Hotel El Conquistador

The breakfast buffet deserves a review of its own, and the hotel is great value. Each spacious room has a lovely balcony. There’s a rooftop pool with full bar and food service, and the staff were courteous and helpful. It’s a beautiful hotel on a main thoroughfare, well placed for shopping, dining, and sightseeing.

I had a pleasant stay overall. The room was comfortable and clean, and the staff were friendly and helpful. The towels were the one thing that could use replacing: they looked yellowed and felt rough. Fresh, white, softer ones would be better. Otherwise, the stay met my expectations.

The luggage attendants were genuinely kind and friendly. They made a real effort to speak English with us or slow down their Spanish so we could understand. The rest of the stay was an awful stretch in what had been an amazing trip. We’d booked on a friend’s recommendation for their wedding, traveling from Europe for it. The price seemed good, but I wouldn’t have paid even 10% of it after staying there. My Spanish isn’t great, and putting sentences together can be hard. I felt that was used to their “advantage” in a lot of things. The room was filthy. I walked barefoot after showering, put on my slippers, and found my feet black with dirt. It was no better after they “cleaned” it. The sheets had dried blood on them, and after the room was cleaned they were covered in dirt. The towels were badly worn, and should be replaced. Cleaning didn’t include taking away our trash or cleaning around the bathroom sink, where we could still see the previous day’s dirt. The shower didn’t work properly. Water sprayed everywhere from the faucet you push down to switch to a bath, and the bath wouldn’t hold water no matter how many times I pushed or twisted the plug. I sent my suit to the laundry service and was lucky we had a few days after the wedding, or I might never have seen the suit bag again. Our room was about 15-20 steps from the elevator, but we could hear its bell every time someone called it or reached our floor. The balcony table was filthy too. I set my phone on it and picked it up black with dirt. We got back from the wedding around 3:30 AM. There was no one at the door, which might be normal, and we could walk in through the automatic entrance doors. There was nobody at reception, as expected, but the room key didn’t need scanning until we reached our room. It made me wonder if anyone could enter the hotel and go anywhere without being stopped.

The location on Merida’s main avenue is about the only thing this place has going for it. Our room was dirty, with chewing gum stuck to the floor, and the toilet seat was nearly falling off. The towels were old, torn, and stained, which made the whole stay feel unpleasant. I can’t see how this was rated five stars; it felt more like a three-star hotel at best. We were very glad we only booked one night.