Hotel Ojos del Rio

The staff were very nice, and I really liked the baked potatoes. They should serve those every day. Breakfast didn’t have many options, though. The bathroom needs urgent refurbishment, and while the bed wasn’t that bad and the TV was cool, all the other furniture needs to be thrown out. The cleaning seemed awful. I saw a piece of plastic on the stairs for a week without anyone picking it up, and there was so much dirt around the building that it stuck to your shoes. They need to talk to the cleaning team about doing proper work.

My friend and I were on a two-week trip through Panama and spent the first few days touring the San Blas islands without cell service. We confirmed our booking with this hotel three times and told them we’d arrive around 7 pm. When we got there, they said they’d cancelled the reservation, leaving us scrambling to find another room. As we tried to understand what had happened in the lobby, another couple arrived and learned their reservation had been cancelled too. The staff gave little help and no apology. I’ve never had a hotel cancel my booking right when I arrived. It seemed like they were overbooking at guests’ expense, a horrible way to run a business and a terrible situation to put people in for no reason. We ended up at Hotel Milan, where we had a much better experience.

They gave our room away. We booked weeks ahead through booking.com and got two separate confirmations, but when we arrived at 7 pm, the exact time I’d told them we’d be there, they said they had cancelled our reservation and had no rooms left. There was no apology, and the reception experience was horrible. A couple arrived soon after us and had the same problem. They’d booked in person and left their luggage in storage while they went on an overnight tour. That made four guests in the lobby, all ready to check in, with no rooms available. We figured they’d been overselling rooms. I’d give zero stars if I could.

The room was big and clean, but the hotel was not okay. At night, a man in front of the hotel, possibly a security guard, threatened us with a wooden stick. Probably because we’re Americans. Our rental car was damaged by their staff, and they refused to provide their insurance information. We called the police, who were super helpful and directed us to the courthouse to file a complaint against the hotel. Beware this place like the plague!