Socialtel Bariloche - Formerly Selina Bariloche

Nice hotel, relatively close to the city center. Friendly staff Room was just a bit cold...

To provide some background about myself, I have backpacked in the likes of Vietnam, Peru, Cambodia etc. I am not some primadonna and can totally accept basic/rustic accommodations. We booked the suite at Selina which is the best room they have and was not cheap at near two hundred per night. Website makes it appear that this is some cute and trendy design hotel. Really this is a vintage hotel which must have been purchased and cleaned up a little bit, it appears nice in the photos because of the modern furniture but the furniture itself is rickety and falling apart at the seams. The top of the coffee table was not attached and the bench in the bedroom area would have collapsed if a child sat on it. My first impression was, they tried but did not succeed. I felt some sympathy for them in the beginning. But it only went downhill from there. When you arrive you will find that the room is without a telephone, a television, water, coffee maker, and the toiletries are in flimsy packets which they do not replace every day because they do not clean the room while you are there. The Wi-Fi is spotty at best. The hairdryer was broken when I arrived, and it took them over a day to fix it. For most people this isn’t an issue but I have 20 inch long hair that is thick and cannot wash it without a blow dryer. I had more or less beg the staff to fix it in order to get it done. There is no air-conditioning. The hotel is staffed mainly by young hipsters who seem to have no training in hospitality, and some of them lacked even basic courtesy and had a bad attitude in most interactions. Above and beyond all of these misgivings, the one issue that I absolutely could not forgive as a fact that there was no running water in our suite. When I needed to shower I had to sit in the tub underneath a trickle of water coming out of the faucet, attempting to bathe myself whilst basically sitting in my own filthy water freezing and struggling to wash myself. When we informed the reception staff of this issue, their explanation was that this was a known issue which was common in the suites. I am of the opinion that running water is a basic necessity and human need that any hotel room should offer whether it is a hostel or not. However, this was advertised as a suite, a private room, as such I would not anticipate having to use shared showering facilities (which we were forced to) or pay the price that we did for the suite. This is definitely 100% a hostel/backpacker place, with absolutely no services. In my opinion they should not even offer private rooms. The private rooms are clearly an afterthought and they don’t even have the infrastructure to support them. If you are expecting anything even slightly nicer than a backpack or type hostel stay elsewhere. We checked out after only one night.

I got there at check in time. The Receptionist asked me to wait 20 minutes for them to clean my room. 40 minutes later, I’m starting to question whether they forgot about me. Reception reassures me that they haven’t forgotten. 1 hour later, someone hands me a key and tells me it’s upstairs, the last room on the left. My reservation was "1 room with Large bed". When I got to the room, there were "10 small beds". I go back to reception asking what’s going on and clearly they try to push this back on me explaining how their bunk beds are bigger than standard. O_o I start pulling out photos and descriptions, booking refs and what not clearly showing that I booked a room with a large bed. I even got photos of the large bed from the publications. They say they’ll get the manager. About 30 minutes later, the manager doesn’t have the heart to come out himself and the reception explains that it’s not their booking platform and anyway, there’s no room available. I explain the platform isn’t theirs but it’s their account and their publication and it is therefore their mistake but nothing to be done. So basically they’re the type of people making obscure publications with contradictive descriptions and if you’re not happy with getting something else, well too bad, you already paid and tough luck. Ask any locals and they’ll assure you this isn’t a simple honest mistake. It’s very deliberate but they’ll tell you with a smile that this never happens and it’s not their fault. If they could at least be responsible for their mistakes but no. Please don’t support this kind of behavior, there are better places in Bariloche with better prices. And finally our cards to open the dorm stopped working and we started getting locked out of our room…

I would absolutely never stay here again. We checked into Selina after a very noisy couple nights at another hostel. But that was a mistake. Selina was even more noisy, playing very loud music in the bar (the bar is directly under the dorms!!) until late into the night. However Selina was more than double the price and the location was way worse than the previous hostel. I wish we had just stayed in our original noisy hostel, at least it had a good location!!! The kitchen situation at Selina was shameful. There is almost nothing you would need to cook or eat a meal in the kitchen. I searched for 10 minutes before I found one small knife to cut my vegetables. There didn’t seem to be a single bowl in the place. The knobs are off the ovens, So you can’t use those at all. There’s no toaster. For the over-the-top price you pay just for a dorm room here, I think it’s very reasonable to expect that the facilities such as the kitchen will be useable. And there should be some sort of warning in the property description that you may be subjected to extremely loud music until late at night so that people who are looking for a good sleep can chose to stay elsewhere.