Volga — Hotel in Mexico City

WELL, do I have a lot to say about our experience with Volga hotel in CDMX, and pretty much none of it is positive. TLDR version: beyond the gorgeous architectural design boasted by the lobby and common spaces, this hotel and the service in particular was a parade of disappointments. In NO WORLD should this hotel be considered a five star, and I am shocked that it has any kind of Michelin recommendation after the continued service issues we faced. ||||Booking Issues: I reserved our room on their website directly, with the iPrefer rewards (loyalty) account. After entering stay and payment details, I received a confirmation number and saw the reservation populate in the rewards portal… but never got an email confirmation nor did I see any charge to my credit card. After attempting to reach them via chat/email and WhatsApp (per the website’s preferred contact methods) I called to make sure we were okay with the reservation, and was then told they couldn’t see my name in the system but would call back. Noone ever called back, so I reached out via phone again, and was told they had located the reservation and confirmed number of nights/room type etc and said a confirm email would follow. Instead, I received an email saying I was not confirmed until I paid via online payment link – but if you click through the link it was a rate higher than the initial booking. I called a THIRD TIME, and was told a confirmation email would follow, but would I like to pay over phone or in person? I declined to pay over phone without written confirmation of the price I had booked initially and they said in person was fine. A second payment link was sent via email the night before check in, for a different merchant processor payment method, with the amount still showing as a different higher rate. Didn’t love that for multiple reasons, so we waited to pay until we arrived at the hotel. At this point they gave me a printed receipt with the correct dollar amount in person… but then proceeded to charge my card at the higher rate. When I tried to debate this with the reservations team, they kept insisting that my bank (Amex) must be charging foreign fees … absolutely not the case since I specifically have a card that does not charge FX fees. Amex had to resolve the issue on my behalf via chargeback.||||Checkin Debacle: The fun doesn’t end there! We arrived about 2 hours early, and were told the room would be ready within an hour. So we dropped bags and went to the rooftop to use our free drink coupons. Were told they didn’t work up there after we had ordered our drinks…. Ooooookay not a big deal. Came back after an hour and were told room still not ready, but would be soon. Grabbed another drink and waited until after checkin start time at 3 to access our room. Lo and behold – room is not ready at checkin time and wont be for a while and NO, there are NO OTHER ROOMS AVAILABLE. At this point I asked for a manager who was able to materialize a room in about a minute. Many other guests mentioned this – so it seems to be the norm. If we had just been notified that it would be late, we could have grabbed some things from our bag and explored the city a bit, instead of waiting in perpetuity at the hotel bar. Felt scammy. ||||Other Service Issues: Service was so poor at the hotel that we barely enjoyed any of the included “amenities” or add ons. ||- Concierge: We requested info at check in for concierge services (booking private mezcal tasting, rooftop workout classes, and car transport), directly with the concierge who was sitting at the desk at chekin. While they did help us book transfer from the airport to hotel prior to check-in, we never received any info or update from the Concierge during the stay about any of the other services we requested at checkin. ||- Breakfast Charges: We stopped by for free breakfast on our first day, and the whole thing was so disorganized, we never went back. It’s a very limited menu (Fruit/ yogurt, and eggs your way with potatoes OR beans, but DO NOT ASK FOR BOTH, YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH BEANS AND POTATOES), yet our orders were still messed up, arrived 10 minutes apart despite being the same meal, and incurred additional charges for an espresso because only black coffee is included (no one told us that until we tried to leave). I truly couldn’t care less about the espresso cost, but after we signed a room charge for that and left a cash tip that was literally 3x the charge of the espresso, staff wouldn’t let us leave and couldn’t articulate the issue. My Spanish is conversational, and I had no idea what they were asking for. After getting a floor manager it turned out they wanted us to sign a second room charge for the $0 breakfast in addition to the paid espresso to make sure we did not want to add a tip on that room charge... for the free breakfast. The manager literally said that it was not necessary for us to sign and we could go. It was just so awkward and inappropriate for this to be protocol for an included rate breakfast (that is being served to guests presumably daily). ||- Other service issues: the absolute cherry on top was a message I received telling me housekeeping reported we had damaged a towel and would be charged 100mxn (~$5 USD) for it- I was contacted via WhatsApp to be notified of this. We did have a few towels on the ground for grip because the polished exposed marble floors were basically a death trap.. but cannot imagine what was “damaged” to the point of being chargeable.. or why the hotel would think its appropriate to add a charge when the nightly room rate was basically 100x that. ||- “Speakeasy”/ nightclub from hell: Some guests complained that there was loud music from the basement club. The sound did not bother us at all – but the hoards of possibly underage (or barely legal) teenagers streaming through the lobby and jamming up the elevator, was SO not the vibe for 5 star hotel. We actually popped down to check things out around midnight one night and found ourselves surrounded by belligerent teenagers. I was just so confused what this hotel was going for after stepping into the venue and promptly turning around after 10 minutes. ||||The hotel itself is beautiful, we did enjoy our room and found the terrace and central lobby to be architecturally stunning. But the subpar service starting with reservations team before we even arrived, make this a huge...

