Che Bacalar Hostel & Bar — Hotel in Bacalar

3/10 - I’ve never left a negative review before but I have never had such unhelpful staff! Pros: really nice pool area, great loungers/ chilling area, good wifi, AC, and excellent location Cons: FAR outweigh pros; staff were unwilling to help eg with tours/ questions. Unfortunately on the day of checkout I went to collect my trainers which I had purposefully left in the (female only) dorm, they were missing. I went to speak to reception as the room was near empty. Reception staff could not have been less helpful, didn’t seem to care at all, just shrugged and said to post on the group WhatsApp. They refused to contact any cleaning staff to ask if the shoes had been seen until I really pushed for it. They also wouldn’t let me look in the lost and found and just assured me the trainers weren’t there. I had to leave the hostel to check into another one (as planned), and an hour later messaged the hostel to see if they were there, they had miraculously “found” the trainers - when I went to collect them reception did not tell us where they were found/ how they were found despite us asking - the receptionist actually lied to us and told us they were found in a locker in the dorm room (2 of us had separately checked each locker so we knew this wasn’t true). When we addressed that this was not true, the receptionist just shrugged and said she “didn’t know” who found them/ where they were found, even though she was the one who had messaged me a picture of them saying they had been found. Before the shoes were found, I went and asked all the staff around the bar area if they’d seen them - everyone seemed very uninterested and just said to ask reception. There was also another girl who lost her bumbag with her passport in it (was later found) - she also said reception were so unhelpful, didn’t seem to care and again told her to message the WhatsApp group chat. I would NOT trust the staff here to help and would lock absolutely everything away in your locker if you stay here. I would have thought a dirty pair of clearly very worn trainers would be safe from being stolen but...

Stayed here for 3 nights with a large group of people; the hostel itself is in a good location and is a nice property that is kept clean.

The rooms are decent but are unbearably hot - the air conditioning was more for decoration than anything and it was impossible to get a good nights sleep with how warm it was.

The biggest issue with this hostel is with the staff. We travelled as a large group of around 50-60 people and while we were all at the hostel-organized boat party, a number of people in our group all had money stolen from wallets/bags in the dorm rooms. We knew everyone in our dorm rooms and all of us were gone on the boat party, meaning someone from the hostel accessed our rooms while we were gone and went through all of our belongings. Approximately 300 USD along with 3000 pesos were missing from our group. When we originally brought it up with the staff they were unconcerned and dismissed it. We went back again when we realized just how much money was gone and they finally said they would look at the security cameras. We were told the manager would come and speak to us before we left but we never saw him. This issue was handled horribly, and we never got any sort of resolution or real response from the manager.

Several of the staff members, including one bartender in particular, were outright rude and had extremely poor customer service - rolling their eyes and sighing when you’d ask for a drink at the bar. I felt like a nuisance just for asking for a bottle of water.

The payment system at the hostel is “tap to pay” with their rubber wristbands - which means you don’t know how much you are being charged until you go to pay your total tab at checkout. One of the bartenders was putting tips on people’s bills without them knowing or asking if they wanted to tip, and they didn’t know until it was too late.

Ultimately, this place has potential to be a good hostel but it is completely ruined by the awful attitude of the staff.

I would strongly recommend finding a different place to...

“Like a Sauna with Thieves and Attitude – A Cautionary Tale”

If you're looking for the full hostile hostel experience, look no further. This place manages to be both sweltering and cold-hearted in equal measure.

Despite promising air conditioning in their listing, what we got was 36 degrees of unrelenting heat and exactly zero degrees of empathy. One of our group resorted to sleeping with a bag of ice just to survive the night – and woke up soaked, not with sweat from restful sleep, but from her rapidly melted bedfellow. When we asked for the air con, we were told the remote was a sacred relic guarded at the front desk. Our repeated offers to pay for an upgrade or cover the cost of the air con were met with sneers and shrugs from staff who clearly missed the "hospitality" part of hostel management.

The rudeness didn’t end there. Staff made sure to add a tip to every bill – even if you were just buying a bottle of water. We asked, again and again, not to include tips. They ignored us, and we eventually had to eat the cost of their involuntary generosity. A 60-person group buying water and beers adds up fast when you’re tipping for every cap twisted.

Bedsheets? Only if you brought your own or are content sleeping under your paid-and-tipped-for towel. A majority of our 50-60 person group were left to burrito themselves in bathroom linen because apparently, sheets are a luxury item now.

And just when you think it couldn’t get worse, multiple people in our group had cash stolen directly from their bags and wallets. When we raised it with staff, we got the same response we received about the air con: absolutely nothing.

In short, this place is the Bermuda Triangle of basic decency – hot, unhelpful, and mysteriously short on your money by the end. Avoid at all costs unless your idea of a good time includes sweating through the night, being argued with for asking for help, tipping against your will, and sleeping with your wallet clutched to your chest like...