GHL Relax Corales de Indias Hotel — Hotel in Cartagena

Firstly, let's set the record straight. This is a) not a hotel for Gringo's who expect to be pampered and mollycoddled, and b) is VERY popular with Colombian/Spanish speaking families. As long as you know, accept and are happy with these two items, then you'll enjoy yourself here.

It's a hotel that is indeed, close to the hotel, and is indeed, a taxi ride away from the historic city centre. Buy at $4/€3 a taxi ride, it's not going to break the bank to get there and back.

The rooms are ample and met our needs. We had two "double beds" in our room, but the double beds are honestly a little on the small size. We found ourselves sleeping in the spare bed our two year old was in once in a while. Unfortunately, those who have small children need to know that there are no baths, only showers, which might prove difficult...we had endless tears with our little one who HATES the shower but loves a bath.

There is a beach nearby, but it's not worth going to. The pools at the hotel are perfect for kids of all ages. In fact, when we were there, they had just started repair work to the tiles in two of the three pools.

On first impressions, I would have written that the hotel was showing it's age and some wear and tear. Buy again, while we were there, we witnessed scaffolding being brought in to repair damage to the roof and facade. So it's clear that Management are doing their utmost to keep the hotel looking sharp.

The rooms are decent sized. Our minibar was stocked the day after we arrived, the A/C worked perfectly, and every room has an ocean view.

The restaurant serves a great selection of food and cocktails. My wife really LOVED their cerviche dishes. The cocktails are hit and miss though. They make great mojitos and Cuba libres, but that's about it. The heat of their cocktail menu was awful (in terms of quality/taste).

Breakfast is a combination of traditional Colombian food, with a lot of fruit on offer too. They also make omelettes and cook eggs as you like, but this is not on any menu. You simply need to ask one of the waiting staff.... something we only learned on day three.

The staff throughout the hotel are friendly and warm, BUT, you really do need to be able to converse in Spanish. If you're a true monolingual Gringo, then book somewhere else.

The kids club at the hotel is also excellent. They were happy to look after our little one whilst we went to the spa/gym (both are excellent by the way). There is a tour company on site too, handy for booking excursions (we recommend the mud volcano) if that takes your fancy.

My ONLY two quibbles we're the cost of having laundry washed (we sought alternative arrangements) and the white taxis waiting outside. Despite speaking fluent Spanish, none of them know where ANY restaurants are in the old town. The price is almost always a fixed 10,000 COP, but it gets annoying when you know your way around the city better than they do after a few days.

Would we return...YES! Is it for everyone?....Best if you speak the lingo, because then you can chat with the parents and other guests who are predominantly Spanish speaking. Is it far from everything interesting? NO....it's only up the road, BUT, it away from the noisy crowd that are out partying until the wee hours....in other words, this hotel is PERFECT...

The worst experience we ever had in this hotel . the Manager , Blanca C. Had such a bad and disrespectful attitude towards us when we were trying to solve an inconvenience with our confirmation number ( because we booked through expedia) the staff and her were really disrespectful saying that because they were not able to see our reservation in the system at that moment the only solution was to leave and look for a diferent hotel or pay more money if we wanted to stay ( making us feel like we were nothing ) Her manager skills are not professionals at all costumer service and cordiality should be number one no matter what but She has a negative , disrespectful and bad attitude all the time that apparently that is how she leads by example and Make her employees follow her pad And be the same way like her in moments when you need solutions and help . Wont recomend this Hotel the service was poor . They only have a few people for staff and do not offer quality of customer service . To all my USA people ( tampa , Miami , Orlando Broward texas ) that love Cartagena Don’t come here the bathrooms are also dirty Most of the times .

Que desagradable experiencia tuvimos que pasar en este hotel este fin de semana . Tuvimos un pequeno problema por que no encontraban nuestro numero de registracion ( por que lo hicimos por medio de expedía) Y la manager BLANCA C. en vez de tratar de ayudarnos o solucionar lo unico que hizo fue tratarnos mal como si no valieramos nada y decirnos que nos teniamos que ir a buscar otro Hotel por q sin reservacion no nos iba a recibir ( sabiendo y viendo desde mi celular que ya todo estaba pago y que si exitia un numero de confirmacion ) en un tono grocero, despectivo y casi gritando por todo el hotel para q los demas se dieran cuenta . Al parecer esa misma mala vibra se la transmite a sus empleados que en momentos como estos toman la misma desagradable actitud de 0 costumer service . Para toda mi gente de Estados Unidos que nos encanta viajar ahorrense un mal rato en este hotel y mas con esa Manager tan grocera y odiosa...

On the plus side, it's great if you have kids because they can just play in the pool all day. However, I have so many complaints about this hotel.

I stayed for 5 days and the best part were the security guards who are vigilant and friendly. They are amazing. But the other hotel staff is terrible, especially room service.

Given the location, you’re stuck relying on room service for simple things like coffee in the morning, but they can’t even get that right. After a 20 minute wait, I got cold coffee almost every morning. Often, there were floaters in my coffee cup from congealed milk that had been in the coffee carafe prior. No bueno.

Room service doesn’t follow the menu, so there were always things missing from each order, like salads without half the ingredients on the menu. Once, when I called about this, room service said they would bring me just the missing dressing and wafers the next day! It was such a petty response and unprofessional.

Another issue is the outdated information packets dor the hotel. The gym hours on the door of the gym aren’t the same as the ones on the form they gave me, so I missed workouts which frustrated me.

Also, Housekeeping didn’t give me new bottles of shampoo for my entire 5 day stay.

The staff isn’t bilingual. The tourism office is nice, but they don’t speak English either.

Nice views and air conditioning, but I couldn’t wait to leave because being dependent on this hotel sucks. They really need to improve their room service and restaurant staff’s manners. One time I ordered dinner and coffee and the room service guy suggested I was trying to get more coffee by asking that he leave the coffee carafe. I just wanted my coffee to stay hot until I finished my dinner. They add tip to the receipt without asking and never get orders right and don’t offer to fix the problem. Even after you complain, they continue to screw things up. It ruined my stay.

I think they are too petty with guests and they should change that because even though the hotel is nice, their attitude is cheap and that cheapens the image...