Costa Bahía Hotel Paseo Caribe — Hotel in San Juan

BUFS IN HOTEL ROOM. STAY AWAY.

Our flight arrives during early evening and as we enter the lobby and we are directed to the second floor where the front desk is located to check into our room. We enjoy dinner nearby and are excited to sleep in a bed and use the restroom after a long flight, but unfortunately our toilet won’t flush. at all. We call the front desk and relay the situation with response from the front desk being “our janitor left already, what do you want me to about it?” and before I can answer she says the janitor is still here and will be up to help. Problem solved.

Housekeeping seemingly will not enter a room for cleaning unless you are present, as we saw housekeeping once during our of our five-day stay (on day 2) and have not received any cleaning services since. There was also completely torn carpet next to the bed, no safety lock on the door to our room, and the bathroom sink was cracked and haphazardly held together by caulking.

Day 2 we notice a bug and kill it, but, day 3 we find cockroaches in the folding of our curtains blocking the balcony. As soon as we see the roaches, we go to the front desk for help because there was an obvious pattern of invasive bugs in our room. Night security comes to our room to help us with our issue and are unable to find them so they radio to their manager and staff, letting them know our room needs fumigation. The following morning I speak with the front desk and they tell us fumigation will happen later in the day so we leave our room for the day so they can fumigate. We did not hear anything about fumigation after we asked early in the morning.

My phone sends all unknown numbers to voicemail, and I noticed that I had received a missed call from the hotel after we had vacated our room for the entire day. I attempted to call around dinner time, twice, and was sent to voicemail both times. I then tried calling from my friend’s phone and the front desk staff accepted the call immediately. I was told fumigation did not happen because they needed my confirmation to enter our room for security purposes. This was after we had already essentially given our permission as we had discussed fumigating the room. Both my friend and I understood someone would be in our room to fumigate, and made sure to allocate our belongings to one corner of the bathroom to make it easier for them. I let the front desk staff now know that my phone sends unknown numbers to voicemail, that I was not informed to look for a phone call, and that I was not left a voicemail by the hotel about fumigation. The front desk staff, Nicole, admitted to purposefully not leaving a voicemail. She then told us that there is nothing she, nor upper management could, or would, do to mitigate or resolve the situation without “photographic evidence” to ensure we weren’t lying, or we can pay the difference in price for a “clean” room. They refused any form of refund or reimbursement for the two nights we spent in the room after seeing the cockroaches. We requested the contact information of her supervisor or said upper management and was told that she was not permitted to release that information as her supervisor was on vacation, when the night before said supervisor was apparently present for our original complaint about the cockroaches. She then told us, again, that they would fumigate the room for us the next day (the last day of our trip) and continued to refuse any resolution for this massive issue. We never once received an apology or any form of sympathy for our negative experience staying here.

We were very dissatisfied with this hotel and our experience and would not recommend staying here.

UPDATE: On our LAST NIGHT, I woke up the following morning with bites all over my arms and legs. I let front desk staff know and they said they’d “email their manager”. Athough this is the “second” email they send, makes me think that bugs in their hotel isn’t an urgent matter but a normal thing to...

We booked this hotel knowing that it would be simple but from the moment we arrived “simple” quickly became “unacceptable”.

Hotel Location and Parking: The hotel is tucked away and very hard to find. As locals who are familiar to the area we were able to puzzle piece our way into finding the hotel but it was a complete guess. There is no parking exclusive to the Costa Bahía hotel and the nearest parking garage is an awkward walk through a shopping plaza and down a flight of stairs and down a driveway to get to the hotel entrance. We later asked reception about parking and they do offer a $15/day parking on the third level of said parking garage.

Hotel Hospitality: Once we entered the hotel you are greeted by security who could not have cared less about being helpful or giving instructions. He sent us up the elevator to the hotel lobby where again we encountered the receptionist who was less than eager to help us out and answer our questions regarding parking.

Hotel Room and Cleanliness: At this point we realized things were not getting better. The hotel room, while certainly simple, showed general signs of wear and tear that had not been well maintained. The bed was not properly fitted and had slight miscellaneous stains. The bathroom was where we ran for the hills. The shower was covered top to bottom, wall to wall with mold. Mold in a variety of colors at that. (Photos attached - black spots and yellow blobs are mold). That’s where we both drew the line and decided we would be ending our stay at Costa Bahía Hotel before it had even begun.

The Aftermath: Our troubles were not over from there. Pretty much from the moment we arrived we decided we would be leaving. However we had already booked and paid for the week so we immediately started calling Expedia and trying to get as much money back as we could. After several days of Expedia trying to contact hotel management, us contacting Expedia, all that could be offered was a $100 credit with Expedia. We were reminded that we could not be fully refunded due to the past time limitation. We were not satisfied with the room due to the state and cleanliness of the room. In hindsight we should have paid more careful attention to the negative reviews for this stay because from our experience it does not merit a 7.6 rating (Expedia) nor a 7.7 (Booking) nor a 3.4 (Google).

We rate this hotel a solid 1/5 due to cleanliness, hospitality and ease of access. No view or deal is going to beat everything else that it will cost you, in our case,...

First- If you got to the "hotel" entrance but have a rental and need to use their parking garage, you have to drive 10-15 minutes to be able to get into their parking garage entrance. Then once you leave the car, you have to walk at least 10 minutes to get to the "hotel" entrance.||Second-As soon as I get top the room, my wife turned the TV on only can see about 5 channels, all the other channels were without signal. Called the lobby for TV service, and to my surprise, the security guard from the lobby, is the one who went to check the TV. His diagnostic: they can do nothing because it was the Direct TV.||Third- As for another room with a working TV, they said the "hotel" was completely full, which was a lie, because during check in, they commented that the have spare room if I wanted an upgrade.||Fourth- Called the lobby requesting more hangers, because in the room there were only 5 hangers. There answer: only 5 hangers per room. I told them that we were two in the room staying for 6 days, that it was not possible to pretend to use 5 hangers for 2 peoples for clothing for 6 days. Two hours later they knocked the door and provided 2 extra hangers.||Fifth- Tried to use the safe box, but apparently the previous guest opened the box and lock the mechanism with the door open. Called lobby and the receptionist came to fix the problem. Changed the batteries and used a master key. The master key got stuck and she was unable to withdraw the key. She said that only Ismael knows how to work with the safe boxes. She called for backup. Engineering personnel came and were able to withdraw the key but not to fix the safe box. But were so kind to inform to please not to leave valuables in the room.||Sixth- Called engineering because air conditioner was working in only 1 temperature setting. The said that air conditioner temperature can not be adjusted, only the fan speed. We shut down the air conditioner and it came on by itself.||Seventh- With the stay, it was included breakfast. What a way to deceive guests. In the breakfast room there was only coffee, UHT milk (not fresh milk), cereal containers, and bread. That's it.||This facility should not consider themselves as a hotel. It's a mediocre hostel. ||||Summary: UNDERSTAFF, UNTRAINED, STINGY, NOT SERIVE ORIENTED...