The hotel itself is okay. I would say that it is probably very nice for Panama City, however, bring your best Spanglish. The staff does not enjoy speaking in English or looking at white people. They also give you free breakfast...stick to the fresh meats and fruits. I believe they made the omlettes out of expired rat eggs. Also, be careful when looking at the pool. It really is the size of a large jacuzzi, however the smell of the ocean and car fumes makes up for the small size. Also, dont wait for a drink at the pool. The staff will most likely be reading (or pretending) to look at the paper. Also, there is a casino on the premises. Be careful. Twelve hands of blackjack...eight 15's and 16's...be careful. Also, they do not accept travellers cheques, unless you want only $300...and only in chips. However, the phone that they use was out of batteries, supposedly, forcing me to walk around the casino for 20 minutos...Oh, one more thing. The phone in my room would not accept incoming calls. The staff knew about it, and despite repeated attempts, would not fix the problem. The sushi bar in the hotel is actually a good scene. However, drinking is only on one side of the bar and eating is on the other. Best of luck to you if you would like a beverage while dining at the sushi bar. The wait staff would tell us to get up and get it ourselves. It was very, very fun to try and pay the multiple bills we had going at the end of the day.

We spent a night here in December and really thought it was something special. Rooms were a bit small and the pool was a little small. The restaurant was wonderful and reasonable.

Would have jumped to recommend it until I stayed at the Marriott at Calle 52 (not the Courtyard). See my review there.

The Decoplis is edgy and trendy at $180 while the Mariott was elegance and sophistication at $140.

This is a very cool hotel. I splurged for a suite and it was big, clean, and well furnished with modern furnishings, a nice high floor ocean view, and very comfortable bedding.

The location isn't great. The hotel is attached to large mall with a casino, and there are some shops and fast food places nearby, but not a lot of good walking areas near the hotel. The nightlife areas are a very short cab ride away.

I booked directly through the website, and the price I paid for the suite included: (a) high speed internet, (b) $20 per day in drinks at the bar, and (c) a $25 match play coupon at the adjoining casino. The high speed internet worked great. I only had one drink at the lobby bar because I thought the atmosphere there was charmless and not really my scene, so I guess I didn't get my $20 per day worth. I did my drinking out around town, where the beer is cheap anyway.

My biggest complaint is that (as another reviewer pointed out), they did not deliver on their promise of the $25 match play coupon at the casino. Instead, they handed me a $2 coupon at check in and just said "Sorry, we don't have any more $25 coupons." I tried to push this a little and explained that this is what they promised when I booked the room, and it's one of the reasons I booked at that price, but the girl wouldn't budge. If I had been sharper, I guess I would have just asked for 12 or 13 $2 coupons, but I don't think I would have gotten them.

Also, on my last day, at about 10 -11 a.m. (when I had a hangover) some exceptionally loud hammering started and lasted for about an hour. It sounded like someone was pounding on the floor directly above my ceiling.

I can't agree with the comment below that no one at the hotel speaks English. The staff I dealt with spoke English fine. South Americans and Latin Americans do tend to speak Spanish to you until you make it clear that you don't understand, but I thought the level of English in all tourist areas of Panama City was good.

My partner and I spent 5 nights at the Decapolis at the start of April, having stayed the previous week at the Panama Canal Country Inn and Suites.
The first experience of the Decapolis hotel for the visitor is the escalator to the first floor, where the rather small reception desk can be found. The spill-over lighting from the adjoining bar is predominantly ultra-violet, and a real pain when you're trying to read or sign forms. You immediately get the impression that the hotel has tried a little too hard to be trendy, and someone should have reined-in the interior designer. This isn't the only example in this hotel of style triumphing over substance. We stayed in an exexutive room to get away from the bar noise that other reviewers had mentioned. The room was quite compact, clean and possessing the TV, telephone and broadband access connection that you'd expect . The room overall is fine for an exec staying alone, but a couple had better know each other very well because the ludicrous glass-walled bathroom leaves nothing to the imagination from an audio-visual perspective! Just what planet does the designer live on?
The pool area is a disappointment too, especially after the Country Inn and Suites Hotel. This is an outside pool, located from memory on the 3rd or 4th floor. It looks like it was tagged-on as an afterthought, the pool being quite small in size and the surrounding area being limited for space. Clearly, they don't expect many guests to want to use the pool at the same time, and to be honest, it never got truly packed during our stay. It does though ovelook the noisy, exhaust-fume polluted main road through the city, and that's a real minus. Like the pool area, the gymnasium is also small, and being only basically equipped is barely adequate.
Our stay spanned a weekend, and we saw no evidence whatsoever in the bar area of the prostitutes, or large numbers of local revellers that a couple of previous reviewers had mentioned. Apart from the lighting, the bar area was pleasant enough, bordering on quiet for a city-centre hotel, and though not great drinkers ourselves, we did enjoy our $20 of free drinks in the early evening.
The complimentary breakfasts were excellent, and on the one evening in which we had a meal in the same restaurant it was superb. Actually, the food and service in this restaurant were the best thing about this hotel - and it's the one room that hasn't been overdesigned - being tastefully laid out, light and airy.
In summary, this hotel is OK, but definitely not worth the 100% extra cost compared with the Country Inn and Suites Hotel.