Hotel Santa María Inn — Hotel in San Juan

We chose this hotel because it is independent and not a multinational chain, with free breakfast, WiFi, and transport from the airport.|| I did not read the fine print- this hotel offers free transport TO the airport only, and states that it is a shuttle. The shuttle is not accurate. They will call you a ride share. Please be aware of this when booking. ||So, after establishing the week before that we would not have transport from the airport, we elected to walk from our rental car office to the hotel which is about 1.5km away. We arrived just before 4 p.m. and there was no one on the hotel premises and all gates were locked. We tried to call but no one answered the phone or WhatsApp messenger. After waiting 15 minutes the owner finally showed up. Again, this is not disclosed and had not been told to me in our emails earlier in the week that we needed to tell the owner when we were arriving. This is a Hotel and not an AirBNB. ||The owner requested then that we pay only in cash and didn’t give me a receipt. ||He asked if we would need to go out again and we said we were going to try to find a tienda to buy some food and he said there was a supermarket two blocks from the hotel. We walked several blocks and found a small tienda with an empty fridge and no food, only some household supplies. We turned around and walked about 1km back to the nearest gas station. ||Finally settling into our room, we discovered mold in the bathroom and that I had been given a towel with dirt brown streaks on it. Luckily I had brought my own to use. ||The A/C is a window unit meaning you can either close the curtains for privacy or have the A/C. ||The shower had strong water pressure and hot water after about 5 p.m. (the owner notified us that there would be no hot water before then, which was fine). However the water also smelled strongly of sulfur. ||Breakfast was a large, and very good, fruit plate, eggs, and toast, coffee and fresh papaya juice.||When we had arrived the evening before we had requested the “shuttle” for 7 a.m. the next morning, and the owner wrote this on our reservation, but at that appointed time we were downstairs waiting and there was not a single person around. At around 7:15 the owner came out and told me we were not supposed to be downstairs until 7:30. They called the ride share after I said that indeed we had asked for the “shuttle” at 7 a.m. and the ride showed up at 7:30. ||It actually takes between 10-15 minutes at this time of day to get to the airport, not the 5 minutes as advertised. And if you are trying to get from the airport to this “hotel” then be sure to check the traffic since both times we drove from the airport to this area in our week’s stay it took between 45-60 minutes. ||This is basically an AirBNB without the graciousness of most AirBNB hosts. While I strive to support independent operators, the lack of service for the price was appalling. We paid only $16 less per night here than for the hotel that we spent the whole week prior that provided exceedingly...

This place was incredibly cute, and very friendly. We only had one issue, which was resolved (they were supposed to pick us up at the airport as they have an airport shuttle, but they weren't there on time as promised. They did come though and apologized after we called)

The hotel rooms are very quaint and minimalist. If you want posh extravagant rooms go to a Hilton. This is very mom and pop style of business which adds to how cute it is. Theres a bed, TV, and a chair and table. Obviously there's a bathroom, but be careful as ours leaked out easily and made a mess which is why I subtracted a star.

There is free wifi at the hotel but it was spotty. The staff at the hotel were very nice, and even arranged for our car rental company to come pick us up.

There's a free breakfast which was made fresh right in front of us, which was the best part of the experience. Juice was mixed right there, fruit was cut right there, and eggs were cooked right there, all in front of us and in the pictures I did upload.

There's not much surrounding the area so if you want night life this isn't the place. If you want a cheap and nice place to stay, come here. I enjoyed my stay and...

What we appreciated: fairly close to the airport (15 min), could fit 6 of us in 'family room', excellent breakfast in beautiful outdoor dining/kitchen area (we were sometimes joined by birds), temperature controlled room, showers had hot water. Smelled 'just cleaned' when we got there (nice), and there was a nice little kitchenette upstairs. And the owner (although very serious) looked out for us. Also, there were lots of Canadians staying here, both french and english ... very nice.||What we didn't like: because there were 6 of us, the airport shuttle guy wanted to charge us for a second run because he couldn't fit us all in at once (WRONG!!). Internet was not accessible in room, but in courtyard. The 'family room' was pretty dingy: wiped down, yes, but stains on ceiling, sparse decor, and windows were under the car port (dark). The neighbourhood wasn't close to dining out, groceries, etc (although we did venture north east on foot for about a mile and...