Santa Sophia del Mar — Hotel in Santa Marta

I feel a bit grinch like leaving a poor review for this hotel when I see everyone else’s reviews however we were very surprised at the quality of the hotel, possibly due to these other reviews, so this is our experience.||1. The hotel owners were very friendly and helpful. |2. Breakfast of eggs and coffee was included each morning. |3. Two of our rooms had no window at all. |4. The other room had an internal window that didn’t have curtains so could not keep the room fully private|5. The bathrooms have no hot water. Only cold showers |6. There is no real communal space - the roof terrace is filthy and the hot tub is in the reception area. |7. It’s a long walk along a main road into town and the part of the sea front close by is dirty and undeveloped. Not the safest feeling area to walk around if you’re on your own.|8. The wifi was ok and one room had a fridge.|9. It was noisy ... next door was doing drilling from 6am each morning, there was a fair amount of street traffic and there was noise from the street and other rooms. |10. For the standard of accommodation, it was expensive. The rooms are basic and are not sparklingly clean (I went looking for power points and wished I hadn’t looked behind the bed and there was no way I would sit on the chair in one of the rooms we had). |11. On arrival we were asked to cancel our booking.com reservation. We initially though this was so we could rearrange the rooms (we had 2 separate bookings and we were trying not to move rooms mid booking) but it turned out that it’s to avoid the booking fees. This doesn’t feel right to us, as it was that site that helped get the booking in the first place ... if you don’t like the fees, don’t use the site for your advertising. ||After 3 nights (it was high season so not much else available) we moved to another place in town which was much better...

Casa Santa Sophia del Mar is the best place to stay in Santa Marta you can imagine. Nicolas and his family run the place and make sure that you have everything you need. They are very friendly, offer great hospitality and assistance in anything you need. During our stay in Santa Marta our rental car broke down, but as none of us was speaking Spanish, Nicolas helped us to arrange everything with the garage and rental agency. Oh… I must not forget to mention that our daughter Marta loved playing with Nicolas’ daughter Sophia each evening during our visit. If my tracks will ever lead me to Santa Marta, I will be delighted to come back to this hotel! To be honest – for the first time I regret that I can give only 5 stars in the Tripadvisor’s ranking, as in this case even 7 stars would...

Questo hotel inganna con le sue pagine in internet. Prima di tutto le foto esposte sono reali però sicuramente manipolate. L’hotel è una casa mediocremente ristrutturata e la vera impressione arrivando è abbastanza da “ostello”. Poi, quando telefoni per informazioni e riservare, ti diranno “per favore” di non riservare per internet ma di arrivare direttamente e pagare in contanti; mi viene da credere, a questo punto, per poi complicarti la vita nello scrivere recensioni. La stanza che ci hanno fornito ha un letto pessimo con copriletto sporco, una aria condizionata che ti spara direttamente sulla testa tutta la notte ed un bagno dove non riesci a fare pipì stando in piedi perché lo spazio è ridicolmente piccolo e mal organizzato. Fin qui accettabile da parte di chi viaggia disposto ad accettare un ostello, anche se si dichiara un Hotel. Ma andiamo al vero aspetto che rende il posto un incubo: nelle case vicine durante tutta la notte fino alle 07.00 del mattino si scatenano delle “feste”, probabilmente perché è venerdì, con una musica assordante e grida e schiamazzi che non ti permetterà assolutamente di dormire. Al tuo tentativo alle 04.30 di chiedere di ridurre il casino verrai maltrattato dai festaioli ed il personale dell’ “hotel” non esiste né, chiaramente, interviene per risolvere. Anzi alla mattina ti diranno che sei tu ad avere torto perché ti permetti di protestare con certa forza, visto che per tutta la notte non hai avuto alcuna attenzione, anzi....vieni maltratto. Alla richiesta di rimborso, anche perché non hai una ricevuta, ti verrà completamente negato da parte della proprietaria con una maleducazione ed una spudoratezza veramente sfacciata. Apprezzerò se i proprietari facessero il gesto di restituire il denaro della pessima notte passata, a cui risponderò puntualmente aggiornando la mia recensione. Comunque...