shade. The staff is friendly and accommodating and the food is excellent.

Nice casual seating area around the pool. Indoor seating area okay but a bit jammed together. Room was clean, but sheets only (no blankets) because it never gets cool enough. Room A/C probably had no Freon because all it did is act as a fan; also power for A/C is only on from 6pm to 6 am. Room is very dark (one overhead 40-watt bulb), shower is only 18" wide, and microscopic bars of soap don't go far. Bathroom mirror is 4 feet from floor so useful only for children. Food from kitchen is widely variable -- some fine, some mediocre. But it's safe and quiet, which has a lot going for it.

When we stayed here we found ourselves in an unfortunate situation- rioting in Port-au-Prince meant that we were stuck in the hotel for quite a while. Even though it was upsetting not to be able to go to our planned location, we were lucky to have chosen this hotel to have been stuck in. The food was absolutely delicious, and the rooms were clean. I got to know the staff and the service was great. I highly recommend.

When last here, there were still many journalists coming to Haiti reporting on the progress since the great earthquake and the Coconut Villa was one of their favorite places to stay, as was the case with the many visiting Christian missionary and help groups going north to their missions. The price was right, the food was good, the pool nice, and the location on Delmas, half way between upscale Petionville and downtown National Palance area, was ideal. Well, all of this is still true...except for the internet and a few other things. On the "other things" menu, like changing electric wall sockets in the plaza restaurant where everyone goes to get strong internet --- since it isn't in the rooms --- and uses the electric sockets all day, pushing in and pulling out until they are loose in the wall, well those things have been overlooked. I say to myself, "Oh bless their heart, they are trying but they just haven't kept up". Especially the one thing that we all need now, a strong internet connection that spans the property, in the rooms as well as in the restaurant area, the only place you can now get strong internet. As for myself, I had a strategic reason for staying at the Coconut. It was a few minutes from my customer. I could walk or drive. If I had stayed at the name brand hotels --- the Marriott near downtown, or the Plaza, The Royal Oasis, or my personal social favorite, the Karibe, at least 30 to 45 minutes would be devoted to getting to my customer or just about any place unless it were in Petionville. Traffic is a bear. So the Coconut it is and probably will be in the future. I just wish they would greatly improve the internet strength. I could then sit outside my room and enjoy the breeze and work away. Please Coconut, improve the wifi. On a final note, there are many fine small family run hotels in PaP catering primarily to expatriate Haitians from the US. Like the Coconut, they are basic but clean and well maintained. I've stayed in a bunch and have never been disappointed by any...at least for the quality of food, accommodation and service that I enjoy for $50 to $70 a night. In the 60s, the Coconut was one of THE places to stay at in Port au Prince, a very cool place. Thing have changed and the Coconut, with its 40 or 50 rooms hangs in there. I will stay there again, wish it well, and hope the wifi improves.

I have been to Haiti over twenty times in the past forty-five years but have stayed in hotels only three times, this being the third. It's wonderful that Haiti now has a number of international hotels and it is part of Haiti being "open for business." But those hotels share more in common with their partner hotels in other countries than they do with the culture and "feel" of Haiti. Not so with Coconut Villa Hotel. ||||Coconut Villa is a Haitian Hotel. It sits off Delmar Road, with all its business, life and traffic, yet because it is in a large campus of tropical plants and trees it is calm and peaceful. The grounds and rooms are clean, the beds comfortable and the restaurant very pleasant. ||||Breakfast is part of the package, and the choices, while simple, are filling and always accompanied by really good Haitian coffee, bananas, and juice. Dinner options are classically Haitian - grilled pork or goat, conch, creole or fried chicken, pastas, good salads (including wonderful avocado and union salad), and riz nationale (rice and beans Haitian style). The restaurant is very clean and the food is prepared with great care. ||||My family joined me for four days in Haiti and so we booked with Coconut Villa - easy to do. We have two adjoining rooms. ||||Now about why this is a bit more like real life in Haiti: Port-au-Prince has rolling blackouts depending on how much electric power there is and the demands of various parts of the city. Coconut Villa is very near the vital center of business and industry and so has power most of the time, but the lights to go out sometimes. Their own generator comes on very quickly and light continues. The Hotel is conscious of water conservation and careful about its use. At the same time the pool is always filled and clean, and hot water showers are standard. The "Haiti" part of all this is that sometimes the pressure drops for a few moments and sometimes it takes a while for the water to heat up. Coconut Villa takes greater part in the "sometimes" events of real Haiti... sometimes a bit of patience is in order. ||||The Hotel makes the visitor feel at ease and welcome, but does not pretend that it is isolated from the realities faced by life in Haiti. The staff helps ease the visitor's way into a way of being in Haiti that is not isolated from Haiti, but part of it.||||We had a birthday party for a friend and the staff was very accommodating and helpful. We were a group of nine and a buffet was set up for us. It was wonderful. We sat at a table by the pool and talked and laughed and ate into the evening hours.||||I highly recommend Coconut Villa for its central location, proximity to the airport, its staff, the simplicity of rooms and the pleasant grounds. It is not a cut-out chain hotel, and not off the charts expensive. But most important it is a Haitian Hotel that is proud of its Haitian character. It is family run and has been here through good times and bad for forty two years. I hope it is here for years to come.

I have already reviewed the Coconut Villa and want to renew my recommendation, this time noting the care given to making our group of 12 feel comfortable and cared for. The food was again very good, and the staff attention great. The Coconut Villa is a great value.