Myself along with seven of my close friends stayed at this hotel for four nights. The hotel was across the street from the beach. Parking was easy due to a employee stationed outside of the hotel waiting to assist guests. The staff definitely made this hotel. Each employee was professional, yet friendly, and extremely helpfull. The hotel was clean but, the rooms were slightly run down. Nothing major, they could just use a little TLC. The continental breakfast was really good. We ate dinner one night at the hotel and it was very good although a little pricer then if we had eaten in town. There were two pools that were cleaned every morning. There were quite a few families with children of all ages so, the pool was pretty busy and loud during the day. During the nights we were able to hangout in the bar area and enjoy drinks, playing cards, or just chating. All in all I would not hesitate to stay here again.

This hotel is in the heart of Jaco, one of the most active beach towns in the country. It is located on the Pacific side, around 90 minutes from San Jose the capital via the new Caldera “highway“.
This is a small hotel. It is a building in the shape of a horseshoe, it has 4 or 5 floors. The rooms are ok, they have a small balcony.
Food is good, however, they have a really small menu.
One thing that is really important to know is that this place has only 6 parking spaces,not in a closed parking lot. Since it is located on the beach, you can leave your car under a palm tree on the beach, but this is a high crime zone, and if you leave something valuable in your car, you might not found it, or your car in the morning.
It has a medium size pool, however, you can see the street and the beach from the pool, and all the people on the street and the beach can see you also, you can't have privacy.
Summarizing, this is a cheap hotel (most of the times), but you should not stay here for a long period of time. There are a lot of other, more private options in Jaco or nearby beaches.
Also, one more thing, Jaco is a famous beach for surfing. However, it is NOT a beautiful beach, it has a high index of fecal contamination, and as i told before, has a very high crime rate.

The Hotel Balcon del Mar is located right next to a police station in Jaco, a very dicey town on the Pacific coast. While the ocean views are lovely, crime is ever-present. Drug dealers sell on the street with impunity and there are plenty of prostitutes cruising near the hotel. My advice is to stay out of Jaco altogether. It's impossible to avoid all the craziness around you and relax. We were booked at this hotel by Sunnyland Tours - another outfit that did not meet our expectations. They should have chosen a safer haven for us; we were on our honeymoon. The rooms are very sparse and worn, and the service was dismissive.

The beach at Jaco is NOT for swimming, as the rip-tides are rough. If you're a surfer, this is the beach for you. We recommend that you stay near the national parks further South.

I don't think I would ever visit Jaco again, but honestly, I'd probably return to this hotel and request room 409 if I had to. We got really, really lucky with our room, as it was very spacious and on the top floor. I had seen other rooms that were very cramped and ours wasn't like that at all. We had an ocean view, air conditioning, TV, and there was free WiFi across the whole property. My only complaint was the noise from outside and the lack of hot water. No one on our floor had hot water nearly the entire time, and that's just unacceptable when you are paying to stay at a nice hotel. It didn't even get warm, so it was quickly in and out for us.

We used Jaco as a home base for visiting the Manuel Antonio National Park, and taking a Crocodile tour of the Tabacon river. We didn't swim in the ocean as there are dangerous riptides there, and didn't shop because everything was geared towards tourists. When we were at the hotel, we ordered drinks and sat by the pool, watching the sun set over the ocean. That was really, really nice and became an evening favorite.

The hotel was very clean and like I said, our room was very, very spacious so we had no complaints. If you need a wheelchair accessible room, ask for one on the first floor, as they do not have elevators at this hotel.