Hotels near Tocumen International Airport - PTY, Panama City

I hope this is in reference to the airport. It is brand new and terminal two is the worst laid out plan. It is already falling apart. When arriving internationally you leave your flight right into the general population of the airport. You then have to walk to the end of terminal 2 to get to baggage (we arrived in terminal one). Some walking sidewalks were not working. I don't understand the logic of the setup and mixing outgoing and incoming passengers. The signage left a lot to be desired. Never sure if you are going the right way. We will use the airport again I am sure but for it being new it sure leaves a lot to be desired.

Entry to customs after deplaning was miserably long (almost 2 hours) we were NOT prepared for this. Very little English speaking officials to help explain what was happening. Customs appeared to be short staffed that late in the evening and fingerprinting, answering all of the detailed questions about where, what address, dates, etc. was very time consuming. Outside of customs, Tocumen was good for our overnighter prior to our shuttle to the Colon cruise port.

The layout is good with all the rooms around a central garden and pool area. The restaurant was good with very nice food excellent service friendly people that work there from the front desk to room service ,gardeners shuttle bus drivers all top notch.

It's about 30 minutes car ride to Panama city, and I loved everything we did. Panama Canal, visited monkey islands, beautiful islands, old town .… great seafood, Columbian food ..enjoyed every food we ate.

We've now flown through Tocumen Airport a couple times on Copa Airlines on our way from the U.S. to David (and on to Boquete and Volcán) and back. We are not fluent Spanish speakers, but most of the signs are in Spanish and English and many of the staff are bilingual, which greatly eased our figuring out where to go to catch our flight. Entry through Immigration and Customs went smoothly and our luggage has arrived undamaged each time (we did use Air Tags just in case). Returning home was equally smooth - baggage check was easy and Security moved everyone along at an agreeable pace. No surprises. There are plenty of shops and restaurants at the airport if you need to grab something to eat. One proviso: We flew Copa Airlines back to the U.S. and they required us to pass through a second Security check at the departure gate. I'm not entirely sure as to the rationale for this, but it went without a hiccup and we boarded and departed on time. So far, our experiences flying through Tocumen have been positive, unlike what we encountered back in the U.S. at Dulles, which I would absolutely recommend avoiding at all costs if possible due to poor and confusing signage and angry and surly TSA agents.

The new terminal "C" is spacious clean and definitely not crowded. TSA was efficient and well organized. We were able to get through that in record time with no delays. The food area is well laid out and stocked with a variety of restaurants and stalls. It even has a Gluten Free stand which I have never seen in an airport and truly a great service for those of us that are gluten free.