Hotel Parador Zacatecas

The city is beautiful, the food is divine and people are kind, even at bad hotels. This hotel, though, is nowhere I'd recommend staying. I booked ahead after reading reviews and looking at guest photos on Google and Hotels.com, but from what I could tell they didn't match reality. I reserved a two-bed room to share with a family member. We were there for just under an hour. I don't usually review places unless I'm really impressed or alarmed, and unfortunately this was the latter. This isn't aimed at the staff. It seemed they could only do so much with what the hotel provided. The front desk staff were friendly, but at about 4:30pm they couldn't find a reservation under my name, even when I showed it on my phone. That can happen when you book through a third party, but we were the second group to arrive without being officially registered. Staff had to call around and eventually found someone who'd forgotten to add each group to the main list. The first room we were taken to hadn't been cleaned at all. The beds were unmade and food trays and containers were scattered around. They moved us to a smaller room that looked clean. Then I found a large dead roach behind the door. I just told the front desk, and they said they'd send someone to clean it up. I'm not squeamish or picky, so at the time I shrugged it off. While we waited, my family member got ready to shower, and I went to use the bathroom first. When I turned on the light, there were dozens of little dots on the tile. They were dead cockroaches. The little ones are the ones to worry about, since they can get into everything and spread like rabbits, including luggage and boxes. That was my limit. My family member was having an allergic reaction and didn't know why until I mentioned the roaches across the bathroom floor, right next to his bed. We grabbed everything and rushed out without opening our luggage. At the lobby, a staff member apologized and offered another room, but I refused because the roaches seemed like a bigger problem than just one room. I asked for a refund and quick checkout while we were still dealing with the reaction. They told me to contact the booking app. The app didn't refund me because the hotel never answered its calls or emails. Hotels.com said refunds were up to the hotel, not the app. As a side note, our Uber driver who took us to another hotel said locals know this place is underfunded because it's state-owned, and isn't a good place to stay. Hindsight is a B-word. I hope this helps future travelers.