Hotel Clara Luna — Hotel in Veracruz

We booked a room at Clara Luna via Booking for 8 nights. We stayed only for two hours and asked for a cancellation and a full refund, which we got. The problem was the lack of cleanliness of the place and rooms and the lack of warm water in the shower.

The bedsheets in the first room we got were stained and had a lot of hairs. The carpet and armchair were also stained and the carpet was dusty. The room felt humid and had humidity stains on the walls. When we pointed this out at the reception desk, they changed us to another room on the top floor.

The second room looked better and cleaner than the first one, but the bedsheets and pillow cases were also stained and had hairs. We asked for them to be replaced, but shortly afterwards we discovered that there was no warm water coming out of the sink or shower. When we told the reception about this, they told us it was a common problem on the top floor due to a lack of pressure in the water pump. They suggested we tried fully opening both the sink and the shower taps for a few minutes and let water run until it got warm. We were puzzled, but we actually tried this and when it did not work, the reception sent a handyman to our bedroom, who managed to get some warm water running after checking the water pump and the boiler, but who confirmed that the lack of warm water on the top floors is a constant issue. In the meantime, we discovered a water leak on the wall separating the bathroom from the bedroom, which could not be fixed on the spot.

Upon taking a shower, we discovered that the water was only lukewarm at best and that the amount of water changed constantly due to varying pressure.

At this stage we decided to leave the hotel and ask for a reimbursement. The lady at the reception desk was most helpful and apologetic. However, we were heavily disappointed in the hotel and the lack of basic services that an allegedly 4-star hotel should be able to offer. We would not recommend staying here. We discovered that there are other hotels in the city centre that are good...

Sour experience. Would not want to stay here again. Never got a 'welcome" a "please" or a "thank you". Booking at an online website gets you a cheaper price. And then the emails come, none of which are polite, telling you how you will not get what you expected to get. Those bright and colorful rooms - nope. I got brown. Broken toilet, that just gushes water - I turned it off. Broken lamps hanging out of the ceiling. No kleenex where kleenex should be. A door that will not close so you can bolt it and a doorknob ready to fall off. I reported that and they tightened the screws (no thank you, for informing us, oh, we are so sorry we missed that - just a shrug). Later, I come back and it starts to fall of again. Inside there is a sign that says, if you have stuff stolen they are not responsible! No wifi. Internet has many confusing codes for the rooms (none are designed by room number), and my room's internet did not work. Again, talked to the front desk and they gave me a list of codes and passwords - none of which work for my room. Again, no apology and no real fix. The pleasure of travel for me is meeting people - not hanging out in grandma's lobby. And if I meet someone and want to talk to them, I'd expect I could bring them back to the room at a hotel. You can't do that here and they don't inform you until you pay. That's guesthouse rules not hotel rules. But then, if I had seen the Noah and the Ark painting in the sort of lobby (it's not clear where the hotel begins and just sort of shops are) I would have turned around and found another hotel. No bellhop. You are on your own. My view was a...

I don't think I have ever been in a hotel with so many friendly and helpful people, and I don't think I will stay at another hotel in Xalapa. Elegant but not at all pretentious, this is the perfect place for a romantic getaway. The room was economical and spacious, clean, and well appointed. The water was hot, there were extra blankets to ward off the slight winter chill, the room was quiet and peaceful, breakfast was quite good and the chef was in no hurry while we dwaddled over the menu. This hotel is conveniently located and we easily walked to the historic center of town. It seemed as if just about everyone there spoke English, which is pretty unusual. At one point we were in the lobby and a chambermaid asked me (in Spanish) if I spoked Spanish. I replied in Spanish, "No, I don't speak a word of Spanish. Do you speak English?" She smiled and replied in my native language, "No, I don't speak any English at all." She had lived in Wisconsin for ten years, and I would imagine winter in Xalapa felt pretty comfortable after that experience. As we returned home (only 90 minutes away but it seems like a different country) we started planning our next trip to Xalapa which centered around our newly discovered hotel and a wonderful restaurant we found. But that's another review I look...