Hostal Color — Hotel in Valparaíso

To start I should say this is not a hostal but a shared apartment with a small dark kitchen. Okay the rooms were a reasonable size but no towels were given and over the 3 days we spent here they never serviced our room. The hallway to the ground floor apartment is used by the bar next door to store tables, bits and bins (see picture). |As you're are aware if you spent any time in Chile that there is a 19% tax (iva) that tourist are not required to pay provided you meet certain requirements (if you have foreign currency you automatically apply), we'll this hostal refused to drop this charge on our bill. After which we contacted our booking provider who agreed that we were exempt. The hostal disagreed and forced us to pay the tax. The booking provider told us to pay this tax and they would refund the amount paid as this was the only timely resolution that could be provided. The booking provider required us to get an itemised bill so that they could clearly see the tax paid. The hostal refused this and would only give a receipt with total paid. And the staff member couldn't understand why we found it strange that they couldn't fulfil this request. ||This hostal (and I used hostal in the loosely term) is not worth ~30 USD per night(when you include the tax, even without that tax it's hard to justify, hindsight is a wonderful thing). The location is the only positive. When I read the other reviews I wonder if it was the same place but I can only speak for our experience. Stay away and spend your...

We booked here because it has a good location, and we found this to be true, but after that things turned downhill! They charged us the IVA tax, even though we paid in USD and provided them with copies of our passports and immigration cards. The staff were rude and obnoxious to us when we tried to explain that we were exempt. And the "hostel", it's a tiny top floor apartment. But first you need to navigate your way up the narrow staircase between the bags of rubbish and old discarded mattresses. The apartment/hostel has no common room, the kitchen is so tiny with no window. Only two people can fit in the kitchen at any one time, and even at that it's tight. The utensils were almost non existent, only 1 kitchen knife! No hot water to wash dishes. There's only 1 bathroom between 4 room, all room cater for 2 or more people so there can be a long que in the morning! No towel provided. Rooms never cleaned during 3 night stay. No heating, we stayed during winter and it was freezing! Don't stay here, there's loads of other lovely places to...

We booked here because it has a good location, and we found this to be true, but after that things turned downhill! They charged us the IVA tax, even though we paid in USD and provided them with copies of our passports and immigration cards. The staff were rude and obnoxious to us when we tried to explain that we were exempt. And the "hostel", it's a tiny top floor apartment. But first you need to navigate your way up the narrow staircase between the bags of rubbish and old discarded mattresses. The apartment/hostel has no common room, the kitchen is so tiny with no window. Only two people can fit in the kitchen at any one time, and even at that it's tight. The utensils were almost non existent, only 1 kitchen knife! No hot water to wash dishes. There's only 1 bathroom between 4 room, all room cater for 2 or more people so there can be a long que in the morning! No towel provided. Rooms never cleaned during 3 night stay. No heating, we stayed during winter and it was freezing! Don't stay here, there's loads of other lovely places to...