NOVOTEL FLORIANOPOLIS

This is a good hotel in Floripa, the rooms are fairly large but the bathroom is quite small. The breakfast is good, and if you stay more than a couple of nights you will notice that they are quite good at changing the alternatives available. The reception staff is generally good English speakers which helps if you don’t speak much Portuguese. Wifi on my floor (11) was quite poor, but on my 2nd stay I was on another floor (5) and that was better. The view from the room is very nice overlooking the water and beach promenade. Good selection of restaurants within easy walking distance from the hotel.

I will suggest this hotel for everything foreign that doesn't speak Portuguese. Customer services were help and well English spoken. They had a great Breakfast as well, make sure you don't miss it. Everything wa perfect and available and it's right off the beach. And there store next to it. I am impressed by Novotel.

I nave been in Florianópolis many times and stayed in diferent areas , however, Novotel , is the best I've ever been. The lateral ocean view is panoramic and amazing ! The beautiful rooms. well furnished,comfortable beds , pillows and the air conditioner works perfectly in silent, computer friendly, nice internet, the buffet breakfast is delicious and it's hard to pick what to eat with so many choices! It's very quiet here, and this is rare in most of hotels. I love the location , near to many restaurants, the Mercado (WOW), and the staff well trained and so helpful makes you feel so welcome! I highly recommend! I want to come back for sure!

How could any Novotel not be just right located' This has an impressive entrance facing the bay on the Island side -- Not far from the malls and lots of cool restaurants too! Ask the hotel which sites are best to see since it not located in the heart of town ! Enjoy!

