Alma San Juan — Hotel in San Juan

Summary: This place is very loud, has small rooms, is cheaply put together, and is expensive. The pros do not outweigh the cons....at all. I would not recommend this hotel. I also wasn't aware that the locals don't like this hotel. It's relatively new and very loud. There are anti-alma signs up next to the hotel. If I had known that its not local friendly, I would not have booked it.

Pros:

1. The bed in the room was very comfortable.
2. Both the lobby restaurant and rooftop restaurant are excellent (pricey but excellent).
3. The location in Old San Juan is good.
4. The rooftop plunge pool is a nice addition.

Cons:

1. There is zero sound proofing. We could hear every door and conversation in the hotel. We even had to call the lobby at midnight to tell them to control the volume down there because it was insane. We barely slept the entire time we were there. Our room had a door to the next room as well that did nothing to stop every conversation from passing through. We purchased a white noise machine and still that wasn't enough!
2. If you like to unpack at all, this is not the hotel for you. There are no dressers, closets, or shelves. There are barely any surfaces at all to lay things down on. I ended up using a combination of the end tables and floor for my things. It was really inconvenient.
3. Unless you get a deluxe room, the rooms are exceptionally small.
4. For some reason they built windows facing into the building into many of the rooms. The blackout curtains don't block all of the light. We had zero windows outside. So there is always light in the room. And if you forget to draw the shades everyone can see in.
5. I asked the front how to rent an umbrella and chair on condado beach for the day. They told me to go to Escambron beach instead. That's a swimming and snorkel beach with barely any sand. Also you 100% cannot rent umbrellas or chairs there. They told us as a backup if we really wanted to go to condado we could go to La concha resort and rent chairs. You cannot do that either. You can get "resort pass" online and get a day pass but they sell out in advance and are very expensive. We ended up walking out to the beach and found an independent company that rents chairs and umbrellas for cheap. The wild goose chase they sent us on was extremely frustrating, wasted over an hour, and cost over $40 in Ubers. It was a very basic question that they should have known the answer to.
6. This is small but they don't have a clock in the room. That's really annoying considering there's no outside light. This place was not cheap. They don't invest their money back in the actual hotel rooms.
7. They stopped refilling out water bottles halfway through the trip.
8. There is a fridge but it's packed with extremely expensive mini bar things so it's not usable for any food you may have.
9. I reached out twice ahead of time via email to the hotel asking questions related to my trip. I never...

We booked one night at the Alma to check out old San Juan prior to heading to Dorado Beach for the week. Initially I was impressed with the cleanliness, design, and location of the hotel (especially for the price.) However things turned sour when the fire alarm went off at 3am. We were located on the 5th floor and made our way downstairs. The employee working the front desk said he checked all the floors and saw no fire so it was a false alarm. Everyone seemed to just accept that answer and go back to their rooms which is bizarre to me. I asked if the fire department was coming to clear the building and he assumed they were but they never came, so I called 911 myself! Much to my absolute shock, the fire department refused to come because no one “saw fire.” What in the world?!?! In the US that’s standard protocol, but here the employee simply silenced the alarm himself and determined the coast clear? I was not comfortable at all and was too scared for my safety to go back to sleep. What if there was carbon monoxide?! Or a fire in someone’s room? I didn’t realize it until after the fact but there’s zero windows in the rooms so god forbid there was a fire I would have been screwed especially if it blocked the stairs. Very scary, but learned a lesson here to always assess for FIRE EXIT SAFETY prior to booking a hotel. To be clear I do NOT blame the hotel employee, he was just a young guy who clearly didn’t know what to do, but the hotel management should have a specific protocol in place for if this happens. Someone an employee could call. Or a protocol to DEMAND the fire department come. I am not mad about a false alarm, I understand it happens sometimes (and glad to know the system works!) I just do not think it was handled appropriately or safely. I would not be leaving a bad review if the fire department came and cleared the building and ensured our safety. The hotel should demand it and protect their guests. Hopefully this review will provide feedback for them to improve their SAFETY policies moving forward, since that’s the MOST important thing when looking for a place to stay. Upon check out I asked if they were offering refunds for the inconvenience (didn’t sleep the rest of the night due to fearing for my life!) I was told they would waive the resort fee…. Which is like 20 bucks… not enough in my opinion. Lastly, within a couple days my spouse was covered in bites…. Hopefully not b*d bugs but if it was them I feel it was probably more likely from here than the second hotel we went to after...

I had the worse experience at this Hotel and will not recommend to anyone. I left a white linen jacket, brand new and which I loved, bought in Tenerife, Spain, last year, brand "United Colors of Benetton", left it hanging in the bedroom and realized that it was left behind when we arrived at the Airport to catch flight back to Miami on January 2, 2025. I called the General Manager at the time, Gisela Rivera and a week later spoke to the Supervisor, Amanda, who said that the jacket was brought down from room 505 by a cleaning staff member. A week later I spoke again to Gisela who said that she was not working at that hotel anymore and neither was Amanda but that she would talk to one of the boys there and she would pick up the jacket and mail it to me. Then later on, I wrote a letter to the new General Manager but had no answer so I called and the new Manager is Mr. Allen Yu, he said that I should send the letter by email because he never saw it.....no answer either. The letter was resent on March 7. Then today, April 4, I called Allen Yu again and he said that he can't do anything about it since he was not working there on January 2nd, and that there was a turnover of staff and there is no one there now that were employed by the hotel from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2.|I told him that I will not recommend this Hotel to anyone in Miami, and there are many people that travel to Pto. Rico from here. I said that someone stole that jacket, the worse part is that we paid $1,296.90 for 3 nights since it was year end. We travel quite a lot to Europe, at least once a year, and we have not had an experience like this anywhere. I would rate this Hotel with ONE star if not HALF! Awful, they could have asked for a photo or pay a reasonable amount for this incident, I bought the jacket on sale and it was not expensive but your hotel's experience in this case left a lot to be desired. DO NOT ADVERTISE THIS HOTEL, IF YOU MUST, RATE IT 1 STAR!|Sincerely,|Carmen...