My Hotel In Puerto Rico — Hotel in San Juan

Warning...this is a long review as there is so much to cover! Everything from roaches, dirty rooms, used condoms, unchanged bedding...terrible service and more.||||I rarely take the time to leave reviews and most of the time I leave positive reviews but in this situation I felt it was my duty to leave a review to protect other travelers from suffering through a stay at this hotel.||||My wife and I are both 60 years old and we travel a great deal. I always use Hotels.com and they have a wonderful site and we have had very few issues with the hotels we have used over the years.||||On this trip my wife and I had been scuba diving for 3 weeks on the island of Saba. We were on our way back to the USA from our 3 weeks in Saba and decided to spend a couple of days to check out Old San Juan.||||On the nights we needed, for our 2 night stay, all hotels in this area were sold out...except for this hotel. Before I pulled the trigger to confirm the hotel reservation I did read up on this hotel and I also noticed the many negative reviews they had received.||||I had hoped that the others that had left bad reviews were simply being picky or that perhaps they were blowing things out of proportion. I thought it cannot be all that bad and we only needed the place for 2 nights.||||Well…I was wrong!! It was much much worse than I had anticipated and much worse than the other reviews had outlined!||||In fairness I will first list the positive aspects of this hotel:||||Positive aspects:||||1.) It is conveniently located in Old San Juan. You can walk to all of the attractions.||||2.) Issac, the lone hotel employee, was pleasant.||||3.) The entrance and lobby area looked tidy, for the most part, and they had some nice artwork.||||Negative aspects:||||1.) This place is so very very noisy! Loud cars, music until 2 am. I also heard two different actual fist fights going on with people screaming. One took place around midnight then a second fight around 1:30 am.||||2.) There are large trash cans right outside the hotel entrance and the odor was stiffeling!||||3.) I noticed both ants and roaches in the hotel rom and common areas!||||3.) They only allow guests to check-in from 3 pm until 5 pm. The front door is locked 24 hours a day.||||Keep in mind hotels are for people that are traveling and when you are traveling you usually have no control over certain things that might prevent you from making this 2 hour check-in window.||||We were fortunate and we did arrive during the 2 hour window but if you miss that window you are out of luck! Read other reviews in which people were late and simply out of luck and had to go find another hotel as they missed the 2 hour check-in window. There is absolutely no excuse for implementing such a policy...none!||||When we arrived it was around 3:15 pm. We had to buzz the buzzer a few minutes but eventually a gentleman opened the front door. His name is Isacc and he invited us in. Isacc was very nice and the check in process was uneventful. While we were checking in other guests started buzzing the front door so that they could be allowed entry to begin the check in process.||||I did notice the hotel was very quiet and asked Isacc where the other employees were. Isacc looked a bit sheepish and stated he was the only employee. I said do you mean at this time or do you mean no other employees...period! He stated I am the only employee aside from a housekeeper that comes in every few days. ||||So...they have NO other front desk person, no bellboy, security, maids...no one!||||The entire 48 hours that we spent at this hotel I never saw any other employees and most of the time Isacc was gone. He simply shows up to do the check-ins from 3-5 pm.||||After we did the check-in I asked Isaac which direction to the elevator as we had two large bags. One was all dive equipment and the other was our personal effects. Isacc stated we have no elevator but he offered to carry our bags up. By this time other guests were rolling in and waiting to check in. As I mentioned earlier I am 60 years but I am still in decent shape so I told Isacc to go ahead and start helping the other guests and that I would handle the luggage on my own.||||Before I left the front desk I asked Isacc the code to get in the front door. He stated the code will be emailed to you in the next 10-15 mins. (The door lock to enter the building requires a 4 digit code. They keys to the rooms is a standard and actual key.)||||When we opened the door to our room and entered our room I noticed several pennies on the floor, a couple of candy wrappers and a hairball. Once we entered the room and closed the door I noticed a foul smell. Kind of like soured milk. The rooms are very small. Probably 150 square feet which was no big deal but it does make it tough to find a place for your luggage. The dirty floor was not a great start but the bed was made...so at this point I considered that a victory. ||||I then went into the bathroom and there was not a single towel or wash cloth, no soap and only about 1/4 of a roll of toilet paper. There was no back up roll. I then pulled back the shower curtain and there were two empty bottles of the mini hotel shampoo and conditioner and the caps for each bottle was on the floor of the shower as well as a used bar of soap.||||Obviously at this point I was realizing I had made a big mistake in staying here. ||||I headed back down to the front desk to inform Isaac our room had not been cleaned and ask for a different room. However when i arrived at the front desk Isacc was working on checking a bunch of people that had arrived as they were trying to make the 2 hour check-in deadline. I navigated past the line and simply let Isacc know the room hadn't been cleaned and asked if he could put us in a different room after he finsihed checking in this mob of guests. Isacc stated they had no other rooms but he would take care of things once he got everyone checked in.||||I head back to the room and we checked our emails and waiting for Isacc to arrive but he never showed up. By this time is was around 4:45 pm and we were getting hungry.