Hotel Yanuncay — Hotel in Cuenca

This is not a hotel for tourists who don’t speak Spanish - there was not a word of English spoken, not by reception or restaurant staff. The hotel is also rather out of the way with no popular restaurants nearby – we found it difficult to find a place to eat in the immediate vicinity on our arrival night especially with nearby streets closed for the construction of an electric tram system. You can walk to the historic centre but much easier in the day. ||||We were initially given the top floor ‘suite’ – spacious and well furnished. Is this the ‘gringo’ room for overseas guests? However, we had requested twin beds and were moved to another room which was vastly different. Cramped, old furniture, a tiny bathroom with no window and no exhaust fan so was like a sauna, plus multiple cracks in handbasin and a mildewed and peeling door. Room service was poor - wet towels left on the floor for replacement were not changed and were rehung! The bathroom bin (with used toilet paper) was not emptied even though the bedroom bin was – not nice!||||Breakfast was at a fixed time (7–8am), served to the table so no choice of food other than how you wanted eggs cooked – and only requests in Spanish were understood. There was no fruit, yoghurt or cereal; just eggs and rolls/bread and jam.||||Key/room security was also a problem. Another guest was issued a key to our room and entered while we were there. A mistake at reception but in sorting it out, they messed up our keys as well. After this incident, our keys never worked and we were locked out every time we tried to access our room over two consecutive days. No one could fix the problem.||||On the positive side, our room was quiet which we appreciated; and staff at reception were pleasant and tried to be helpful despite the language barrier. Overall though, I couldn’t...

We stayed here on a whim but we’re so glad that we did. My husband and I had booked a room at a different hotel on the same road (let’s call it Casa Poop) who then lost our reservation. The woman at the desk of Casa Poop was then completely unapologetic, even though we had booked and confirmed weeks prior, then didn’t even try to help us find another place; she just shrugged her shoulders and said that everything was probably booked, then sat in silence as we tried in vain to book something else on our phones. She did let us use the wifi, thankfully. To be fair, it was a holiday weekend so there were a lot of people in town, as well as an arts and crafts festival happening at the river and, to her credit, lots of places were fully booked. But, Cuenca is a big town. Every single room is booked so don’t even bother trying? Come on.

So, we walked one block down and saw Hotel Yanuncay. The guys at the front desk smiled and waved through the glass so we decided, “Hey, let’s see if they have a room.” They said that they did and that we could go ahead and check in right then (it wasn’t even 12pm, yet!). The room was great and clean and the hotel, itself, was very clean and well furnished - bar/restaurant downstairs with a natural light hangout area on each floor as you go up. The staff is awesome and extremely welcoming and there was a free breakfast included, too.

So, not only did we get to check in earlier than we would have, it was also more economical than our original plan.

We’re so thankful that the kind and welcoming staff were nice enough to give us a wave through the glass doors and usher us in. Who knows where we would have ended up? Probably under a bridge, right, because every room in town was booked. I would definitely recommend Hotel Yanuncay to someone visiting Cuenca and...

This hotel is nice. The rooms are large with microwaves and fridges. Masses of hot water and the staff are lovely. We had a car and there is a secure car park out the back. Beds are comfortable - no blackout curtains so bring eye masks in the summer.||||The thing that lets it down is breakfast. There is no buffet and no fruit one of the two days we spent here. The food is served at your table and they offer nothing like yoghurt or muesli - essentially you eat eggs and bread. We solved this the second day by buying our own stuff and keeping it in the fridge in our room. The TV blares out in the small dining room and the whole affair is a bit of an ordeal.||||Once you get through breakfast, everything else works pretty well. The WiFi is a bit hit and miss, depending on the time of the day. There were only three electrical sockets in our 40m2 room (one was six inches from the ceiling)||. The hotel is pretty close to the centre - Cuenca is fairly safe and you can walk back after dark (unlike most cities in Ecuador)||||This place isn't setting out to compete with the Four Seasons and generally we felt it represented good...