Hotel El Paraíso

I've been coming to Tandil several times a year for over 15 years and have stayed at a lot of hotels and guesthouses. This was the worst one for me by far. Paola and the man on the early morning shift were genuinely lovely, wonderful people. The rest of the experience was a mess, and I'm sharing it because the hotel was packed and I don't want the same thing to happen to someone else. We booked a room with a “garden view” for $280,000 for two nights, but what we saw was a lamppost, the highway, and a completely dry patch they called a garden, without even any grass. We could hear the traffic. The photos they show are completely different from reality. The room was dreary and neglected, with cobwebs on the windows. They moved us to one that was a little better, apparently the top category and presumably more expensive, but it still wasn't worth it. The paint was peeling off all the windows, and the whole hotel looked badly neglected. There were cobwebs everywhere, raindrops showing on the breakfast room windows, a broken pool railing, and peeling paint on the outdoor stairs. Maybe they don't maintain the place, maybe they don't want to spend money, or maybe they are doing it slowly while building new rooms. Either way, for that price, it left a lot to be desired. They gave us late checkout, so we were meant to leave at 2 pm rather than 10 am. While we were relaxing, the cleaning staff knocked twice. The receptionist then texted, “Just a reminder that check-out is at 10 am.” I replied, “Oh, sorry.” The staff clearly aren't communicating with each other. I also have to mention that the room we first got had cobwebs on the windows.

We were there for one night in January. The location is lovely and the rooms are comfortable, but they were dirty and the sheets had already been used. The bathroom was the worst part; it hadn't really been cleaned. I asked the cleaning staff if they could please take care of it, and they apologized very kindly and cleaned it. Breakfast was average, though quite good. The cleanliness of the shared spaces overall was poor.

The view from the hotel is lovely, with lots of greenery, and breakfast was okay, though it could be better. That's about it for the positives. The place seems to have had its heyday, but it's far from that now. I paid 154,000 pesos for what they called the most expensive room, supposedly because it had a mountain view and because it was the only one available for two people. The room was tiny, with a window about 1x1 meter. Everything was old and rusty, the front door needed a slam to shut, and the bed made an incredible amount of noise. When they handed the room over, it was filthy, with hair all over the floor. There were leaves and dirt in the hallway, too. The pool was full of leaves and clearly not being maintained. The indoor pool also had hair all along the sides, and the water was incredibly cloudy. About the hotel's response: yes, they charged the most for that room because of the mountain view, and it was the only option for two people. They also didn't follow what they say on Booking.com. They asked for my email so they could request an advance payment outside the platform. Rather than trying to downplay a guest's opinion, they should fix the facilities and earn positive reviews. They shouldn't be surprised by comments about the pool's cleanliness.