|||| So...we leave our room and stop at the front desk on the way out. Isacc still has a number of people waiting to check in. He spots me and states “I have not forgotten you”. I say fine but I tell him we never received a code to the front door. I tell him we are hungry and probably won't return until after he is gone for the day. Which would mean we would be locked out of the building. So Isacc gives me his personal entry code. I test out the code to make sure it works then we head out for dinner. ||||After dinner we return to the hotel around 6 pm and Isacc is long gone. We head to our room and it is still in the same condition as before. Plus we still have no toilet paper!|||| I decided to walk to a nearby store and purchase a roll of toilet paper.||||My wife and I are both pretty grossed out by this point but we know all the other hotels are full so we decide to stay the course and stay the night feeling confident we can get the room cleaned in the morning.||||Before we turn in for the night I send an email to the hotel letting them know we have no towels, no soap and no toilet paper. In my email I mention that we are going to leave our room around 8 am the next morning to go explore the forts and do some tourist things. I ask them to please get our room clean and get us towels, soap, and toilet paper. (Luckily we did have our own soap and shampoo and one towel we kept with our dive gear.)||||So we decide to go to bed and when I pull the blanket and sheets back I see long strands of what appears to be ladies' hair. Of course I am grossed out as it seems certain the bed was used but then remade without changing the sheets!||||I kind of assume the maid came by before we had arrived that day and made the bed, after the previos guests departed and she must have gathered up all the towels and intended to return but she had failed/forgotten to do so.||||So they don’t change sheets between guests!!! Without a doubt!||||During the night I got up twice to use the bathroom and when I turned on the bathroom light I saw cockroaches! :(||||The next morning I check my email messages but there was no reply from the hotel. I know I have the correct email address as I had traded emails with them when i booked the room.||||So I send them a second email and I also stop at the front desk that is always vacant side from 3-5 pm. I handwrite a note asking Isacc to have housekeeping get our room squared away. I mention we will be gone most of the day but that I hope we will return to a clean room.||||So...after a day out doing tourist stuff we return to the hotel around 2:30 pm and there is no isaac and our room is exactly the way we had left it. By this point I am not only grossed out but pissed off. ||||I send another email to the hotel letting them know this is unacceptable and that I want some action. A short time later I receive an email reply stating they will address my concerns soon. 10 mins later there is a knock on our door and it is Isacc. Isacc is holding two rolls of toilet paper. Isacc states they won't have anyone available to clean the room until the next morning. Of course we are leaving the next day.||||That night we head out for dinner and when we return, around 6 pm, our code no longer opens the front door of the hotel. So we are locked out of the building. We were not the only guests that were locked out. (There were other guets waiting outside the door and no ones code worked.)||||They have two phone numbers posted outside of the hotel. I dial one of the numbers and a woman answers and she stated she is the manager. I explain to her that we are locked out. She sounds annoyed and asks if I have you tried entering the code? I tell her yes but she wants to walk me through the process. She has me try multiple things and different codes but nothing works. I then ask her why they don't have a staff member here for more than 2 hours a day. She yells at me "I don't have to answer questions from you" and she hangs up.||||(In other reviews I had read online many other previous guests had mentioned this same woman. In all of these reviews she was very rude/nasty).||||I then call the other number and Isacc answers. I explain that we are locked out and he states he will be there in 30 mins as he needs to get an Uber from his home to the hotel. ||||An hour later Isacc shows up carrying a pizza and a cold drink. I guess he decided there was no urgency to get us in? Isacc tries his combo and it does not work either. He had to use keys to open the door. By this time there are 9 other guests waiting to get into the building!! No one can get in!||||The next morning we are excited to leave this place and we get all packed up. Just before we head out I dropped my pencil on the floor and it rolled under the bed. When I reach down to retrieve it I see a pair of men's underwear, a condom wrapper and a used condom. Obviously I was grossed out but by this point nothing surprised me.||||Lastly, we noticed both ants and roaches in the hotel room as well as the common areas. This place is absolutely gross and you should avoid the place at all costs! Speaking of costs. This should be a $40 a night hotel...or less. Our 2 night stay was $340||||Once we got to the airport the hotel sent me an email with a copy of my receipt and stated "Please come again". I would not stay here again even if they paid me $200 a night!||||Please know through all of this I treated Isaac well and I was never mean or rude. I knew Isacc was not responsible for the way this hotel is run and he truly did the best he could! He always seemed flustered and embarrassed!||||I feel certain the hotel will reply to my review with a bunch of lies, excuses and smoke screening. Please know my account and review is 100% accurate! Don’t believe any smoke screen reply that the hotel will surely post!||||They will also try and use Covid as an excuse for the lack of employees and poor housekeeping but if you read their early reviews they had all of these same issues long before Covid.||||Again…Please know my review is 100% honest and accurate!||||You should avoid this hotel or you will be sitting here writing a review like mine​! Lastly, please go to other similar websites and read the reviews on this hotel. They have hundreds of terrible reviews and have for a long time. They could obviously care less as they know no one will ever return.!||||Thank you for taking the time to read this long review and I hope you will take my advice and avoid this...

