Novotel Buenos Aires — Hotel in Autonomous City of Buenos Aires

we understand that foreign visitors in Argentina are exempted from IVA (tax) of 21% on hotel accommodation. The rebate system is available to visitors who can prove with a valid passport and who pay for their accommodation with a non-Argentine credit .The process should be completed at the time of billing, with no need for any extra paperwork.

We stayed at 3 hotels in Argentina, two of which have granted us tax exemption as expected without any hassle. However Novotel Buenos Aires has insisted on charging us 21% tax unless we can produce an online immigration form. The online form simply doesn’t work for us.

We requested to see the front desk manager, Emilio but had to return to the hotel twice and waited for one hour before we managed to see him. He appeared to be busy and could only spare us 5 minutes to discuss this matter. He was sarcastic and unapologetic too.

Emilio has insisted on charging us the tax. He advised us to claim the tax back at airport which is clearly a bad advice. Tax refund at airport only works for purchases of goods which are supported by tax refund form from merchants.

We asked an immigration officer at passport control and she told us there is no need to complete an online form. She wasn’t aware of one herself and she can’t explain why the online form doesn’t work.

Anyway we have requested Emilio to explain the reasons for charging us IVA by email which he had promised to do before we leave Argentina. But he had simply ignored our emails despite a few reminders sent. This is totally outrageous! There is no courtesy or what so ever towards a guest and an Accor member! There is no help offered! I guess the hotel will simply pocket the IVA charged for foreign visitors since there is no indication of IVA amount charged on the invoices!

The hotel is centrally located near Obelisco, Buenos Aires. They are a lot of other hotels within the same vicinity and price range.

We would suggest you to avoid this hotel to save 21% on your accommodation unless you are 100% sure that you could produce an online immigration form.

We received equivalent service from another hotel chain 300m away, and saved 21% on our hotel bills hassle...

This is a very central hotel right near the Obelisk. It's a decent hotel and quite modern with modern rooms. For a Novotel hotel though, it didn't have many amenities in the room with only basic tea and coffee facilities. Although i speak Spanish and didn't bother me, the TV channels are all in Spanish except CNN, i could see it would frustrate some guests who don't actually speak Spanish. We had to check out quite early and head to the airport one morning and the hotel was helpful in organising a Remis to come pick us up at 6am. They did not however mention to us that maybe we should leave a little more time than usual as there was a marathon that day in the city and they were going to close off some roads from the early morning. The car arrived quite late due to traffic and he also didn't know where the roads were closed so it ended up being a quite stressful trip to the airport. If the hotel had mentioned the event, we would have tried to leave earlier than we actually did, and not had to stress to make it on time. One more thing, the day before we checked in, we were in Buenos Aires for an hour or two before we had to take a plane, and had organised a car to take us to the airport. I used my credit card to pay for this as i wasn't a guest, however on my credit card statement, it looks like i have been charged twice. When i mentioned it to the hotel, they have only given me an email to contact and couldn't refund me the money. That's quite...

Very reasonable rooms, but with low maintenance ( damaged faucets - room 403 ), what passes along a bad perception of abandoned property. Complained about food replacement/refil during breakfast since several plates were never replaced. Food Manager promptly responded to my complain and situation was squared out in the day after. Front desk with very poor communication : we very clearly informed the need of a van for 4 people and 9 bags to the airport and in the last minute they sent us a small SUV, what created an unnecessary last minute apprehension. We ended up having to pay for 2 transfers, by the way with an abusive price of 30.000 pesos each taxi , when I paid 3.000 pesos for my arrival transfer. This type of behavior negatively scratches the image of NOVOTEL Buenos Aires, since the cars that picked us up were not nice remises cars , but just regular taxis from the street. Of course the profit is split between the parties, and who pays for this bad practice is the hotel guest. NOVOTEL should not allow this type of bad practices because the repercussion is not positive at all. There are no stupid guests nowadays, and what happens in practice, is that guests do not come back. I personally prefer to pay more and stay away from situations where I feel abused by my suppliers and...