Best Western Plus Panama Zen Hotel

The hotel was well located in a convenient safe and central area. The room was spacious and clean, the bed was huge and comfy, the view from the room was OK. The rooftop pool and bar areas were nice, as was the restaurant area. The staff were helpful and overall the stay was excellent value for money.

My only complaint was a saga with the food. Long story short my wife and I ordered two veggie burgers for dinner at the restaurant. At first only one came, they'd misunderstood that we wanted two, so they started preparing the second. Because we were hungry, we cut my wife's in half and both started eating it. Immediately we were both like "this is beef!" The burger was supposed to be a fake meat kind, so at first I thought maybe it was the most realistic fake meat burger I'd ever tasted! But no, we debated it and it was beef. I complained to the staff and they were ADAMANT it was veggie burger, in the end I had to ask them to bring me the packaging the burger came from, and when they did, sure enough it was a 100% beef burger. In their defense the packaging was in English for some reason, they'd become confused by the term "no animal by-products" on the packaging (in the context of "no hormones, no GMO" etc) but when I typed it into google translate for them the penny dropped. Less in their defense the ingredients clearly listed "100% beef". The manager did come and apologise, but the upshot seems to be that they've been feeding vegetarians a beefburger for who knows how long!! I kind of see the funny side, but I've not eaten meat in years and even that one bite upset my stomach, so it was far from ideal. Disappointing for a large hotel chain like that. Doesn't give me much faith they could deal with allergens for example, so beware of that.