This hotel was originally a Sofitel which in November 2016 was rebranded as a Novotel. This was my fifth stay at this hotel in two years so I know it quite well. Overall it is a good hotel, but I wouldn’t call it a great hotel. The rooms are somewhat dated with old beds and bedding, old carpet, old curtains, and old furnishings. However the rooms are still reasonably comfortable. The old TVs aren’t wall mounted which means I can connect my laptop with a HDMI cable which is great (this is not possible in the majority of Accor hotels – particularly their newer hotels). The hotel has an above average gym, and very nice pool with amazing views of the bay. The breakfast is reasonable, and you can often book the hotel at a reasonable rate. The hotel is centrally located (away from the beaches, but close to shops and restaurants). So what’s different between the old Sofitel and the rebranded Novotel' Firstly, Sofitel is Accor’s luxury five star hotel brand. Clearly this hotel was no longer considered premium enough to carry the Sofitel brand name, so it has been rebranded as Accor’s mid range Novotel brand. The biggest change is that the lobby and ground floor dining area have been completely refurbished and updated. The results look fantastic and are both modern and welcoming. The rooms are essentially the same (minus the premium toiletries). Other differences include: the hot-tub spa on the top floor has been removed, the Le Club loyalty program welcome drink no longer includes cocktails (the hotel used to offer a delicious caipirinha), and the uniforms have been updated (which are a vast improvement on what was one of the ugliest and unflattering uniforms in the industry). In other words, besides the ground floor refurbishment not much has changed. Overall our stay was good, however we did have several disappointing service issues. Firstly, we booked the hotel in October 2016 for a two night stay in November 2016. We booked directly through the Accor website and we booked it as a Sofitel. I find it difficult to believe that when we booked the hotel in October they didn’t have any knowledge that the hotel would be rebranded and refurbished within the next month (particularly as we also stayed in September and refurbishments were already in full swing). What was really disappointing about our stay was that prior to our arrival there was absolutely no communication from the hotel notifying us that the hotel had been rebranded. Firstly, there is the practical aspect that if it were our first time to Florianopolis we would have arrived expecting to find a Sofitel which no longer existed – this would have been quite confusing. Secondly, there is the basic courtesy of notifying us that the hotel had been rebranded, and some basic information of what had changed, why it had changed, and what to expect. The lack of communication was both sloppy and unprofessional and I am astonished that communicating with guests who had existing bookings was not one of the highest priorities of the team that oversaw the rebranding. It is quite a significant oversight. Secondly, when we checked into the hotel there was again no acknowledgement that the hotel had been rebranded. A simple ‘we notice that when you booked the hotel you booked it as a Sofitel’ would have been a good start. I also think it would have been appropriate to offer some sort of compensation in acknowledgement that guests had booked a 5 star luxury hotel but instead ended up staying at a mid-scale four star hotel (or at the very minimum a goodwill gesture in the form of drink or food vouchers or bonus loyalty points). I’m not sure how consumer law works in Brazil, but if it is anything like in most western countries, legally the hotel would have been required by law to provide some sort of compensation for promising something that they didn’t deliver. Accor has a pretty clear distinction between these two brands and what they offer and represent and although the changes might have been minor, I think any reasonable person would acknowledge that you can expect a more premium experience staying at a Sofitel to a Novotel. If I was more assertive I would have demanded some compensation, but firstly I don’t like confrontation, and secondly I was staying at the hotel to relax not fight for consumer rights. I was going to say something during the check-in, but the check in was so slow and cumbersome that by the end of the check-in I was too embarrassed to bring it up. That bring me to the third issue. The check in was too slow, and administratively sloppy. Overall, my interactions with Brazilian hotel employees have been overwhelming pleasant. The clerk that checked us in seemed like a nice guy but was rather unwelcoming and unfriendly. He seemed nervous and fumbled his way through the check in process. I requested to pay for the room upfront and when he quoted the balance it did not match back to my booking confirmation. To be clear, I booked directly through the Accor website and the booking confirmation clearly quotes the total price including all fees and taxes in the local Brazilian currency. This was at least the 10th time I have stayed at an Accor hotel in Brazil where there has been a mismatch between the price on the booking confirmation and the price the hotel has quoted. I am really at a loss to how this continues to happen as the price of the booking confirmation couldn’t be more authoritative. There is an endemic problem with Accor’s systems in Brazil which needs to be urgently fixed. My advice to management is to fix this problem once and for all and if this involves employees manually checking every single booking then so be it. I wonder how many customers have been overcharged by this hotel and I would suggest that any guest staying here check their invoice carefully. The clerk insisted that I pay the price in the hotels system and it was only after providing a copy of the booking confirmation with the correct price that he adjusted the figure in the hotels system (with much fumbling). The check-in process took 15-20 minutes which is totally unacceptable and unnecessary. The prior month I had six stays at Accor hotels in Europe where check-in never took more than 2 minutes and the invoice matched back to the booking confirmation on every occasion. It was pretty clear that European Accor hotels are light-years ahead of their Brazilian counterparts in administrative fundamentals. The fourth issue we had was in regards to some missing Le Club loyalty points from a stay 2 months earlier at a different Brazilian Accor hotel which we had unsuccessfully tried to resolve via phone and email on several occasions. We asked if we could use the reception phone to call Le Club to again attempt to solve our issue (the issue was caused by an system error completely out of our control and involved about 4000 points). The clerk recommended we use the phone in our room and when I asked if we would be charged for the call he said yes we would. Mind you, this was to resolve an issue with the very company that was proposing to charge us for contacting them. Given the exorbitant fees that hotels charge for phone calls (especially in Brazil) it was completely unreasonable to expect us to pay. This is really an astonishingly poor level of service which fails the most minimum standards of what I expect from even the most basic hotel. In the end we asked to speak to the Manager who quickly agreed that we would not be charged for any phone calls. When we initially attempted to resolve the issue with the missing points we were staying at a different Accor hotel and not only did the reception clerk find the appropriate phone number for us, but they also called Le Club on our behalf and assisted us with attempting to resolve the issue. The contrast at the Florianopolis Novotel couldn’t have been more stark. And I was particularly taken back by something the hotel manager said: ‘this hotel is an Accor franchise and anything that happens at other Accor hotels is outside our control.’ In this comment, the manager crystallised why there is such a big gap between the best Accor hotels and the worst Accor hotels. Both my partner and I are Le Club platinum members and in 2016 I had over ninety nights at Accor hotels. I can say with authority that this hotel offers a very average level of service and it offers Le Club loyalty members the absolute bare minimum – and I suspect this is because as a franchisee the only thing that is important is the hotels own bottom line, and not the Accor brand overall. This encounter was extrememly disappointing. The poor service aside I do like this hotel but I would think very carefully about staying here again, and I would probably only stay here again if there was a very good promotional price (I certainly wouldn’t stay at this hotel if the rate was anything north of 300 reais).