Guest User
January 15, 2024
I will start by saying I like prefer boutique hotels and like to support small businesses over chains. That said, our stay at Carmenere was very unpleasant made worse by a staff that was inflexible, and without basic compassion. Upon (Friday) arrival at our 4 night stay, we learned that the portion of the city we were staying in would have its water cut off until Sunday morning. When you’re on vacation and on a romantic getaway, not being able to bathe or shower is a bit of a nonstarter. After all, we booked a hotel, not camping. Worth mentioning that I also booked a room for the night before we arrived so we could check in early in the morning when we arrived without incident. My husband and I were completely caught off guard by this news. I had contacted the hotel 5 business days before to get some recommendations and never heard back. The lack of responsiveness should have been my first red flag. The next few hours were very frustrating, as the on-site manager proceeded to: 1. Suggest we change our plans so that we would go on excursions during the days when there was no water. He insisted on this many times even after we explained that we were traveling with a group of 16 (the only ones staying in this hotel and in this predicament), and had fixed plans that we couldn’t change. And again, when you book a hotel, a basic expectations is running water. 2. Insist that this water outage caught them off guard. Upon talking to staff that other hotels, we learned that the town had known about the water situation well before our arrival. 3. Continued to gaslight us and insist that the situation was “not that bad” and that they would give us water bottles so that we would have access to water to clean ourselves. 4. Offer absolutely no compensation or solutions to help - again, we paid for the nights we were scheduled to sleep there + the extra night before we arrived. We ended up booking a different hotel nearby at a similar price point that had running water while the water was shut off. It was great, the staff was friendly, our room was so nice. Because the staff at Carmenere wouldn’t offer us any sort of financial compensation, we begrudgingly returned. And it just wasn’t pleasant. The rooms were old, small, very creaky floors, you could hear in between rooms. The breakfast was good, though - very fresh with a solid spread. I really wanted to like this hotel, but the way we were treated was honestly shocking and disappointing. I would not recommend staying here. The customer service was truly horrible.