Think twice before staying at this hotel. We had nothing but problems...starting with being sent to a room that had not been cleaned at all. Then, in another room, our air conditioning didn't work. They sent a maintenence man, and he worked for awhile on it, but said, "Esta muerto". Now 10pm at night, we have multiple phone calls of broken english/broken spanish after first told we could switch rooms...then told all rooms were booked. A complete fabrication of the truth as we had noticed earlier how empty the hotel was, no people, dark rooms, etc. I fought the lady at the desk on this point, and she held to her story, telling us they'd upgrade us the following night. They offered to send a fan...and after more phone calls wondering where it was, they brought a floor dryer...not exactly going to cool the sweat on the brow...unless your face is on the ground!!!
We hardly slept that night with the mugginess, but we had to get up at 6am to leave for the day. When we returned later (7pm) they had "just" gotten our room ready and had not moved our bags. We had to have several more annoying conversations inquiring about our bags. Meanwhile we enjoyed the cigarette smoke that lingered in our supposed "non-smoking" suite.
This hotel just about ruined our pleasant memories of Costa Rica that we had enjoyed until this point. Stay away and spend your money elsewhere!

Our trip was from February 1 to February 17, 2008. We stayed at (and wrote reviews for) the following hotels (if you are interested in the others):
Hotel Vista Caribe, Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Doubletree Cariari by Hilton, San Jose, Costa Rica
Cabinas Espadilla, Manuel Anotonio, Costa Rica
Garden Court Hotel, San Jose, Costa Rica
Days Hotel - Greenspoint, Houston, TX, USA

My husband and I stayed at the Doubletree on February 8th before heading out to tour the country. It was a beautiful hotel with all the convenience you’d expect from a Doubletree. After a week on a family trip, this was a nice way to start relaxing on our own. The hotel seemed to have all the business amenities you’d expect. The breakfast was great and the room had a very welcome mini-bar since we arrived so late at night. The staff was very friendly. We wanted to be near our car rental place, and were a little further than we thought so we’d probably do the Garden Court or Hampton Inn right next to the airport if it was another really short stop over (the noise there is annoying though), but if we had the better part of a day or more at the edge of San Jose, this is where we’d go.

The hotel is okay. Do not pay more for the, "Royal Service." It is not worth the extra charge,

We stayed at the Melia for the first three nights of our honeymoon. We thought it was great. The entire staff was quite friendly and we liked that it was not in the downtown area. The hallways to the room are really beautiful as is the lobby. The front desk helped us a lot with restaurant selections and calling for reservations.

The breakfast buffet was wonderful. A very large selection and the food in the bar and casual restaurant was also great although the prices were a little steep.

The steak house is excellent and the prices are what you would pay for that type of meal anywhere we felt.

Our room was nice and big and also very clean.

The only thing we felt the hotel was lacking was a vending machine or mini convenience store. Nothing in the mini bar seemed appealing and we were quite hungry upon our arrival at midnight the first night.

We did tours with Swiss Travel (there is a desk in the lobby) and all of those went great as well.