Villa 97 Guayaquil – Suites y Habitaciones Económicas Cerca del Aeropuerto — Hotel in Guayaquil

The location is exceptional: two blocks from Mall del Sol. It is a maximum $5 cab ride to anywhere in the city! The family that runs it is wonderful, full of smiles and helpful information and recommendations. The Matriarch of the family walked us to the mall, and showed us where to get the 'safe' taxis. And she told us 'no mas cinco dolares' to make sure we didn't get charged the 'gringo price'. Once you get past the rough, secure exterior (and it is quite rough from the outside), the inside is a jewel of marble floors and lots of woodwork.||||It is not really a dislike, but something travellers need to know: it is difficult to find. Addressing is not as you would expect in North America. Most cab drivers don't have a clue where it is. Take advantage of their offer to pick you up at the airport (5 minutes away), or get the cab driver to take you to the Sonesca Hotel at Mall del Sol. They can meet you there. The Wi-Fi on the main level is great, but is spotty in the rooms because of all the concrete. But none of this would stop us from staying there again!||||I would like to take a few lines to address some of the comments made by others:||1. For Guayaquil, the price is very good. This level of accommodation elsewhere in Ecuador, even Quito, would be much cheaper, but not in Guayaquil. Best Western and Sheraton are there too, but for $135 to $160/night, minimum. We feel we got fair value for $55/night ... in Guayaquil, right at Mall del Sol.||2. We did get a key for our room, which appears to be the same one others slept in ... the king bed that is really two singles. It did take them a while to find the key, but we did get one.||3. The bed was not the greatest ... admittedly. But lie sideways, and the problem goes away.||4. You always have to do the right things to be safe, but linking a stolen iPad on a bus to staying at this B&B is not really fair. If something was stolen from you HERE, it would have been fair. Theft is an issue in all tourist situations, not just Guayaquil, and not just Ecuador.||||In summary, Villa 97 is good, clean, basic accommodation, in a great location, with friendly service. If you are expecting a name brand hotel, you will be disappointed. But if you go expecting Ecuadorian friendliness, and desire to please, you will enjoy your stay. Other than sleeping, and maybe breakfast, we don't spend much time at the hotel, so our expectations may be different.||||For those looking for things to do, the Guayaquil Vision bus tour is great, and only $6/person. Walking the beautiful Malecon is a must, and climbing the 444 stairs of Santa Anna provides a beautiful view of the city. If you do, stop at the first landing on the way up for a cold cerveza at La Taberna. It is a historic little bar with all kinds of music and sports memorabilia. We stopped there on the way down too! But the absolute must see is Parque Centro Historico. Do take the time to read the placards. It is a wonderful place! And remember, don't pay more than $5 for a cab from here to anywhere, and in many cases, it will...

$55 for the room in this private home is about $30 too expensive for the VERY basic furnishings and lower standard of cleanliness & services.||||First - there is NO KEY for your room - you just have to TRUST that no-one will enter and go through your stuff, which in Ecuador is a tall ask (we had our iPad stolen on a bus here).||||Next - the linen is tired and doesn't look that clean AND the king bed is 2 singles pushed together lengthways meaning your hips fall into the crack between beds.||||We had to ASK for towels and go searching outside of the room for soap. The floor in the bathroom was dusty & grimy.||||The reception was advertised as 24hours, but upon arrival, while one young guy spoke to our taxi driver who had a hell of a time finding the place in the unmarked backstreets of Simon Boliver, another older guy ignored us and kept playing his candy crush game on the computer. After waiting for over 5 minutes before anyone spoke to us - they didn't even have our booking from booking.com and tried to charge us $65 (choke!!) ONLY because we had to leave for the airport at 4.30am did we decide to stay so we asked them to book us a taxi for the morning. We were only going to be there about 8 hours, so we would miss their breakfast as well.||||NO TAXI - NO RECEPTIONIST upon departure... just a set of keys left on the bench with NO INSTRUCTIONS on how to unlock ourselves from the building!!!||||If there was someone there I would have demanded $30 refund because this is the most expensive place for the most basic of services & furnishings we have EVER stayed in especially over the last 2 years of FULL TIME TRAVEL!||||I suggest you remove this property from your listings until they drop their prices and become more honest in what...

I booked this through Hotels.com and had received my emailed confirmation, but when we arrived they had no record of this, or at least that's what I think they meant, judging by their sign language and the Spanish conversation between office staff. However, they told us "OK", took our $60 and showed us to a room to "store" our bags until our room became available, which would be "later". This room was unlockable, but with trepidation we did as we were told. When we returned some hours later, there had been no room made available. It was now late and dark, so they told us we could sleep in the storage room. This room did have a bed of sorts, with shabby (questionably unclean?) bed linen, but no door to the toilet, nor toilet paper and cold water in the shower. The common room on the same floor was dirty and had no wifi as was advertised. It was too late to do anything but stay there, (and we were exhausted) so we arranged for our 4.30 am wake up call for a flight, and the night boy promised he had arranged a taxi pick up.||After a short period of restless sleep, (remember this room was unlockable) a person came into our room...clearly not expecting that anyone would actually be sleeping there! ||At 4.30 am, you guessed it, no wake-up call (no need because we hadn't been able to sleep after the intruder) no taxi, no night boy! ||So we had to leg-it, flat out with our back-packs etc, in the dark to try to flag down any random taxi, in a not so nice part of town. Being aged closer to 60 than 50, this was not something either of us were hoping for.||No apology, not...