Best Hotels near Margate Bay (55), Kralendijk

I was very happy we decided to stay at Delfins Beach Resort. We stayed in one of the two-bedroom apartments. The main pool is very nice, with direct access to the bar. We typically skipped the buffet and got breakfast at Boertiek, which offered decent coffee, smoothies, yogurt parfaits, and pastries. For lunch or a casual dinner, the Beach Brasserie was excellent—I especially enjoyed the goat stew. And for a more formal dinner (by island standards), the Brass Boer was truly excellent—arguably the best restaurant on Bonaire—and we ate at many excellent restaurants during our weeklong visit.

This was our third visit to Divi Flamingo Resort in the past 7 years. Each time we came we were part of a very large dive group. Our first visit 7 years ago was pleasant and there were no issues. Our second visit was in 2022 and a third of our dive group contracted COVID during our stay. We only got in 4 days of diving until the resort closed down diving for the last couple of days. Although we paid for 18 dives, we only got to dive 12 dives. We were not refunded for the dives we didn’t get to take. We just returned from our third trip with our dive group to Divi Flamingo. We were notified the check out time was 10 am which was ludicrous. On the day before we were to checkout, my husband and I spoke with the manager asking if we could possibly get a late room checkout because he had a virtual business call or could the manager arrange a room on the premises where he could take the call in a quiet environment. The manager told us we would have to pay an additional $25 per hour to stay in our room and he also said he could not tell us if any other meeting rooms were available at that time. It was quite disappointing the manager was not more helpful in my husband’s circumstance. Our dive group has been coming to Divi Flamingo with a large group sometimes 2x a year bringing in huge revenue to the resort, for the past 25 years! Being asked to pay $25 per hour for a late check out is extremely petty when the resort makes a lot of money off our large group. Additionally, some of the staff at the resort were extremely polite while others were very rude. On the third day when we checked in at breakfast, the hostess insisted we have our room key card information even though we were with our dive group. We had not been asked for this on the previous days. She berated us and told us we had to go back to the room and get it. She then said she would remember us the rest of our visit, but she didn’t and asked us for it everyday. Honestly, this third visit left us with the feeling we may not return to Divi Flamingo again with our dive group. Why would we when we could spend our money in other diving resorts who appreciate the visitors?