Selina Red Frog

This place has potential to be great but they should not rent it out while trying to renovate. Renting rooms with strong smell, covered in mold and trying to cover up with spray?? Staff tried to help by offering to change rooms 3 times(last one was decent with no smell or visible mold). There is no restaurant ( again, being renovated as we were told by staff) so if you don’t want to take water taxi there are only 2 options to get food at 2 near by resorts. We should have listened to previous reviews but hoped they were wrong. Well, they are not.

Bar closed

Initially we booked small double room (shared bathroom), which didnt meet our expectations at all. Shared kitchen is very dirty. There are some nice rooms but overall the whole place is outdated and needs and upgrade.

Maybe some kitchen facilities need update. And the bar was not working during our stay which could be the spot for all guest staying there for socializing at the evening. But it was not a big deal at all. I would also suggest to put some shelves in the rooms or hooks for beach towels as there is space for that :)

Everything is shabby. The kitchen and bar were not working, but customers are only informed when checking in. Yet the price remains as if the full service is available. The hotel has a communitarian kitchen which is quite dirty and open to outdoors, so you can’t be confortable when it rains. Prepare yourself to dishwashing and sharing a nasty fridge with the staff and the rest of the costumers. The only food store in the island is expensive and has few goods to sale. Electricity went off for a whole morning. The staff is false in their kindness and rather quite abusive. Everything has an extra charge. The morning we left, a storm was hitting the island so we asked them for a 300 meters raid to the tier in order to not soaking ourselves, and they wanted to charge 5usd per person! This is a hotel for backpackers with resort prices. Not recommended for families or for relaxing holidays. You need to be full time alert and in a survival mode.

They only told us the restaurant and bar on site were closed a little more than a week before we arrived, too late to cancel. Expensive beers and the communal kitchen needs a lot of cleaning.

We understood that the “hostel” had just been re-branded under a new owner, and that not all facilities were available (mainly restaurant, meaning no coffee or tea facilities as you would normally expect in any establishment).
However, there were several things that annoyed us from the start. You can only get to the island with a watertaxi (extra cost 7$), and then you have to walk roughly 10-15 mins to the destination. The road is not always paved and the last bit is quite steep uphill. Whenever you want to leave the island you have to make use of the watertaxi and every ride is 7$. When we were checking out, we asked if we could get a ride to the marina, as my friend had hurt her foot the day before and the walk was not comfortable. The reply was yes, but this would again be an extra cost of 5$. These were things that were not mentioned when we booked.
That on top of that, wrong information was shared with me just days before arriving- that there would be no possibility to pay with card on the island and that all payments had to be done in cash, and so we had to withdraw all of the money we needed (payment for stay + extra) and pay the $7 fees that you have to pay when withdrawing cash and not having a Panamanian bank account… however, when we checked in, we were asked if we wanted to pay in cash or card! I obviously got upset, as we just spent $21 just in fees. I made the staff aware of the “miscommunication”, yet no attempt was made to compensate us for their obvious mistake.
In terms of food and drinks (you can fill your water bottle) there is a shared kitchen where you can cook and a grocery store that is extremely pricy, so make sure to stock up on snacks, food, drinks going

Small minus for the kitchen, it should have been renovated in the first place. But I understand that since it is used by many people it is a challenge to keep it clean at all times.

No coffee!! No water!! C'mon guys! I know there is a store down the hill but it is down the damn hill. Buy some water and sell it for a profit and make sure you never run out of coffee. Better yet, how about a restaurant? Coffee was obtained at another resort a few minutes walk away, but these things are basic. Thankfully they do sell beer, so, points for that.

The kitchen wasn't very clean and some of the bedding and towels aswell.

1. There was no pool during our entire stay (5 nights). We did not get any notice of this situation beforehand.
2. ⁠There was no cafeteria, breakfast or restaurant in the hotel. To get food you had to walk to a MiniMarket, to the nearby resort or to one of the two restaurants by the beach. Either choice is a 10 min walk at least and to get to the restaurants by the beach its a walk through the jungle which at night I would not recommend. We were not informed of this situation either.
3. ⁠The common kitchen area is not clean.
4. ⁠They did not have good communication with the next door resort (Red Frog Beach Resort) or with the Hotel/Restaurant by the beach (Palmar). First they told us that if we went to get dinner at La Rosa (restaurant of Red Frog Resort) they would provide us with transportation to and from the restaurant. This did not happen. Next, when we went to get lunch at the Palmar, after lunch they asked us to leave the lounge chairs because we were not guests of Palmar. We felt like we were unwelcome everywhere we went, and all of this because the place we were paying for had nowhere to be or anything to eat, or transportation of their own. And clearly they were relying on other hotels instalations and logistics to meet their clients basic needs.
5. We had to carry our luggage through the mud about 15 minutes walk to get to the hotel and the signaling was very confusing. How hard could it be to have a basic car to transport guests to and from the dock, no need for a fancy golf cart, just any vehicle!

Please don't underestimate the way to the property once you have arrived. It is a approx. 15 mins walk partially uphill, which is burdensome if you have suitcases. The golf cart at the boat docks are only for guests of the Red Frog Beach resort and will not take you up. Sociatel Red Frog should invest in a golf cart to pick customers up. Pool was dirty and in general the common areas could need some renovations.

Our room had a heavy smeell of damp and common kitchen needs more cleaning.