Meraki Boutique Hotel — Hotel in Guatemala City

I chose this hotel for the price, location, and free breakfast, as most other hotels in Guatemala City wanted $20 a day for breakfast, which can add up. You get a menu for breakfast (make sure you ask for the English one if you don't speak Spanish). I got orange juice and 3 pancakes each morning. That comes with a small bowl of fruit too.||I felt a got a good room, but when housecleaning was cleaning other rooms, I looked in and they seemed very tiny. Some did not even have windows, or had just a slat near the top of the wall for a window that you could not look out of. ||The hotel is in a very noisy area, so you will need very good earplugs. This is especially true Friday/Saturday nights when an open air nightclub right across the courtyard blasts music until the wee hours of the morning.||The walls are also thin. I could hear my neighbors in adjoining rooms talking, coughing, taking a shower, going to the bathroom, etc.||There is a mounted A/C unit above the bed controlled with a remote. Slide down the cover some for different modes, as mine wasn't on the A/C mode, so I couldn't figure out how to get the room cooler when I first got there. There is a heat mode, but it doesn't work, so you may get cold at night. I did. ||The shower drains slowly, so you may be standing in an inch or two of water if you have the shower on full blast. ||There is a small grocery story attached to the hotel that sells water, lots of other drinks, snacks, etc. and there are plenty more within walking distance, along with local restaurants and chain ones from the US such as McDonald's and Burger King.||There is a nice open-air upscale shopping mall, Fontabella, across the street, and a real big very nice indoor shopping mall, Oakland Place, right down the street that you can walk to. ||The English of the front desk staff varies on the person, so have some basic Spanish or Google Translate ready to use, but it wasn't that big a deal. I was able to communicate fine with them.||My smoke detector was missing from the ceiling, luckily there was no fire or I would have slept thru it. The toilet seat wasn't secure and would move around when I sat down. A towel rack was missing the whole time I was there, but appeared on the final day. No peephole in the door to see who is knocking on your door.||They have guards standing outside the entrance to the hotel, and even put a cage around the hotel sometimes. Zone 10, where the hotel is located, is considered the safest zone, but it's still Guatemala City after all. Overall an OK hotel in the heart of Zone 10, close to upscale malls, and the free...

The good parts - nice location in Zona 10, feels very safe walking around during the day and close to restaurants, a mall etc. Their breakfast was also fine and served quickly. The bad parts - I am not exaggerating when I say every staff member I encountered was downright rude. I’m 25, I’ve worked in the service industry since I was 15 and even as a 15 year old I was better at masking any unpleasant emotion I might have felt and apologizing when I knew I was wrong. That’s to say, I understand being tired and over it when you’re at the end of a shift. But the lady at the reception, Valerie, wears her true feelings on her face, for better or for worse. She was unkind from the beginning, which whatever, I can get over. But then she gave us a room with one double bed instead of two and when we went to let her know, she did not apologize until it was clear we were unhappy with the service. She said the other rooms were all full and did not offer a refund for the smaller room until we asked. I would have been totally fine with the refund and double bed had even one person been kind about it. To top it off, the room stinks of mold. At this point we decided to cut our losses since it was 8PM and we didn’t want to search for and uber to a new hotel. At breakfast, Meraki needs to fix their booking system and let their staff know how to better mask their true emotions in front of guests. I would...

This Boutique hotel is well located, just a 10 minute walk to the Oakland Shopping Mall. The hotel is well decorated, from the reception to the breakfast area to the rooms. The receptionist provided us with above and beyond service. Kudos to Fernanda (I think that was her name). Since we arrived early and it wasn't time to check-in and also that we were leaving the next day at 3 a.m. the receptionist offered us breakfast since it was included and we were going to miss it the next day. We thought that was way above than what we expected. She arranged for a taxi for the next day, too. When we returned later to check-in, out baggage was already in the room. They really know what hospitality is all...