río serrano hotel + spa — Hotel in Torres del Paine

Great location. Beautiful views directly from your window. However, very poor customer service and rude staff. Particularly the ladies at the front desk. Very unfriendly, presented themselves as though they were bothered whenever they were addressed. Made rude facial expressions (I observed on multiple occasions, staff looking at each other and mockingly laughing or smirking whenever a customer was complaining about something to another staff member). We paid for the all-inclusive package, which we regret. It is extremely overpriced for what you get. Breakfast is the same exact buffet each morning, but it’s soggy eggs, extra greasy and undercooked bacon, deli meats and cheeses, some fruit, (they kept bringing out overly ripe bananas that no one would touch, so one morning they added a “fruit salad” which was just the old mushy bananas, smothered in yogurt and a bit of stale granola. Instead of just throwing out the bananas, they tried to cover up how old they were with the salad. The lunch and dinner menu are the same one menu each day, so you go through all the meal options very quickly. The meat was always very good, but the more “interesting” meals didn’t taste very good. They were beautifully plated, sounded awesome on paper, but weren’t that great. They make you sign a check with everything priced out individually, every time you eat anything. It’s odd, for an all-inclusive package. But, in doing so, we quickly realized that we overpaid for the package, because if we had purchased the room separately, and then purchased the meals separately, it would have come out to way less than the $1000+ we spent there per day. Anyway, here’s the horror story: We purchased an excursion to see the glaciers through their activity services. We received a phone call to our room, telling us to come downstairs because our transportation was waiting for us. We were taken to the drop-off point with two other Rio Serrano guests. We were told to return to the same location afterwards for pickup. When we showed up afterwards, with over 100 other excursion guests, our van was not there. All of the other guests got in their vans and left. The four of us (myself, my spouse and the two other guests) waited there, alone, in the middle of the national park, with no reception, for over two hours. It was clear that the van wasn’t coming, so we started walking. After a while, the van comes tearing down the dirt road we were trekking. It was freezing and extremely windy, we had no water or food. It was extremely stressful and scary. When we finally got picked up, the driver was completely nonchalant about the entire situation, and even lied to us, claiming there was a construction block in the road (which we found out was not true). By the time we get back to the hotel (it was a 45 minute drive back), we were livid. We had already missed our dinner reservations, the kitchen was closing, and we were starving. They had the audacity to say that they’re sorry, but we missed dinner. They suggested we go to the bar and order something from the bar menu. By that point, I completely lost it. I spoke with Rosio, who said she was the manager. She said they’d accommodate our dinner timing. We asked for a full refund for the excursion. The manager said “of coarse!” and also comped our massage that we already had reservations for the following day. The massages were good, and the money we saved on them, we used towards extra tips for the ladies who worked on us. The next day, we still had not received any kind of refund. We tried again the following day (we were leaving the country that morning), and the staff at the Massif started saying they would not offer us the refund. We explained the entire situation, but they said they would need direct confirmation from the manager we spoke to (but she was not answering her phone and was not there). We demanded a refund to be initiated prior to our departure. After much dispute, we left without our refund, angry, and stressed out. We reached out multiple times with no success. Terrible hotel. Go...

A few tweaks could push this to five stars

Good:

The spa: beautiful indoor pool and two saunas; a lovely place to warm up after a long day hiking. Dinner: Three courses and a glass of wine for 28,000 pesos. Apart from in the spa, the wifi was pretty good throughout the hotel. The numerous seating areas with amazing views.

Mixed:

Horse riding: there are two sessions each day (10am and 3pm). Edoardo who looks after the horses is great; passionate, informative and patient with taking lots of photos and videos. Sadly when I went to book a second session two days later, I was told that it was full and it would be the same route as before. Providing different routes and warning guests of limited availability and booking in advance would be very useful in order to maximise time and experience.

The horses roam freely around the area (as do other livestock), which is lovely, but the grounds are covered in excrement. While this is no issue for surrounding grass areas, it was slightly peculiar to have to navigate my suitcase around excrement on the front steps of the hotel.

The packed lunches for the hikes are $15,000 per person, which I think is slightly steep. Some of the group tried the packed lunches, which were fine. Others bought snacks (nuts, salami, cheese, fruit) at the supermarket in Puerto Natales which we took on our hikes.

Poor:

The transfers from Puerto Natales are expensive: $50,000 per person if you travel at two set times a day or $65,000 per person outside of this. The guided tours are also expensive and they are going to charge you more just to drop you off and pick you up. For information, we were quoted $90,000 per person for the transfers to and from Base Torres versus $75,000 per person to do a guided tour.

As there were seven in our group, in the end, we hired our own car from Puerto Natales and drove ourselves around the park, which I would recommend. This cost us just over $700,000 for an eight person van.

Buying tickets to the National Park through the website is a nightmare. For a hotel such as this, they really should offer to organise these for you and simply add it to your bill. It took us an hour one morning to get tickets for all seven members of our group, which just reduces your hiking time. When we highlighted to reception that we were having problems, they replied ‘you have to be patient…’

With regard to the hikes, if you are going to do guided tours through the hotel, you are limited to their schedule. If you are travelling off peak, as we were in April, they do not offer Sendero Grey or Valle Francés.

In comparison to the spa and common areas, the bedrooms could really do with a lick of paint, as they are worn and dated.

You can pay in US Dollars, but if in cash, the notes have to be pristine. I have no issue with this, but I was frustrated to receive my change from reception in ripped notes, which the bar area then originally refused to accept! After explaining that reception had given me the ripped note, the bar accepted the cash, but then...

I actually love most of this hotel. The administration is excellent, the cleaning is wonderful, the location and view are amazing, and the breakfast is fantastic. However, I assumed, when I booked this hotel, that they would have functional wifi, as I needed to book campsites. Unfortunately, they have some malware installed called Fortinet/Fortiguard that blocks almost all camping websites, as well as most google searches, and sometimes event their own website. It also snoops on your connections, and attempts to violate privacy procedures and encryption protocols. I've spent four hours trying to book a campsite for tomorrow night. It has been unsuccessful. I told myself an hour ago that I would go no higher than three stars if this actively ruined one of my hiking trips, so I am reducing this to three stars, from five. This appears to be a case of the hotel actively inhibiting my travel plans, rather than a case of them passively failing to meet expectations. Given that I needed to purchase additional data for my mobile plan, because I couldn't use the WiFi to post this review, I have docked a third star.

Update: I've docked the final optional star. Unable to book the ferry ourselves, we booked it through the excursions office at the hotel. They informed us that it would be 160.000 pesos. We explicitly asked for the 10:00 Thursday, and the 17:30 Friday. These and the price were verbally confirmed by the agent. After a 40km hike, we waited an hour for the return ferry, before being told that it had been cancelled. This seemed odd, given that we had tickets. After checking into it, the hotel had purchased the incorrect tickets, and we were stranded on the wrong side of the lake. Thankfully, the refugio had some availability, so we had a place to stay overnight, but it was still far from ideal. When we got back to the hotel, we attempted to get a refund for the tickets. After an hour or so of waiting, we got to speak to a manager, who informed us that the excursion employee not only lied about the ticket timing, but also about the price. We were to be charged 280.000 pesos instead of 160.000.

Update 2: This has been corrected. The tickets have been refunded. I am adding back 1 of the stars. Given that we still should have been able to book online, had the wrong price stated, and were stranded on the wrong side of Lago Grey, I don't think I can go higher. But if you book everything in advance and avoid the excursion office, I think this...