After returning to our room at 11 pm, we noticed that when we flushed the toilet, black water from the toilet started coming out from the shower tub drainage. Since the front desk was closed, I called the Manager's cellphone to explain the situation. She mentioned another room was experiencing the same issue, but someone was dealing with the problem and would shortly come to our room. After patiently waiting for 30 mins, I called her again for an update, but she did not pick up the phone and texted me, "I'll call you back." We were tired and just wanted to sleep, so I texted her back, letting her know that no one had come to our room yet and that I would prefer taking care of the issue at 8 am. Her reply back was, "working on it.”

The following day I called her at 8:30 am, asking her for a new room to shower in or have someone come clean the tub. With a rude voice, she started getting on my case that she had no one on the property and it would take her time to get housekeeping there. At that point, I felt I had been patient enough and asked her to find the best solution. She got off the phone and called 8 mins later, yelling at me that I was a rude person because I had my "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, and it was against the law for them to knock on the door if the sign is out.

First, if that was the case, she should have told me over the phone or by text the moment we established communication. Second, I have not found anything that says it is against the law to knock on the door when the sign is out. On the contrary, hotels have the right to disturb the guest in case of an issue or repair needs to be done.

I am very disappointed with the handling of this situation by the hotel manager and would expect professional conduct when we were very patient with an issue that can happen at any hotel. I would avoid booking this hotel for the simple fact that they did not take accountability for the situation and treated their customers poorly. The Manager created a hostile environment that could have been addressed differently with a...

Hotel is definitely nice and well decorated but in all honestly I hardly think that is excuse enough for many of the failures. You would do better going to another place for the same price. The hotel has barely any staff making things like check in and asking questions a nightmare. The staff that does the check in also takes care of the place so if you have any issues or questions you have to hunt them down and find them. Once you find them they are as helpful as asking somebody on the street. They don’t seem to know anything about the parking situation that was sent in the email. The email stated there was a 24 hour parking for 13$, I was not able to find it anywhere nor the staff was helpful with it. Another little surprise that you might get besides the misleading email about parking is the issue with the showers. If you come to San Juan and it’s raining get ready for a cold shower. They use solar power to heat the water so if it’s raining you’ll have to shower with cold water. Again this was not stated in the email nor in the information of the hotel. Customer service overall leaves a lot to be desired. Hotel decoration is nice but the rooms look like a motel. Bathroom is tiny so if you are a L or XL person don’t expect to fit in the showers. Cold water as the only source to shower is not great either. Coming in and out of the hotel is easy after you spend a good amount of time waiting to be checked in because the staff is running around doing the rooms. Only reason I do not give it 1/5 is due to the nice decorations and the convenience of the hotel. I would not come here again unless they decide to take hospitality lessons and try to fix many of the logistics and...