Casablanca Sayulita Hotel — Hotel in Nayarit

Majority of the staffs were friendly and tried to be helpful, the room equipped with the cookware, flatware, mini fridge and a 5 gallon purified water dispenser. I booked a room for 7 days for 4 people. It was not a 5-or 3-stars hotel so I didn’t set too much expectation. Staffs at front desk ( daytime) knows English but the rest of staffs don’t. My standard for hotel is to have a clean room - that's it. Other reviews mentioned the place is dated; it's fine with me. The staffs are trying their best to keep it up, however:||The staircases were not safe for young children, there were trails but the gaps were very big; kids could climb out or fall off from there, so be aware. ||Wifi was slow, as the rest of Sayulita. Do not expect to come here to work remotely if your work requires good bandwidth.||The A/C (heat pump unit) in my room was not working at the night of day 3. It dripped water for like 30 mins then making noises for another 30 mins - alternating between water dripping and noise making for the rest of the time from 2 am until the next day. I reached (8ish am) out the front desk for help. After a staff fixed it, the A/C was not able to be turned on with the universal remote control on the evening, probably it was reset, not sure. I was desperate because it was like 38C even at night time, tried to ask the front desk but no one was there except the security guard. He was not able to help because he didn’t speak English. Thus, I returned back to room and tried to figure out what was going on. Then, I realized that the remote control was out of sync/reset. There was no English instruction manual found online for that brand - only Spanish. Good thing was the remote worked the same way as most of the other universal remote control. Checking some YouTube videos for the setup helped and also figured the “channel” code of the A/C brand from the Spanish instruction manual (mirage brand - code 027 or 028) to sync it back then it worked properly.||Starting on day 4, the room was not provided enough bath towels :( - some reviews mentioned that too. I had 4 people but only 2 towels provided. I went to ask the front desk (around 8ish pm) but there was no one except the security guard again. So I tried to talk with him using google translate. After he understood my intention, he was so nice that he went out to another staff’s house for asking help. That staff, who was mainly responsible for maintenance/repair, was already done for his day and I believe he lives close by the hotel since they both came back within 5 mins) He was able to give me extra towels I needed . Sadly, I still didn’t get enough towels again for day 5. I didn’t want to bother asking for help again. Every time that I found out the missing towels was already in the evening and the poor security guard couldn’t help much besides asking another staff for help. Also it wasn’t his fault. I think it is some thing that the cleaning staffs should be aware of - attention to the detail. ||The pool itself doesn’t look that clean, there were debris (like plants, bugs, etc.). I saw the staffs sprinkled chlorine powder in the pool once. The water was not so clear which could be told by the water color. It feels like the pool needs a few maintenance - water refresh , fixing the missing or cracked tiles on the pool. In certain part of the pool, you may be able to smell strong paint smell, which I believe (just my assumption) that the room’s floor may be painted every time a guest is checked out from a room since the floor of my room had 0 scratches on day 1 but as long as someone opened the patio door, the door will definitely scratch easily the floor.||Some reviews mentioned that the bathroom smelled like sewage. It was unpleasant, I tried to avoid it propagating out of the bathroom by closing the toilet lid and close the shower door accordingly. ||Hot water in shower will run out after 2 people took shower in a row ( max 10 mins) but it will come back after waiting like 10-15 mins, so plan the time accordingly. Good thing is in the middle of the summer so i didn’t mind to take cold shower. ||I would like to give a good review, among all the points I brought up above I could handle them, not a big deal… However, the only one thing that was unbearable was bug. The room itself has a lot of tiny bugs (grain of sand sized, looks like ant but not sure) crawling everywhere ( on the kitchen counter, floor, behind the couch, closet, coffee table etc.) l completely understood that the weather was hot and having bugs was unavoidable, but the amount I saw in the room made me very uncomfortable. The patio doors and the unit door had no seal. Basically there were gaps on the top and bottom of the door could let any bugs come in. There were also a gecko and a beetle visiting the room once. I didn’t dare to touch anything or leave anything on anywhere because of those tiny little bugs. Also I prohibited anyone ate in the unit to attract more bugs to come. When I left an item on the table I had to shake violently it a lot to make sure no more bugs. When I packed my luggages, I had to empty them all and make sure I didn’t bring any bug around.||After 5 nights of stay, I decided to leave the hotel, I did not want to make a fuss. The place was cheap but I rather paid a bit more to stay in another hotel so that I could end well my vacation for the last 2 nights. I didn’t ask for a refund for the rest of 2 nights. I understand life is hard, especially after COVID happened and everyone should show sympathy. I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it because it was not the staffs’ fault. However, I would like others know what they are signing up for. Everyone has different tolerance on different things, this hotel may work for some but...

