This is my fifth time visiting the city of Cuenca (which I absolutely love). Just to be upfront, my review is based on past experiences and expectations I've had from staying in other Cuenca hotels.
My mistake this time was not planning far enough in advance, and all the previous places we had stayed (which had been great!) were booked. This place had a 4 star rating on trip advisor, so I thought great! It's in our price range ($60 a night) and its close enough to the historic center. Let's try it out. This was a bad decision. There's a reason they still had rooms open.
Even if $60 was what we ended up paying a night (which it wasn't - when we got there they informed us that %12 taxes and %10 service was not included -- and they DON'T accept credit cards, which is ironic since I reserved my room on a credit card). Although this type of manipulative advertising happens in Ecuador (I've seen it many times in the three years I've lived here), this is the first time I've experienced it in Cuenca. Don't advertise $60 a room when it's going to be much more. And don't let me deposit 50% thinking it's going to be $60 when it's going to be closer to $70 a night.
The whole deposit and asking for more money when I arrived wouldn't have bothered me if the room was good (a lot of hotels in Cuenca have beautifully quaint rooms) and the service was good.
The room was TINY and poorly, poorly lit. There was barely enough floor space to walk around without bumping into the bed, dresser or bathroom. I was shocked. It was a room similarly set up to the $10 a night/per person hostel I had stayed at, which had a nicer room. We could barely sleep both nights because they have this chiming doorbell (horribly annoying) that goes off (very late into the night) and any conversation that takes place by the reservation desk carried all the way up to the third floor (where we were). I can usually sleep through anything (I've lived next to large roadways most my life) and could not for the life of me fall asleep until after that chiming annoying doorbell stopped late into the night.
There were a number of other things to happen, which I won't even go through, because I understand in the service industry, people make honest mistakes. I worked in the service industry for 4 years, my fiancé works in the office of tourism & hospitality in the city where we live in Ecuador - we get it. But this last mistake (after about 4 previous mistakes in our two day stay), was the last moment where I knew none of this hassle was worth it.
We were going downstairs for breakfast (which is included with your stay) and we went to eat in the side room with a view of the street where we ate breakfast without a problem the day before. However the receptionist ushered us to eat in the other room (presumably because there were many people, though the same number as the day before, and wanted us to be closer for faster service?). Well, the day before, we had been greeted immediately and although the service was slow, it didn't bother us because we had this great view of the street. Today, we were ignored, without even a buenos días for fifteen minutes... In no culture is 15 minutes an okay time to wait to say good morning and take your order, regardless of how busy you are (there were two servers, and two managers walking around). I couldn't believe it. I've never walked away from a table ever in my life, and I walked away this morning. This was also when I knew I needed to write a review.
On the upside we went to Cafe Austria about a block away, and had a DELICIOUS breakfast with incredibly fast service.
If you're looking to come to Cuenca (which I definitely recommend!!) look somewhere else and leave this as your last choice. Consistent errors are not something that just happened to us, consistent errors from management down mean they have issues managing. Choose another hotel with known quality in service!