Star ratings are intended to indicate the general level of features, amenities, and services to expect. This property is classified according to Giata.
For $40 a day, you get three meals and two island excursions. It's a pretty good deal despite the fact that the island they took us to (Pelican Beach) was no larger than a large studio apartment and overcrowded with obnoxious tourists lugging coolers like they were going to a tailgate party. You can pay extra to go to different islands or to be dropped off on a deserted island for the night.
Yeah, the food isn't great (eggs and bread for breakfast, rice/fries and beans with chicken or flank steak for lunch and dinner) but if you ask them, they will catch FRESH LOBSTER AND FISH in the ocean for you to eat. It's only $8 and it's literally the catch of the day. You see the hotel employees go out into the water and come back with fresh seafood. It's pretty awesome.
The hotel is clean, right on the beach and right near the airport. Oti, his wife and the rest of the crew are awesome. If Chiki is your tour guide, you will be in luck. He is THE MAN. I would recommend HEP over Hotel San Blas which is on Nalunega and pretty grimy. The main Kuna villages are littered with trash while El Porvenir is clean and while I wouldn't get in the water there, it's much cleaner than the surrounding waters of any of the other villages. It doesn't get any better than waking up at 6am to watch the sunrise while listening to the waves gently crashing on the shore from right outside your hotel room.
If you only have a day or two in San Blas (which we did) then I would definitely recommend staying here but if you've got 3 or more days, you're better off paying independent fisherman to take you to different islands and spend your days there.
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Date of stay: October 2010
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Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
After extensive reading,and research on where to stay, we opted for El por Venir, which was on of the options on the package we got in panama city. The serenity of the place, and just relax is the whole reason of going to san blas. The service from the lady in charge, can be confrontational at times. Most of the other staff, were willing to help out in any way they could. Food is ok, dont expect anything great. The island is located close to another island which is the major town, and some crafts can be purchased, and cheap lobster at $6 per lb. Choose your dinner, and bring it back to the hotel, they will cook it up for you (remind them NOT to overcook it..!). No lights, a generator provides electricity from say 4pm to 9pm. After of which, they leave one light on in the dining area, for those hanging around having drinks, socializing etc. Theres an airport landing on the island, so a flight or two might come in daily. The rooms have there dividing walls, but the roof area at the top is a shared connected space, so a cough and other affairs can be heard from afar. But then we really don't know which room its coming from anywayz. I heard of several people over paying for similar service/level hotels in the area. seems like a safer bet here. In the daytime you can go on tours, and visit other islands as well. My overall ratings is in comparison to other hotels in the area, considering, otherwise all would be poor. The islands are beautiful, and worth the experience. After we went to cartagena, colombia, and boy i wish i spent MORE time in san blas :(
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Date of stay: December 2013
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Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I stayed at hotel Porvenier for 3 days, booked it through the Happy Landing Travel agency in Panama City. We knew that things are very different from our lifestyle,it`s the land of the Kuna people. We arrived out of the season so no noise from neighbours or planes. Everyday we made boatrides to very very beautiful islands, on some we were the only ones (with a Kuna family) and others with more tourists. 2 times we visited a Kuna village which was very interesting. The food was very good -3 homecooked meals with fresh fish. The room was o.k. not dirty but very rustic. Private cold water showers and toilet, bring a moskito net for the bed. Electricity is there at night. Backpacker of well-rounded traveller will apreciate this accomondation. We drove with a car (only 4 wheel drive cars with experienced drivers) from Panama City and had to wait for a boatride to the hotel, it seems not very organized but somehow the Kuna people manage it to get you there.
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Date of stay: July 2013
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Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The staff were really friendly and helpful. The facilities though, while rated 3 and a half star online, were at best 1 star. The room was poor and the mousquitos were plentiful, despite the nets over the beds. The food was mediocre at best. Again the best feature was the staff.
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Date of stay: February 2020Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I do not understand what these people are talking about, I stayed at Hotel Porvenir several times during my assignment in Panama. I felt it was one of the most relaxing places I have ever been the people were great and the food was excellent. I loved diving in the reefs. I became friends with the Kuna Indians that lived on those islands.
