Downtown Beds Hostel — Hotel in Mexico City

Downtown Beds is a good option if you’re looking to get a taste of the boutique style for a lower fare. It’s located in a beautiful historic building in the heart of Mexico City—here you can find several open courtyards with green spaces, little shops and restaurants, and Downtown Hotel which is also part of the Grupo Habita brand.

As you enter the hostel area you notice the design elements forming the scene. Bright colors, strong use of typography and visuals on the walls, and the typical Mexican terra-cotta tiles seen throughout the flooring and stairs. You walk past a wall full of pictures of past guests, a bike rack, a foosball table, the dining area, the TV room, the bar, and finally you reach the lobby for check-in. All the common areas are located on this first floor in an open courtyard, and on the higher floors you can find the rooms and shared bathrooms.

We stayed in a private room with a queen bed, and shared the bathroom with other guests. The room was very minimal—white walls, eggshell colored wooden flooring, and iron beams held the bed. Along the wall there were stark iron light fixtures accompanied by two small lockers. There was also a fan that we used at night to keep the room cool. The shared bathrooms and showers were well maintained, they felt private and spacious. In the morning we walked down to the dining area for breakfast, and received a complimentary piece of toast with a selection of jams, a piece of fruit, coffee and juice. There were other more filling choices available for decent prices.

Overall we loved the design, the central location, the cleanliness, and the low price. As much as we appreciated these things and truly admire the brand, we noticed a lot of opportunities for improvement. Group Habita is all about attention to detail, which is why many aspects of this hostel didn’t quite fit with our prior experiences. It was basic in regards to only providing a place to rest, other than that it lacked empathy towards the guests. Downtown Beds is a hostel, and they should embrace that by activating the social atmosphere. They could offer tours of the city, or suggest activities to participate in. They could also attract more customers to their bar with deals and events, provide a shared kitchen, introduce movie nights, or simply give guests the ability to change the channel on the big screen. The patio with the green walls on the first floor could become a pleasant shared space by simply adding places to sit. The rooms could benefit from chairs or tables to make them feel more complete, and also adding some sort of surface apart from the floor to place belongings. It would be thoughtful to supply guests with essential toiletries like shampoo and soap in the shower area, and again some type of surface besides the floor for guests to place their clothes. The bathroom mirrors were cool and made the area look unique, but they were not very functional, a regular mirror would be nice to have somewhere in the shower area or rooms. And as a final note the wifi was very inconsistent therefore could not be used successfully.

Apart from these suggestions the experience was pleasant, and we would come back when looking for a budget design experience in...

The design of the hotel is great & the rooms are beautiful but that unfortunately is where our positive review ends.

The rooms:

Are extremely dark and have no natural light unless you leave the top half of the entrance door open, thus allowing anybody that walks by to see into the room. For us, this made it a not very particularly enjoyable space to spend time in and it was a shame not to be able to lay in bed with the curtains open and enjoy a coffee in the morning, without feeling completely exposed.

Whilst incredibly noisy, the air con unit also didn’t seem to do anything so our room was extremely hot no matter the time of day. In fact, the room was always considerably hotter than outside!

The food:

We had breakfast at the hotel twice and on both occasions our food arrived cold. It was also not made clear to us that the majority of the menu is not included in the B&B rate. So, on both mornings, we were charged full price for breakfast. If we’d have known this, we might have decided to try somewhere different.

More generally:

The biggest problem during our stay was that the hotel had taken a booking for a wedding on the Saturday night. With no prior mention of this happening we came back one afternoon, with the intention of spending the rest of the day by the pool, to find the lobby area cordoned off & a wedding drinks reception in full swing. We were escorted the ‘long way round’ by security to our room so that we didn’t disturb the party and after getting changed into our swimsuits and heading up to the terrace, were very quickly ushered back into the lift by a security guard. He told us that the terrace was closed, even to hotel guests, for the rest of the day due to a private party. Worse still, upon returning from dinner that evening, we were greeted by extremely loud music which went on until 1am. With it only being the second night after flying in from London, we were quite jet lagged so this was a real problem.

If accepting bookings for a private event, you should not be taking paying hotel guests at the same time. It is simply not acceptable to restrict guest access to all of the hotels facilities for an entire day/night when that is part of what we...

Loretta and I decided to take a nice Reality Getaway to Cancun. When we arrived at our Cancun destination, we were promptly advised of Hurricane Delta. The hotel informed us we would have to evacuate by noon the next day. So, we hopped in our dirty Jetta and drove almost four hours to Merida, MX to buy us thinking time. We stayed at a Nice Marriot Signature hotel. They did a good job but not enough to review as I felt it lackluster and I don't want negative in our hurricane avoidance tour. In Merida, I studied the trajectory and determined it was too close to Merida and the category, though later reduced, too high at a predicted category 4.

Then next day we hopped a ride on Viva AeroBus. Their online interaction blew but the experience on the plane amazed.

Once in Mexico City, I decided no elevated mediocre Marriott experience would do. I looked to a Mexican experience. We landed on Downtown Mexico in "Centro" with some hesitation.

Reservations: Superior! When I go to Marriot , as a platinum member I always am offered free 50 cent bottle of water. They hand me a bottle and I bow to their generosity.

The first time at Downtown, they offer us two free margaritas and we looked at each other and were like "what?" Oh, that was after a free upgrade room with a balcony. I get it, it's Corona virus time. Hotels remain mostly vacant. My conversation here discusses a culture. The culture at Downtown clearly abounds with genuine care that I rarely see in our world. I found at Downtown, something forgotten.

Downtown's culture is not placation. Their culture: show the people that choose to visit us our souls are strong, we are of value and you will leave knowing the power of who we are and you will be better because of us. They desire to share their culture. We received of the greatness that is Mexico city. I will leave hoping my business can find the self worth that permeates this ancient and beautiful palace that is Mexico!

Thank you Downtown for making our hurricane misadventures a...