I'm gonna cut straight to the chase. When staying at a hotel like Tierra Atacama, it's all about the excursions and the guides, who play a vital role in determining how enjoyable your excursions will be. I have stayed at two explora properties in the past, which is a similar type of hotel, and they have excellent guides. The problem with Tierra Atacama is that they occasionally use third party "freelance" guides who are substandard. I suspect that they have to use a freelance guide when it is busy and they they don't enough guides of their own. To be fair, the guides who work exclusively for Tierra (such as Claudio, Leonardo and Anna) were excellent. However, my first 2 excursions were with a freelance guide who was terrible. Now Tierra normally sends a cooler full of food and drinks with the guests on an excursion. This particular guide always made sure that she moved the cooler to the front beside her and the first thing she does is grab a drink for herself before offering anything to the other guests. After a few minutes, and almost as an afterthought, she will then ask the guests if they wanted anything to drink. I found it extremely unprofessional for her to help herself first before asking the guests. In fact, on one excursion we ran out of Coke and bottled water for the guests while she made sure she had a Coke for herself. On another excursion, she had 3 cans of pop, 2 chocolate bars and lots of trail mix, all within a 3 hour excursion and she ate more than all of the other guests combined. I guess that whenever she gets a Tierra gig she feels like she hit the jackpot with all the free food. Her actual guiding was very poor as well, for example simply reading the caption from an exhibit whenever we came across one and at times reading it out in Spanish to the English only guests! Tierra needs to recognize that the guides are the face of the hotel and the guests interact with them far more than any another worker in the hotel. Outsourcing your guides and trusting them to represent your hotel with your guests is simply ludicrous and having to pay $1200/night for second rate guides is unacceptable.
Other observations:
-the guide for horseback riding didn't once tell us where we were going or where we were and spent most of the time chatting in Spanish with one other person, kinda let the group split into 2 which would not have been a problem if he didn't insist on having another horse carry my water (not the greatest when riding in the sun in the driest desert in the world)
-you pick your excursions for your stay right after checking in and then given a schedule; we requested a stargazing excursion but the guide never put us on the list
-meal service was sloppy e.g. breakfast buffet items not replaced when they ran out, some people receiving an amuse bouche for dinner while others didn't, having to ask to have water or wine glasses refilled
-food was average, should have afternoon snacks and snacks for guests to carry along on hikes like explora
-nice, well maintained pool but should perhaps improve wifi signal there and have poolside service
-a lot of the bath towels were obviously stained, should probably start replacing them
-laundry picked up in the morning was not returned that evening until I called for it late at night
-Nicholas, the manager, was a bright spot for the hotel and he was very welcoming and personable
The bottom line is that explora is better. Unfortunately, explora Atacama is currently under renovations due to a kitchen fire but once it reopens, I would certainly book with them over Tierra any day of the week.