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Date of stay: May 2023
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Trip type: Travelled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We came by boat, but you can come by air as well. There is an airstrip on the island.
The hotel is rustic. We were provided with a large room with double bed and bunk beds if needed. Our own bathroom with shower. Cold water, but with the heat, you do not need hot water. Very refreshing after a long day. Provided three meals a day. There is not a selection, you get what you get. Fish, chicken, rice, potatoes. If you want fresh fruit, vegetables, or a variety, bring your own provisions. We had fresh barracuda and it was delicious! They run on generators and do not have a way of storing so many provisions. You are provided with fresh caught fish from a local fishermen. Part of the whole experience! You can buy extra water, pop, juice and a few other things.
Arriving by boat, be prepared to get wet. They provide a tarp for your belongings. Use a towel or garbage bag if you don't want to be involved in the whole experience of the trip. Tours of the islands are provided daily with a fee of 2 dollars. Excellent , a must do! They are supporting other Kuna that live on the islands. The staff or owners are fantastic. I enjoyed our capitan cheeke, even though I could not speak Spanish he and I communicated very well. He brought us to many islands and showed us different islands on the tours. Antonio is a wonderful person. He showed us his fresh caught fish for the day and he speaks English. When I had a tough time communicating he would help.
This is an experience that you should not pass by to see San Blas islands and the Kuna people. Go to town with cheeke and stroll through the village. This is not a five star hotel, not for the faint of heart. A getaway from the everyday. I wanted to stay.
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Date of stay: March 2014Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
In all fairness, this is neither a terrible nor a great place to stay. There is a better place on the other side of the island called Cabanas Nan Gabayai which is cheaper ($25/night vs $50, but it doesn’t include meals or boat so it probably comes to about the same) that is right on the water, very scenic, quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. (More on Nan Gabayai toward the end of this review.)
El Porvenir is relatively cheap and much prettier than the neighboring native islands, which are shanty towns with outhouses over the water and naked children playing in dirt. Which is not to say El Porvenir is beautiful necessarily—there’s more trash around than there should be, and the water’s cloudy with debris and not great for swimming. Put it this way—it’s pretty if you know where to look. It’s neither close nor far to nicer islands (about 25 minutes by very wet and uncomfortable motorboat), but everything’s pretty spread out in San Blas, and given some of your other options it’s not bad. (For example, you can stay on Dog Island—a very pretty island with a nice swimming beach—for $15, but that’s a mattress on the floor in a big shared hut with an outhouse about 40m away.) The rooms at Hotel El Porvenir are not terribly clean, the beds are not terribly comfortable, there’s no hot water, and the food is bad. But you don’t go to El Porvenir for luxury. You go because you can afford it, the nicer resorts were booked, and it’s either this or something much worse. So if you look at it that way, you can make the best of it, and maybe even have a really nice stay here. (Agree with that other reviewer about Chiki—he is awesome!)
I will strongly recommend that if you do stay here, try to get the $60 bungalow. Not only is it the only one that seemed to have any sort of privacy, but it’s steps from the water and farther away from the noise of the construction, which other people told us was bad and starts early. (We were there late December 2011 and the construction had just started—by the looks of it, it won’t be done anytime soon.) In the bungalow you wake up to gentle ocean sounds. (That being said, you do get the view of the dredging pipeline and a fair smattering of trash just outside your door, and there’s a big mouse hole in the corner. Which, now that I think about it, might have been good if it was occupied, since maybe the mice would’ve eaten the roaches. Yes, roaches. I killed two during the night and found a third that was already dead. Though they're pretty big, they're much slower than NYC roaches ;)
Though they tried (mostly), the owners of the Hotel El Porvenir are just not very nice or friendly. From the moment we got there they were yelling. (We called them the Kuna Costanzas because they seemed to be constantly yelling.) When we asked for a lock for our door because of all the workers outside our room, they looked at us like we were crazy. The first day when they left us stranded on the island until dusk because their boat man was busy, they yelled at us for worrying about it so much. (They are good about taking you to a nicer island every day right after breakfast...it's just the picking up that's bad. I get that they're on island time and all, but 3-4 hours late to pick someone up is just very troubling.) And the next day when we came back to our room and it was flooded with two inches of water, they immediately tried to somehow blame us for it.
