Solace by the Sea Hotel — Hotel in Ponce

If I could give this "hotel" zero starts I would. Our party consisted of 2 seniors, 2 adults and 3 small children traveling around Puerto Rico for 2 weeks. We wanted to see the whole island so we were booking hotels either same day or the day before depending on what city we happened to be in. Around the 4th of July we were near Ponce so we decided to stay at Solace by the Sea. I looked at their website and read their reviews which were decent so I booked two rooms for check in same day. When we arrived the place looked a bit worse for wear, but knowing hurricane Maria effected the island so heavily it did not concern me to much. During the check in process they told us that if we needed to keep anything refrigerated we could leave it with them and they pointed to a mini refrigerator behind the front desk. At that point it did not click that if i wanted a cold bottle of water in the middle of the night i would have had to leave a bottle at the front desk already and then walk 300 feet from the back of the hotel thru an open unlit walkway to get it. I was also taken aback when they handed me actual keys for our rooms not key cards. I thought it was a security concern since anyone could have made copies of these keys in the past and easily gone into our room while we were out for the day. As we walked towards our room we passed chair swings and patio furniture that were completely shredded, but still out for guest use. You could see all the yellow filling spilling out of it. We continued on to our rooms feeling more hesitant. We had 1 room on the 1st floor and one on the 2nd floor. Normally, it would not be a problem to walk up the stairs to the 2nd floor, when you have a bad knee and 3 young children it's a hassle to haul 3 large suitcases up the stairs. When I arrived to my 2nd floor room it smelled like a heap of damp clothes that has been sitting around for days. The bathtub looked as if someone had taken a chisel to it. The tv had a total of 13 channels with only 2 that could actually be watched, the rest either had no sound, a loud humming sound or were scrambled. I went to check the room the rest of our party was staying on the 1st floor by the pool, if you could call it that. The pool was tiny and filthy it looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in weeks. The room on the 1st floor was just as bad and the room on the 2nd floor. We immediately went to the front desk and they offered us a different room on the 2nd floor, which was identical. The front desk told us they had no other rooms available. At this point I requested our reservations be cancelled because we would not be staying and they told us that we would still be charged for the stay since we would have need to cancel the reservation 48 hours to check in. I explained that the reservation was made the same day through their website and that I we had just checked in and they still said they could do nothing about it. I asked to speak to a manager and when she came out she told us the same thing. She even stated that because we signed the paperwork at check in we could do nothing about it. I explained to the manger everything with the rooms, the shredded patio furniture, the safety concern and all she did was offer us the "executive suite". To humor her we went to check out the suite and it smelled the same way, the tv still did not work and there were two golf ball size holes in the walls. Again I said we would not be staying and she was still adamant that the reservation would not be canceled and that we would be charged for it because that was there policy. Needless to say we left and ended up staying at the IHG...

I don't know the last time I actually took the time to write a review about a hotel. Where do I start? I've been at this hotel for one week & 2 days. In that short amount of time this is all that happened.

Water backed up causing all the bottom level floors to flood. I was told ahead of time not to flush the toilet paper period. Not sure anyone else was. Yikes! The tub in my room leaked every time I took a shower for two days. They had a fashion show during the week directly outside that went on from 7pm-12am. The washer & dryer doesn't work so you have to pay the hotel to have your clothes washed. $15 for a small bag and $20 for a larger bag. The hot water stopped working two days ago and there is no word on when it will return. The power went out for about an hour 1/2 yesterday and again today for 20-30mins.

To make it worse I was told this place had direct TV and Wi-Fi connection. So far that hasn't proven to be true. There is one available channel and it is in Spanish. The Wi-Fi signal isn't strong enough to connect to so I have to use my phone as a hotspot to utilize my laptop.

The surrounding areas has nothing in walking distance besides maybe the Sea which is supposed to be located behind the "hotel". I can't tell b/c this big monstrosity blocks any view of the Sea. What is the monstrosity you ask? The hotel use to be a race care track so the old stands sits up against part of the hotel blocking out the only thing worth seeing. The whole area is resemblance of an industrial town that went belly up and is now deserted. The hotel/motel sits all alone by itself.

Is it the worst place I could have ended up? No, but I want everyone to know what their booking before they spend the money.

The plus side is the a/c runs wonderfully AND the two ladies in the main office are very nice and do their best under the circumstances. Also, all the problems I listed were quickly resolved avoiding any major inconvenience. I guess you also have to consider that P.R. just went through a category 5 hurricane & everything may not be running at top ship. My experience may not get an A but the continued efforts of the...

Wow where do i start ? Horrible and unpleasant nothing like the pictures or what i was expecting base on what was offer . No costumer service no manager on site to deal with complaint, questions or needs. When we complaint we were offer to move to another hotel our first choice was Fox but unfortunately they only had one room available (without hot water I might add) and we needed two rooms since we had two reservations. We end it up the Melia not what we wan it but at this point anything was better then nothing. If it wasn't for Brian at the from desk at the Melia that went above and beyond to helps us and make things pleasant for us , we would have left we just disappointment and the lost of our money. Nothing that we were offer on our promo made sense , welcome drink what a joke a little bottle of Ponte Vecchio (so cheap) to be share for 2 person with plastic cups really. Next day went to get paddle boards for our 1 hr use (part of the promo) just to find out that there were not available for weekdays only weekends even thought our reservation was for weekday and it was part fo our package. Very misleading waste of money and time. Cant wait to get home to put my reviews online . So other people do not go through the same disappointment not fun to have your vacation mess up , with so many false advertisement. I thought that bringing my business and stay in a local hotel its was going to be enjoyable than going to a big chain hotel . This make local tourism...