Hotel Casa Zapallar — Hotel in Zapallar

Not recommended for foreigners!

We had a mixed but ultimately poor experience:

Firstly, the positives are fantastic: The rooms are great, the lounge is lovely, dinner was exceptionally tasty.

HOWEVER

Payment for dinner was horrific. The hotel has two identical menus - with one priced in chilean pesos, the other priced in USD. The prices in USD are consistently 30% HIGHER than the prices in Pesos, and is what they try to charge tourists. This is done purely cynically in order to catch out unsuspecting tourists and over-charge them to maximise profits for the hotel. This is called price discrimination, and is illegal in most countries.

Now as we are not American, we had no desire to pay in USD (other than for the room fee, to avoid paying IVA). However when we went to pay for dinner, the waiter told us we had to pay the higher USD value "because the system forces us to'. They would not accept us paying the lower prices in CLP cash, or in CLP on card despite their menu prices in CLP!!

We have stayed in over 40 hotel in Chile, and never experienced anything so ridiculous or outrageous! We had to argue for almost an hour which completely ruined our evening and the stay.

They did eventually (the following day) allow us to pay their lower CLP prices, however the stay had already been ruined. Additionally, because they did not accept my debit card or cash, I had to pay higher processing fees for my card company.

Hotels must not have two different food prices (one for Chileans, and one for foreigners). This is immoral, unpleasant and indeed criminal in many...

This was a wonderful quiet little gem that blends right into the neighborhood. The beds were wonderfully comfortable, the chef, Javier, a vegetarian, was amazing and the staff Angelita was so kind. ||I give it 4 stars for a few reasons. 1- the shower often lost hot water. 2- when we checked in, there was no one there but Angelita who did her very best to speak slow Spanish and I tried my best Spanish. Javier’s business partner was away so check in was a little strange and you just had the run of this large guest house yourself with little direction—all in all not a bad thing. However, we didn’t know what time was breakfast and no one was in the hotel until about 9a and we awoke at about 7a wondering when breakfast would start or see coffee. The dining area was also very very cold…but we found a space heater that we plugged in. It was also difficult to make the reservation as the website was down and I had to call 2 times and no emails were returned. I finally tried the website again and got in. They also touted a forest to walk in nearby, but when we got there, the park/forest area was privately owned and the owner was away so we could not get in. ||I would 100% stay here again with the kind staff, but you need to speak a little Spanish and be ok being alone in a hotel/B&B. The walk to the beach was fine and the ocean...

We spent three nights here. It was mostly positive but not perfect. First, the good. The staff are lovely, the ambience delightful, the rooms very comfortable. The food was excellent, including dinner and breakfast. The major downside is internal noise - the rooms are not well soundproofed, so you can hear a lot of noise from other rooms and from the reception area. We were woken on two nights out of three by noise from other rooms. The location is good, but be aware that it is the top of the hill. It's a 15 minute walk to the beach, and the climb back up is not trivial. On the first night, they had no chef, and it's not easy to find another restaurant in the town on a Tuesday night in winter. On the second night, we ate at the hotel - there were two choices of starter and main, and three of dessert. The meal was fabulous. On the third night, we wanted to eat at the hotel again, but the menu was exactly the same as the previous night, but with fewer options for dessert. We opted to eat in the village. It seemed odd to have such a small menu but not to vary it from one night to the next. Overall, we liked this place, but given the noise, we might stay...