That was the end of our stay. We got pretty angry with them (our clothes were soaked in what was most likely toilet water, and some of our electronics were ruined), and in their defense they were good in the end about paying for our other hotel (since we’d paid in advance through Panama Travel Group, who, as others have mentioned, were not particularly nice or helpful either), but I’m pretty sure if we didn’t raise a stink they would’ve shrugged and just told us to deal with it.
The following two nights we stayed at the Cabanas Nan Gabayai hotel on the other side of the island, which for us was much, much better. It’s raised up on stilts over the water, and run by an extremely nice man who keeps it clean, speaks good English, and cooks similar but far better food at his restaurant (where you can watch some very entertaining Venezuelan soap operas any given night). His beds are less comfortable (very thin mattresses), the walls are thin, and there’s no cross-breeze, but there are fans in the rooms (that work until the solar power runs out in the middle of the night). But none of that even matters because it’s just so much more aesthetically pleasing compared to the Hotel El Porvenir. Instead of a crumbling cement motel, it’s all wood and bamboo on stilts over the water, bigger, with nicer bathrooms. There are some shared rooms with bunk beds and such, so it might be different with more people, but we were the only ones staying there at the time, so it was a real paradise. There’s an amazing porch with a hammock where you can just sit and relax and watch the sunset and pelicans diving into the water without any worries or cares—which is exactly what island life is supposed to be, and, unfortunately, what the Hotel El Porvenir is not.
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Date of stay: December 2011
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Trip type: Travelled as a couple
Room Tip:Â The bungalow is by far the best
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The first thing you have to remember about San Blas is that it is expensive! At this place, we paid USD50 per night, per person. This included 3 meals a day, accomodation, and transport to a random island for the day.
Food: was fine for one day - but then you realise that it is the SAME dish for every meal. So if you are planning on spending more than 2 days here, maybe go smowhere else. The food is acceptable; nothing more. (I think you might be able to pay more to get a lobster dinner - if you like lobster, definitely do this!). It surpised me that beers and wine were no more expensive than they were in Panama City.
Accomodation: was a much lower standard than a lot of places we've been to throughout central america. But it was clean, and comfortable.
Day trips: were fairly random - noone seemed to know where we might end up for the day, but that didn't matter. A lot of the islands were amazing (we really liked Pelican Island - but get there early before the ice-cooler brigade turn up!). Chici was a briilant boatsman/guide/host!
When we stayed, they were building the new runway, so it was NOISY from about 6am.
There are probably better islands to stay on than this one, but if you end up here it's not the end of the world.
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Date of stay: July 2012
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Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The beauty of the san blas islands makes it hard to be objective about this hotel. But even with the beauty of the white sand beaches and koral just meters away, some Things weren't great. Food is fish or chicken (both fried) with rice of patatoes. We had this for 2 meals a day, three days long. You can howrver get your own lobster and crab at islands near, and they will prepare it for you. The cook was very unfriendly, but everyone else on the island was very nice. They will take you to other islands at no charge and will bring you to beautifull places for a few bucks. (Isla perro is one of the places i would recommend as it has a sunken ship)
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Date of stay: August 2014
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
My wife and I want to experience a moment out of the lights of the city. And I can say this spa give you a look of how we get where we are now. Ok San Blas is beautiful all islands give you piece. in the hotel have a basic service local food by the Indian of the guna. If you want to try something different. I was happy about this place traveling there is long but ad to the experience lol ask for the bread at the hotel delicious go
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Date of stay: May 2015Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
London, United Kingdom29 contributions6 helpful votes
Si, en las habitaciones puedes dejar tus cosas, he ido en 2 oportunidades y nunca he perdido nada, pero vas a la playa no lleves muchas cosas de valor. Además en el trayecto de
"Rooms face common court yard and wing with back to dock have back doors and clothes line. Around 3:30pm. keep an eye open for the power cord to appear on the floor next to bar as everyone wants to charge electronic devices. No Internet service"
There are more places to choose from in the El Porvenir area.
LOCATION
PanamaGuna Yala RegionSan Blas IslandsEl Porvenir
NUMBER OF ROOMS
19
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