Socialtel 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.

From start to finish I loved it 👍