We stayed three nights at Arena Ipanema, due to the location and that it had quite good reviews, but considering the price per night it was not worth it, so we moved to another hotel for the remaining 6 nights of our stay in Rio.
Based on the price and the fact that it’s a 4-star hotel, we expected the facilities to be at least a bit luxorious, but the general vibe of the hotel was more like a slightly more fancy version of an Ibis budget with very tight rooms with thin walls between them, minimal storage space so we had all our things on the floor, and you could see by the corridor that this is a result of trying to stuff as many small rooms together as possible. The A/C was way to big for the small room, which meant that it was either way too cold (ON) or too warm (OFF).
The roof terrace and pool was also quite tight, and the few sunbeds were mostly occupied, so better to just head for the beach which luckily is close by.
Check-in/out was also a hassle and took very long, since the computer system didn’t work, and only half of the staff knew english. We had one meal in the restaurant which was ok, but way more expensive than it was worth, and we had a 20% discount through Hotels.com which they said would be deducted automatically at check-out, but it wasn’t, and since it wasn’t noticed when we checked out it took 4-5 e-mails over as many days before they even replied, but it got sorted in the end after me also sending e-mails to the other hotels in the Arena chain.