Hotel Alda Bonaval

I just stayed here for four nights with family. Whilst it has a lot of pros, there are definitely cons you need to consider when booking: PROS: - Staff very professional, friendly and attentive. They speak English for those who cannot speak Spanish or Galician. - Rooms very clean and cleaned very thoroughly on daily basis by staff. - Beds ample in size. My wife and I are tall and I am of large build, and the double bed was comfortable. - Hotel only a few minutes walk from the cultural part of the city including Cathedral, restaurants, shops, etc. - Hotel on a hill so many hotel rooms have great views across city. CONS: - Air con faulty in both rooms we used. Had to have windows open for ventilation overnight and were therefore woken by quarter-hourly church bells. - No kettle or tea/coffee facilities in room or rest of hotel other than at breakfast buffet time. This is a big standard requirement for hotels these days, which this lacked. Staff confirmed that the coffee machine in breakfast buffet room is not for use by guests at other times. - No restaurant in hotel; only a room where breakfast buffet is served. You'll have to eat all other meals out or use local supermarkets. This can be quite annoying when you have a toddler, and most restaurants do not start serving dinner until 20:30. - Paid 24€ for taxi from airport to hotel when I booked it myself. For return to airport, hotel offered to book taxi for us and told us that prices were all the same because it was one company. Got charged 40€ for return taxi. Learning: don't allow hotel to book taxi for you, book it yourself.

We were very pleased with the appearance of he hotel and the pleasantness of the staff, all of whom were very welcoming. Our experience with the room, though, was among the worst in our decades of travel. We arrived on an usually hot day and found the room at 29.0 degrees C upon entry. We switched on the air conditioning and took a two hour stroll through town. Upon our return, the temperature had dropped to only 27.5 degrees. We mentioned this to the front desk staff before leaving for dinner. While at dinner, a storm moved through and dropped the temperature from the 30s into the high teens. Despite this, the room remained at 27.5 degrees overnight, making sleep virtually impossible. I abandoned the room for several hours during the night, in favor of the lobby, which was only 1.5 degrees cooler despite being air conditioned. The front desk staff was kind enough to contact hotel management the next morning, but we were only offered free breakfast, less than 20 euros off the total charge. There was no adjustment made for the 135 euro room charge, despite the unusable nature of the accommodation. We were both exhausted and very disappointed with hotel and their response to our situation. Follow up emails to hotel management have not been responded to.

Hotel provided incomprehensible directions for arrival by car. There is extensive street construction being done nearby, and reaching it is a nightmare. After driving around for over an hour through the same narrow one-way streets, we called sevreal times and could not get any help. We were told to go to a fire station nearby, and call for further directions; the directions the hotel sent to that location was just a link to "fire stations" in Santiago, and didn't help at all. And when we tried to cancel, we were billed the full amount. Total incompetence & lack of sympathy, don't stay here unless you want to pay for massive aggravation.