Hotel Boutique Casadoca — Hotel in Concón

We stayed at CasaDoca as our entry point into Chile. Our original plan had been to stay in Valparaiso but we removed ourselves to the quieter location of Concon during social unrest. ||||CasaDoca was a wonderful place, our only hesitations were about location to some bigger sights. ||||||The main dwelling is beautiful. There are endless views of the sea and wonderful places to sit on an exterior patio as well as indoors. ||||It’s easy to walk to restaurants 10 minutes south and 20 minutes north. We enjoyed both beach walks with some great bird watching and the more developed look of condos and restaurants. A note though:: it’s harder to venture beyond...a bus, rental car, or hired car is needed for the sights of Valparaiso, Vina Del Mar, and the sea coast. We were disappointed we couldn’t see Valparaiso which had been an important goal of our visit ||||On the other hand, the wonderful staff understood our love of nature and helped find a great local guide to take us to a beach preserve. This was a highlight of our trip. We also met a lot of interesting folk whil chatting over coffee or meals in the dining room. ||||We really enjoyed our stay here. It was a highlight. We’d like to mention a couple of things to make sure everyone makes the right choice ||||1). Location is a bit remote from major attractions. If you want to hang out near the see, this is a wonderful place. If you want more sights you will want a car, or adricer, or the patience for the bus. ||||2). There is an upstairs/downstairs situation. Some of the rooms are in the main house. Others are up the hill in more recent construction. Make sure you know which you are choosing. The separated rooms at the top of the hill mean a fair amount of going up and down stairs. They are also more isolated, which can be good or bad depending on your preference ||||3). The only real problem with CasaDoca was getting information. This fell into two categories; weird reservation process and bad email communication. ||There was a difficult registration process unlike any other I had which required filling out forms and scanning. Other hotels seem to handle Expedia/booking just fine, but Casa doca had extra steps which were both inconvenient and insecure. ||In addition, whenever I emailed them they might not respond at all or they might respond eagerly. The delays caused us to miss an opportunity for a good activity...the email problems should really be improved. ...

Our original plan was to stay in Valapariso... but after reading about crime, opted for ConCon. What a delight!! The views at Casadoca are really unbelieveable. Even if the rooms were terrible, the views would be worth it. The common spaces are so lovely, cozy and well appointed. The rooms are very nice and have all the modern amenities. The highlights were the service and the food. Both amazing. One night we got lazy and didnt feel like walking to dinner, they made us an amazing four course meal with wine on the spot! We were speechless. See pics for food. You will not be disappointed with this choice. Even on a cloudy day we agreed this place was beyond our expectations. Look forward to meeting nice people from all over the world, eating amazing food and enjoying spectacular sunsets. They play awesome smooth jazz throughout.. like jazzy versions of pop songs, it was entertaining.Logistics: this place has 2 entrances, one on upper street one on lower street near the beach, both have a ton of stairs with no railing so know that. This is not a place for young children or those who have mobility issues. Wifi is free and works well. Tv in room, none in common area. Safe to walk around during the day and at night to dinner. Whatever you need just ask the front desk, they are beyond helpful. Whatever we manifested appeared (champagne at 4 PM after a day of walking around?!?! Boom!! Done). Enjoy this special place...

BEWARE: If you are booking and paying through a 3rd party platform, you’re likely to encounter payment issues. In the case of my fiancée and I, we booked through a popular online hotel booking platform and paid at the time of booking. However, we were informed upon check out that no payment was received from that platform by the hotel, which obligated us pay again in person. What was otherwise a lovely stay at a beautiful property was marred by this experience at the time of checking out.

It begs the questions: Why is someone allowed to book through a popular online platform if these kinds of issues exist between the property and the platform? Why were we only informed about this while checking out and not immediately when we checked in? Why is it the customer’s problem if the property is facing payment issues with an online platform. Should this not be something that would be worked out by them? Or shouldn’t they pull their property from appearing on that platform altogether if that is the case?

Lastly - we certainly didn’t appreciate being told that that we paid much less than we should have because of this payment “error”. We simply booked and paid the advertised rate.

How a property handles these kinds of issues says a lot and the customer service around this was very much lacking.

I could not in good conscious recommend staying here after...