AC Hotel San Juan Condado — Hotel in San Juan

It has been an interesting experience so far staying at the AC Hotel. Most of the brand hotels in PR are quite old in the I.V. and Condado area, and you can forget about those local "boutique hotels". We booked a 7 night stay at the AC because it is somewhat renovated and it is only a little under $400 per night for a suite with partial ocean view. The location is good, about 15 mins drive from SJU, it is not exactly on the beach but just a short 3 min walk. There are plenty of restaurants and shops outside on Ashford St., about 6 mins walk to Walgreens to the west. We checked in around 4pm, front desk told us that our room is not available, so we had to be down graded to a different suite type, but they will comp us with free breakfast buffet which is worth about $24 pp. We had no choice, I even called the Sunday before to confirm the rooms but they somehow over sold it even though I made the reservation over 3 weeks before. Next day, we moved into the intended room to find 3 things, the bathroom sliding door doesn't close, the reading light on the right side of the bed doesn't turn off, and there is a couple of huge stains on the bed sheet when I pull away the cover. It was late at night, no housekeeping and no maintenance. You will find the bed sheet in my pictures, and these are supposed to be the best rooms in the hotel. Here are the rest of the hotel... Depending on which side of the building you are located, there are 2 sets of elevators, the side I am on, there is only one elevator, so you have to wait a long time if you catch it on the way up, just to wait for it come back down. The rooms are clean, but you can see which parts were renovated and which weren't. No microwave, just a coffee machine and a cooler (not fridge). There is no closet space even for a suite room, enough space to hang 5 items. If you booked this hotel online, the price includes a $45 per night resort fee which you can use towards food and alcohol at the rooftop bar and restaurant, but not for breakfast and gratuity. There is no room service so you will have to go to rooftop to either eat there or take out. So you can imagine the wait during rush hours for that single elevator. The food quality is not bad, but I will give you an idea in the picture, that is a $16 Tuna Sashimi on the menu. They basically force you to consume something at the hotel, either you use your credit or lose it. There is parking onsite, reasonable priced, I think $20 a day, secured and open. The AC in the room is central, but because the room side faces outside and it is hotter, when your room is at the right temp, the living room will be freezing cold. We didn't really use it, it has a large pull out couch in a large space with a TV and a desk. It is a waste of space, that living space is bigger than the bedroom and bath room combined, you can hear your own echo. The roof top pool is small, it is just a dipping pool, fits around 15 people around it max. The breakfast buffet is European style, the only meat item is the sausage and the cold deli meats, not much else, we went around 930 for our comp breakfast, no one was there. I wonder why. Overall, it hasn't been a very good experience staying at the AC, I think we will look a little harder next time if we go to the PR...

A very honest review from a Platinum Marriott member who travels quite a bit annually.

Rooms: 2/5 The rooms are ok. We used our suite upgrade to get the Condado 1 bedroom Suite. The Suite really just was 2 regular rooms with the shared door open and one side of the room had just a couch. A bit disappointing considering this is one of their luxury rooms. The balcony was very small.

Cleanliness: 2/5 The overall hotel well maintained but the rooms were just clean enough where it passes the bar but you second guess whether you need to keep your shoes on. The floors were definitely not thoroughly washed or seemed like the room was washed a while ago but had been sitting there for weeks. Bed and sheets were clean to the hotels credit.

Food & Bev: 1/5 You can only get food on their rooftop bar. When we got to the rooftop at 2PM to try and use our mandatory resort credit, 3 of the entrees were “sold out” already. I don’t understand how that is possible so early in the day. The rest of the food was clearly made from frozen packaged food just reheated and thrown on a plate.

Fees: 0/5 They charge you a mandatory $45 per night +$5 tax on the resort fee. You can use the fee on food only BUT no breakfast and no alcohol. In all the hotels I’ve stayed at in the world, I’ve never been denied when I can use my credit. This is clearly a money grab by the hotel owner to try to force you to not use the credits at the hotel especially with the “sold out” items.

Service: 1/5 Thank god we asked for no turn down service for the duration of our stay because our last morning the housekeeping knocked on our door and entered our room at 8AM in the morning. Checkout isn’t until 11AM so there should be NO reason you should be bothering your guest before checkout time. After we turned them away, the housekeeping started working loudly on our neighboring rooms which kept us up the rest of the morning. This UNACCEPTABLE for any hotel establishment. When I complained at the front desk at check out the front desk attempted to call the cleaning person for an explanation and he couldn’t even get them on the phone while I was standing there.

Location: 4/5 The one redeeming quality to the hotel is the location. It is very centrally located and you can walk to most places in San Juan. The location was the main reason we booked the hotel.

Recommendation: Honestly, the cost of the hotel per night is quite high and the value for your money is not worth what you pay. Read the other customers reviews complaining about the resort fees and service. I would look at other options or just pay a little more for one of the other Marriotts that are in the area.

Message to the Owner: You respond to all of the other negative reviews here on Google with “I’m sorry for your experience and we will take your message to the staff” but it doesn’t seem like you have made any changes to the hotel despite all of the negative reviews you’ve received. Don’t respond to our concerns with false platitudes if you don’t intend on making your hotel better. We were on a mini honeymoon and our trip was soured by the clear greediness of your fees and level of service...

How do I start? Well me and my wife were on vacation in Puerto Rico and booked an Airbnb at this hotel. Paid upfront and while we were pulling up to the hotel received a message from the Airbnb host which was the Ac hotel informing us that our reservation was canceled due to overbooking. We walked into hotel since we were down the street manager Desiree informed us they had other families with same issue and that she would accommodate us completely free all we needed to do was pay the taxes on room which were around $75 she even decorated our room for our daughter who’s birthday we were celebrating free of charge. All this was done because the Airbnb host was showing as the AC hotel. They claimed they had not been the host and that it was a scam so that’s why they accommodated us. The Airbnb host wanted us to cancel the reservation which had a no return policy that’s why she gave us a free room. Well to our surprise we get back to the states and we were in fact charged the entire rate for room. We called and spoke to Desiree who turned around and said that she would talk to her general manager and get this all taken care of, and we will be returned our money. Well, the next day we got a phone call from Johanna Tejada giving us a different version saying that we would charge for the room, but that she would speak to Desiree and have the matter taken care of and we would have our money returned. It’s been over a week now no money has been returned we have called numerous times have been placed on hold. No one ever coming back for our calls and yet to receive our money back. Stay away from this hotel, apparently someone at this hotel is scamming using Airbnb booking rooms, taking your money and then lying to you once you reach to the front counter. It’s a disgrace to have management running a hotel that can’t keep their word after offering to resolve an issue and then turning around charging us and lying to us on the phone they should lose their jobs. You can see my attached photos from the messages that were going back-and-forth between the Airbnb host, which was the AC hotel. If I could give negative stars for the managers who both lied it would be 1 million negative stars. Part 2 yesterday as you can see someone responded to the review saying they were investigating this matter. At the same time the general manger johanny tejada emailed my wife with an excuse that she hasn’t been at hotel and has been busy and would contact her yesterday with no prevail!!! So I will continue to write negative reviews and call until she returns out calls back with the decency and respect that a general manager dealing with...