The Journal 3 min read
We Analyzed 6,661 Aruba Resort Reviews. The Best-Rated Places Aren't the Famous Ones
Boutique hotels sweep the top of the ratings table while some big-name resorts sit a full star below them. The numbers, the names, and what explains the gap.
By The One Happy Aruba Team · Updated Aug 14, 2026 · How we know
We maintain a database of recent TripAdvisor reviews for 40 Aruba resorts — 6,661 reviews in total, weighted toward what guests wrote in the last couple of years. When you rank every property by its average recent rating, a clear pattern falls out: the resorts travelers rate highest are mostly small places you've never seen an ad for, and several of the island's biggest names sit at the bottom of the table.
The top of the table
Every resort below holds an average of 4.74 stars or better across at least 100 recent reviews:
| Resort | Recent reviews | Average rating |
|---|---|---|
| Boardwalk Boutique Hotel | 154 | 4.94 |
| Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort | 229 | 4.93 |
| Courtyard by Marriott Aruba Resort | 226 | 4.92 |
| Carinas Studio Apartments | 150 | 4.91 |
| The Mill Resort & Suites | 150 | 4.85 |
| Bubali Bliss Studios & Villas | 150 | 4.85 |
| Hotel Rh Boutique | 150 | 4.84 |
| JOIA Aruba by Iberostar | 150 | 4.80 |
| Divi Aruba Phoenix | 164 | 4.79 |
| Oceania Residences | 150 | 4.79 |
| Tryp by Wyndham (adults only) | 150 | 4.78 |
| Manchebo Beach Resort & Spa | 174 | 4.74 |
Notice what's on that list: a boardwalk boutique hotel, an adults-only eco resort, studio apartments, a low-rise from the 1960s. With a couple of exceptions, these are properties with dozens of rooms, not hundreds.
The bottom of the table
Same data, same rules, other end:
| Resort | Recent reviews | Average rating |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel Riu Palace Aruba | 158 | 3.09 |
| Marriott's Aruba Surf Club | 155 | 3.60 |
| Divi Aruba | 161 | 3.73 |
| Hotel Riu Palace Antillas | 171 | 3.76 |
| Divi Village Golf & Beach Resort | 166 | 3.82 |
| Marriott's Aruba Ocean Club | 150 | 3.83 |
That's not a subtle gap. The Riu Palace Aruba's recent average is almost two full stars below the Boardwalk's. For context, across our whole database Aruba's resorts average 4.41 stars — so the bottom six aren't "slightly below average," they're far outside the island's normal range.
What explains it
Reading through the low-rating reviews (we did a separate breakdown of what one-star reviewers actually complain about), the bottom of the table shares three traits:
- Scale. Check-in lines, palapa races at 6am, and packed pools are volume problems. A 60-room property doesn't have them; an 800-room one does.
- Age of rooms vs. price of rooms. The single most common complaint in negative resort reviews is room condition — words like "outdated," "old," and "dirty" appear in 48% of 1–2 star reviews but only 7% of positive ones. Guests aren't angry that a room is dated; they're angry that it's dated at $600 a night.
- Timeshare pressure. The Divi and Marriott vacation-club properties collect a steady stream of reviews about sales presentations. It's a small share of total complaints, but it's concentrated at exactly these resorts.
None of this means you'll have a bad week at a big resort — thousands of people have a great time at all six of the bottom properties every month, and the all-inclusive convenience is real. But if review scores are your compass, the data is unambiguous about where it points.
How we did this
Ratings are averaged from each property's most recent TripAdvisor reviews in our database (roughly 150 per resort, 6,661 total across 40 properties, collected through August 2026). Recent-review averages differ from TripAdvisor's lifetime "bubble" score — deliberately: they tell you what the resort is like now, not in 2015. We have no commercial relationship that affects rankings; some booking links on this site earn us a commission, and the picks don't change based on payouts.
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