Puerto Dreams H — Hotel in Oaxaca

I really want to give 5 stars but I can’t.

I’ve been traveling for a while nomadically and stayed at other hostels & coliving spaces.

If you are a digital nomads or remote workers you might want to read this review. I stayed here for 1 month.

Positive things about Puerto Dreams: Fast & reliable wifi Beautiful aesthetic Clean (Maria & the cleaning personnels deserve gold stars & raise) Central to good & affordable restaurants & market in centro The budget private room is pretty comfortable and the private bathroom is pretty big with a good shower pressure.

Need a lot of improvement: Service from the front desk volunteers who are foreigners. When I arrived, I reported that my main light in the room was having issue. It made the room looks like in a horror movie. It didn’t get fix after a few hours. I reported it again. No one fixed it.

The next day I reported it to two other different people and didn’t get fix. I sent an email to tranquilo a company that manage this place and they told me a management will help me.

On monday, i came across the maintenance guy and then i told him. Then they fixed it.

No one from management or the front desk followed up with me.

Vibe: it’s like a sorority house. During slow time mostly people that stay there are volunteers and they are very cliquish.

Most of the activities are going out of the hostel and cost money.

Someone said on hostelworld review that these volunteers are unorganized and need someone to be in charge because no one is in charge for this place. It’s true.

Also as a POC i feel the treatment that i got was different than others by a few of the volunteers.

These volunteers were great tho when I was there,Emma, Cameron & Solomon.

Robyn was the only one that knows how to make coffee so the cafe during weekdays is only open when she has a shift for the day. Maybe they should train the other volunteers.

There’s no hot water to make our own coffee at this building you have to go to the other building to get some hot coffee if you don’t want to spend money.

It depends on which volunteer is working the front desk during the day, the music they play is loud and even with your headphones on, you can still hear it at the co working space.

The co working space only have 1 good work style chair, the other two are broken.

Before i booked this place, i was confused on why most of the reviews are about the bar and they were all 5 stars. It’s because they will give you a free beer in exchange for a review.

They also have their free salsa night on Wednesday starts at 9:30 which is fine because just use earplugs you can sleep through it but then after the lesson, they turn up the volume of the music until midnight sometimes a bit over and your earplugs won’t handle that volume.

Location is far from the beach. Walking that 20 minutes in the heat & humidity might get old after doing it once. You can take collectivo or taxis. You can lend bicycles from them but i heard they were hard to ride on.

It’s a good place for a bit but maybe not for monthly stays which is too bad because they have a lot of potential to be more than just...

BED BUGS is apparently a normal occurrence here. They didn’t seem surprised when I woke up covered in bites. For me this is the most traumatic thing that I vigilantly avoid while travelling. I never put my bag down near my bed, thankfully, but that was almost impossible in this tiny room with literally no space for anything but 5 beds. No point even taking about anything else when you have bedbugs but I might as well: at first the French receptionists were so lovely, and this looked like an amazing social hostel, attached to another hostel. Massive kitchen. Netflix room. Perfect right...? WRONG! Firstly I got charged 10 pesos more for a towel. Music from the bar pumped on till way past midnight. A/C was pathetic, and only came on between 10pm and 7am... what’s the point!? The bathroom was dingy and kept locking itself! Morning pancakes were burnt and didn’t help my distress of having bedbugs bites all over my body (I flipped the mattress over and saw a family of bedbugs red and engorged after feeding on my blood like an all night Vegas buffet) As soon as I told reception they apologised and refunded me, saying people that came from nearby beach villages tend to get bedbugs so they store their bags upstairs on the roof. However this can be prevented with ample locker space and room for bags not piled on top...

The hostel is nice, clean and I loved the fact that you can use the bikes for free! The staff are all extremely nice and positive apart from the tall tattooed American volunteer who checked me in in the morning (maybe she was hangover jaja). There is a whatsapp group of the hostel and they always organize something. Beds are comfy and guests are generally young. Location is a bit far from the main beaches but close to ADO and town market, with cheap local places for shopping and eating. Unfortunately the lockers in the rooms are pretty small and the biggest flaw is that the storage room is a terribly smelly closet where the door was open without any control both when I left my luggage and when I picked it up. I left my backpack for two days to go to Zipolite, I had padlocks in place but the only zip that didn't have them was opened and the contents were stolen, luckily not of great value. I believe that there is plenty of space in the hostel and they should put lockers for storage or at least set up a better and more controlled deposit system that guarantees the safety of the luggage. The place is nice but I don't recommend it if you have to leave there your backpack...