So we stayed at the Hotel Residencial in Merida. It was those photos above that I saw too when I was researching about the hotel. What those photos didn’t reveal is that ALL of the surrounding areas of the hotel has NOTHING. it is in the middle of a barren street. It’s not even a main street where its on. It’s so out of place in a semi residential area (perhaps hence the name?) so there are no other commerical activities around.
The Zocalo (main plaza/square) is a good 10-12 blocks away! (deceiving descriptions of “a short stroll to the main plaza,” and “good location” got the better of me)
As my number one criteria is really location, this already brought the rating down several notches.
Ok, if a place is not central location, you’d hope that there would be other redeeming factors. The next criteria would be the room of course.
very dated, not only in terms of decor but appliance too which is a big thing. The A/C came from the 1980’s (when was the last time you saw an AC like that?). True the room was spacious but the A/c just wasn’t big enough for it. The TV was like half the size of that air conditioner that showed only 1 channel ( an mtv type of channel). True you don’t travel to watch tv but getting abit of local or international news would be good.
The bathroom was …let’s not even go there. in a nutshell they made the rooms so spacious that there’s only a smidgen of a space left for the bath.
Ok enough ranting. The average/good parts of the hotel are:
the pool area. which on the 4 days we were there, we only ever saw 1 person use it.
The hotel restaurant which reminds me of Club Filipino. Service at the hotel was quite bad. Save for the receptionist, everyone else was very curt, and seemed to want to be anywhere else but at that hotel. They seemed grumpy and in a hurry when ….again, we seemed to be the ONLY guests at the hotel everytime we came down for breakfast and the occassional lunch/ afternoon tea!
I really would urge someone to find a different hotel when staying at Merida. The rate wasn’t worth what we got (in my opinion) for the service and location.
I guess I have myself to blame for this. I didn’t do much research on this hotel’s location thinking we’d be preoccupied during the daytime anyway. But it does matter when you want to take a stroll outside at night, or want to get some emergency/last minute things. For me, a good location will always trump fancy amenities.
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