Atma Eco Villas — Hotel in Antioquia

One of the worst and one of the nicest hotels i have ever stayed at for the following reasons: undertrained staff - when we have arrived (by car) the main entrance was locked and we had to wait in front of the hotel for 10 minutes, when someone finally came it was a very tiny woman, thus, no one there to help us with our luggage. At the reception no one spoke english, they checked us in and forgot, we waited again for 20 minutes, and we were only taken to our room when i finally found the owner of the place and asked what was going on. Arrival to the room: we asked explicitly, what we need to know, the person said nothing and left. Thus, we had to prepare our own hut tub (uncover, set-up, find bath robes in an adjacent relaxation room, as there were non in the room, turn our own heating on and figure out by ourselves how room service works at the place) People were in general rude, not friendly, no proactive attitude. -services and atmosphere- Hotel transfer: we received no information about transfer ahead of our arrival, and on departure we were offered a few strange choices at high costs 80k pesos to get to Guatape in 10 minutes. Room service took about 1h to arrive with some stale nachos. When we ordered water, even though it was hotel branded it was not free (i would expect free water at EUR 300USD/night) -music- The place has a pontoon with loud music, which can be heard from all of the villas (which are tents basically). I did not mind the loudness but the quality of the music (@hotel owners: please look some playlists of nice chill out music: all luxury places have them: Scorpios and Nammos Mikonos, etc.) The music which was playing is general disco nonsense.

Now, i don’t want to get only into the bad stuff: The overall place has top notch design by what seems to be a very good architect. The villas are well designed, clean and offer a great experience. Each villa manages to offer very good privacy, including while in the hot tub. There was a very nice fireplace on the deck of the room (the only problem was that we had to figure out ourselves how to start it)

Thus, we had a very nice couple retreat experience once we entered the room and figured out how everything works and we were able to enjoy Guatape from a unique perspective.

A very nice place, however the experience is ruined by the services and atmosphere. I would expect at 300 USD / night to have a 5 star luxury experience (and this is about attention...

Prior to arriving we read through the reviews and we now feel either some very good changes have been made or, more likely, some people just can’t be pleased. Im an English speaker and my partner is a Spanish speaker so the lack of English is not a concern for us, nor is it any different to most of Colombia. The arrival was fantastic. Boat pick up was nice, on time and the whole arrival process was wonderful. We stayed in the bamboo palace supreme. Amazing views with el peñol rock in the distance. We were here for our honeymoon and didnt need the second bedroom or bathroom but they are also great quality. The fabric of the hotel throughout is wonderfully done. Now the food, which so many people reviewed badly, was quite good and I’d call us somewhat fussy. Tacos were fine. Corn tortillas weren’t stale… they’re corn! Breakfast was good. Our final dinner included the beef burger which was way beyond expectations and a chocolate volcano which brought me to lick the plate! Yes, it’s all pricey but in line with the hotel. Review the menu online so your expectations are managed. We skipped lunch each day. Activities are great. Jet skis, SUPs, kayaks and others. They’ve done well here. Didn’t have time to try the spa. For other non-Colombian travellers, get use to the obsession with WhatsApp. Here, it’s super useful. You just message for room service or bookings or whatever. Bring mosquito repellent. 60,000 COP to buy here. Great spot for a few days. Staff are fantastic. We...

Absolutely amazing location and a beautiful place to stay but it felt like some of the communication could be improved. We were told that we could order an Uber to the hotel. We ordered an Uber but some of the roads near the hotel are not suitable for a regular city car, therefore our Uber driver was not happy. This needs to be communicated better. Check in was smooth. We explored then returned to the hotel in the evening. We tried to use the hot tub jacuzzi but it was too hot. We were unable to find someone to fix it and nobody was responding to our messages. One guy tried to turn the hot water off but he ended up turning off the hot water for our shower and no the jacuzzi. We were unable to use the hot tub on our first night. This was fixed the next morning. We booked a romantic dinner on the lake and Alex was great (also at breakfast). We had arranged to check out at 7am, therefore we wanted to get our invoice the night before. We were told multiple times it was on the way to our villa but it never came. The service from the staff at the restaurant and bar was amazing but overall it felt like the whatsapp messaging wasn't so good and it took time to get...