Charleston Santa Teresa Cartagena — Hotel in Cartagena

Brides Beware!!!! We had planned to get married at the Charleston in April of 2020, but we had to postpone our wedding twice due to covid. We were finally geared up to have our wedding in April of 2022, when the Charleston gave our space away to another wedding.

In October, 6 months before our third attempt at having our wedding, the Charleston contacted us because they had a larger wedding interested in having their cocktail hour in the square in front of the hotel, and wanted to see if we would be willing to move to another space in the hotel. Our wedding was 150 guests, this other wedding was presumably larger. We politely said no, we’d been planning our event in the square for nearly 3 years at this point, and the other venue they’d offered us wasn’t close to as nice as the square. A month later, the hotel reached back out to tell us there had been a “glitch” in their system that showed the square as available, so they had given the space to this other wedding. They didn’t care that we had a contractual agreement in place or had paid thousands of dollars in deposits already. They offered us other spaces - none of which were on par with the space we had reserved originally - and at one point they even suggested that we move our wedding to a Friday or Sunday. They could have honored our contract and asked the other wedding to move, but they never did. They actually spent an inordinate amount of effort trying to get us to accept another space - even the baluarte across the street which definitely could have accommodated the larger wedding - yet they focused on asking us to move because our event was clearly less of a priority than the bigger wedding they booked after us.

We ended up moving our entire event just 4 months before our wedding. I contacted the Sofitel, explained the situation, and they couldn’t have been kinder and more accommodating. We were able to move our events to a new venues and a new hotel that we love. In the end, we are thrilled that things turned out as well as they did, but I know the stress that goes into planning a wedding and get angry just thinking about the absurdity of the Charleston giving away our venue in spite of nearly 3 years of communication and coordination, not to mention multiple signed contract. Fellow brides, save yourself the frustration and book the Sofitel! You won’t be...

I have never stayed at a worse 5 star hotel in my life. Avoid this place at all cost, I have spent over 1000 nights in hotels all over the world and never have a lived such a poor experience in a “world class” hotel. Let’s start off with the classic room I was assigned, it’s a nice room a little dated very small but I could have lived With it if everything else wasn’t so terrible. So most of the rooms are facing the main corridos that overlook the dining area of the hotel where they have a bustling restaurant open to the public until 2 am on weekends and 12 on weekdays. It’s impossible to sleep the noise is unbearable, after about 2 hours of bustling and turning I finally had a enough and called reception: there solution cheap ear plugs lol. So I put this things in my ears after paying 300 dollars and I can’t deal with it so I rip them off and finally fall asleep around 1 am, to my surprise at exactly 6 am the noise begins again, plates crashing, people yelling music playing. Needless to say I jumped out of bed thinking something was happening outside, well it wasn’t it was just the morning service of this “hotel” I went downstairs to speak to the manager, I waited for 40 minutes and then was told she was in a meeting. I went to my room and expected a call of some sorts but the only call I received was at 11:40 telling me to check out. I finally spoke to the manager who brushed off my complaints , telling me that the get real manager would contact me in the future to hear my complaint, I stormed off never to return again. Please save yourself this headache and find your leaf the Santa Clara hotel, or the newly opened four seasons, I can’t see this place being a lux hotel much longer. Shame on you Charleston Santa Teresa, you had a chance to make our stay memorable instead you made...

My experience staying here is a bit mixed which is why I’m giving only 3 stars. One of my friends and I just stayed here for a week and returned home yesterday. First off, it’s a lovely colonial style hotel, not a resort style hotel, so in general everything was smaller. Admittedly, I’m more familiar with resort style hotels. Our room was on the first floor which came with a lot of issues. After a heavy rainfall, we noticed a pungent/unpleasant odor from our room and had to tell the front desk about it 3 times before someone could explain that it was due to the humidity following the rainfall and it’s particularly worse in October( so be mindful of this if you’re given a room on the first floor). They ended up putting a diffuser in our room which helped with the smell. Also, after storming one night, a ton of sand and mud washed up from our shower gutter and the whole shower was a mess so we requested housekeeping to come clean it. During our stay Housekeeping also passed by both in the morning and evening (around 6pm) even if the ‘do not disturb’ sign was on the door which was odd and pointless. Since it’s a very old building, there always maintenance going on during business hours which took away from the beauty of the place and the pool was closed the first 3 days of our stay due to maintenance. Lastly, there really shouldn’t be vendors allowed right outside one of the entrances to the hotel. They’re extremely intrusive and it’s like you can’t catch a break. All in all, the restaurants were nice, the massage at the spa was excellent(though the “jacuzzi” was tiny), the bar was great and the pool (when we finally got to use it) was refreshing. My friend would probably give 2 stars so I’m probably being...