As a small business owner myself I always appreciate when customers directly reach out with concerns in real time so we can find a solution. Which is exactly what we did, multiple times during our stay, with little to no remedies. I also reached out prior to leaving a review in a final attempt to help make things right, in which I was told no refunds in any amount are ever given. Here is a list of issues we encountered while renting the main house for our family (2 families of 4).

Here is what I sent to the manager:

Hola, I got an email asking for a review of our stay. Before I leave a public review I wanted to give you a chance to make things right with us. We had a list of issues that never got resolved and we spent a lot of money to stay in the main house with our family.

the house wasn’t ready at check in time and it felt very hastily cleaned. The tiles were extremely slippery and smelled strongly like bleach. When they were wet they were deadly slippery. In fact, within 5 minutes of checking in the main house my kids got in the pool and when my 5 year old stepped out (not ran - just stepped out of the water) he slipped and fell flat on his back and cracked the back of his head open and was bleeding. We used one of the garbage cans and put water all over the tiles and scrubbed them with the broom to get the remaining bleach/soap off the tiles and it made it slightly less slippery. But we had 2 other adults slip and fall on the tiles as well. ⁠the freezer didn’t work and the tuna we had frozen thawed and it was too much to eat and got wasted. The ice cubes in the freezer promptly melted. ⁠the air conditioning in our room barely worked. It was set at 17c (62f) and was maybe blowing air at 24c (75f) ⁠the toilet in our room ran constantly ⁠the pool pump wasn’t working for almost the entire time we were there, so the tiles were always wet on the lower deck area - causing them to be extremely slippery. ⁠in the description it stated that one bedroom did not have air conditioning - it should be noted which months it’s even possible to sleep with out air conditioning (we were there in October and it was 90f). Also it should be made clear that neither set of bunk beds is in an air conditioned room. The only beds with air conditioning are 2 kings - so each family of 4 slept all in 1 bed. ⁠the kitchen smelled very strongly like mildew

Alvaro did call me after and told me the freezer and air conditioning did work and that they were working on the pool the whole time. And yes, they did come work on the pool for 4 of the 7 days, which we appreciated but was also not what we expected on our vacation - to have groups of people troubleshooting and working on the pool while we were trying to swim/relax and catch up with family. Any of these issues on its own is tolerable/fine, but having all of them combined really left a bad taste in our mouths, especially when they refused to offer any form of refund for all the troubles. The area is beautiful, but we will definitely book somewhere else the next time we visit Sayulita.

There were some pros: the staff at the desk, cleaning, and night security are...

I “stayed” at this hotel from April 27-30 in a two bedroom suite as part of a destination wedding.

The good: Located on the beautiful beaches of Saulita, Mexico.

The bad: Room wasn’t ready until 4:30 (check in time is 3). The front desk staff suggested we keep our bags under a carport while we waited for the room to be ready. When we asked if it would be locked up they said, “no, but there’s always someone at the desk”. We knew that wasn’t true since we waited at least 5 minutes to be greeted at the unmanned, outdoor front desk.

The ugly: When our room was available it reeked of fresh paint and the woman who showed us to our room (who was extremely respectful and nice) continually apologized for the smell and agreed the room was unusable. The 2 room suite was unusable the first two nights and we had to find alternate locations to sleep. The smell was so bad and made me nauseous that we missed the Friday night wedding events. When we inquired about changing our room the man at the front desk said they didn’t have any alternate rooms available and we wouldn’t get a refund unless we found someone else to stay in our unusable room. During the middle of our stay the refrigerator leaked all over the outdoor living room. Our room was never cleaned and when we inquired at the front desk they said “oh, we didn’t know anyone was staying there so we didn’t tell the cleaning team to clean it.” Speaking of cleanliness, the room itself was half indoor and half outdoor. You cannot lock the outdoor living area - which is where most of the square footage is in the space. The outdoor living space included a kitchen, dining area and couch. The dining room table was filthy with fingerprints and grease. The couch cushions looked like they’ve been around (outdoors) for years! The second (bunkbed) bedroom had a door that didn’t shut which was extremely unfortunate because that’s where the paint smell was lingering for our entire stay. Finally, in the room there was a full 5 gallon water jug that was sitting on the ground in the built in kitchen cupboard without a dispenser. How is anyone supposed to use this? While walking around the hotel we saw some of these convenient water stations and it would have been really nice to have a useable one in our room.

I’m not one to write negative reviews but since the Casablanca team did nothing to rectify any of these issues, (even going as far as denying the room was painted) I needed to say something to warn others of, not only the experience, but lack of customer service. Overall, I would not recommend this hotel to anyone. If you want to be close to the beach you can find many other hotels...