WELL, do I have a lot to say about our experience... TLDR version: beyond the gorgeous architectural design boasted by the lobby and common spaces, this hotel and the service in particular was a parade of disappointments. In NO WORLD should this hotel be considered a five star or Michelin Key.

Booking Issues: Reserved room on website directly, with the iPrefer rewards loyalty account. I received a confirmation number and saw the reservation populate in the rewards portal… but never got an email confirm nor did I see any charge to my cc. I called to make sure we were okay with the reservation, and was then told they couldn’t see me in the system but would call back. Noone ever called back, so I reached out again, and was told they had located the reservation and confirm email would follow. Instead, I received an email saying I was not confirmed until I paid via payment link – but link showed higher rate than the initial booking. PHONE CALL 3 - was told a confirmation email would follow, and asked to pay over phone. I declined to pay over phone without written confirmation of the price I had booked initially and they said paying in person was fine. A second payment link was then sent via email with a different merchant processer and no change to rate. Didn’t love that for multiple reasons, so we waited to pay until we arrived at the hotel. At this point they gave me a printed receipt with the correct dollar amount in person… and proceeded to charge my card at the higher rate. Not an FX issue since my bank doesnt have FX fees- had to contact Amex to handle the discrepency

Checkin Debacle: The fun doesn’t end there! We arrived about 2 hours early, and were told the room would be ready within an hour. Dropped Bag, grabbed a drink and checked in multiple times- room was not even ready at checkin, until I complained to a manager who magically found a room.

Other Service Issues: Service was so poor at the hotel that we barely enjoyed any of the included “amenities” or add ons. Concierge: Requested info at check in for concierge services (booking private mezcal tasting, rooftop workout classes, and car transport), were told they would follow up, never did. Breakfast Charges: Free breakfast is limited menu (yogurt, fruit, eggs), takes forever to come out, orders were messed up and delivered 10 min apart despite being same order. We were charged for espresso which is fine, but they could not articulate that we had to sign a second receipt after paying for espresso and tipping cash for bfast.. second receipt confirmed we did not want to tip on a room charge for the FREE breakfast. Literally had to have a manager come out and explain this and tell staff they shouldn't have held us from leaving the table. Other service issues: the absolute cherry on top was a message I received telling me housekeeping reported we had damaged a towel and would be charged 100mxn (~$5 USD) for it- I was contacted via WhatsApp to be notified of this. We did have a few towels on the ground for grip because the polished exposed marble floors were a death trap.. but cannot imagine what was “damaged” to the point of being chargeable.. or why the hotel would think its appropriate to add a charge when the nightly room rate was basically 100x that. “Speakeasy”/ nightclub from hell: Some guests complained that there was loud music from the basement club. The sound did not bother us at all – but the hoards of possibly underage (or barely legal) teenagers streaming through the lobby and jamming up the elevator, was SO not the vibe for 5 star hotel. We actually popped down to check things out around midnight one night and found ourselves surrounded by belligerent teenagers. I was just so confused what this hotel was going for after stepping into the venue and promptly turning around after 10 minutes.

I do agree with other reviewers that the location and ambiance make for a nice stay - outside of every single staff...

We had a very disturbing and unpleasant stay at Volga in February 2024, still bearing with unsolved issue up till today.

Volga management, if you are reading this. Could you please stop hiding and start to act!

Hotel hosted a big Event/Party at their basement restaurant during our stay which is located directly under all rooms. Hotel didn’t take any precautions nor to pre notify its clients about such event as the event turned out to be extremely loud with music and people laughing and shouting until very late. On top of that, Volga Hotel is built without sound proof glasses and very thin walls, so the effect was disastrous. It was like we were having a party directly in our room! We couldn’t rest for the entire evening whatsoever as a result we had to call hotel reception to complain and was informed that they would lower the volumes of the music but unfortunately nothing was done. We waited and waited, the noise only got worse, it’s quite clear that nothing was dealt with. We then called hotel again and again as each time hotel reception always gave different information to us, hotel promised that a manager would get back to us very soon, 1 hour past, 2 hours past, 3 hours past, 4 hours past… no one showed up, and no one called to follow up, only until the very end (next day morning) we were informed that there was literally no manager on duty previous evening. What a pile of lies from a 5 star hotel?!

Surprisingly a manager appeared next day in the morning after we requested again and again!! After waiting for her almost 2 hours, The manager finally magically appeared, what a victory! The manager promised that she would issue the refund of one night to us which should take no more than 1 week to process. But guess what! It’s almost end of April now and we still didn’t receive any refund!!!!

We have been chasing up the hotel every day since February, but Volga just have been keeping lying and making empty statements and playing dead.

Volga management, if you are reading this. Could you please stop hiding and start to act! Please issue the refund ASAP!

Fellow google review readers, please stay away from this hotel if you want to have a restful evening and a...