Stara Boutique Hotel Hamburgo

I booked a room here about 4.5 months ago for the Formula 1 race and Day of the dead festival. Arguably the biggest festival of the year in Mexico so I wanted to make sure I secured a room well in advance. It would have been my 4th trip to Mexico this year and first time in Mexico City. I got a buddy to get me a single reservation for Pujol restaurant after weeks of trying and failing on my own and I also built a full itinerary since I was planning to be there for 1 week. Unfortunately on Friday, October 20th, I received an email (luckily I check my email daily) saying that my reservation for STARA Hamburgo was cancelled with no explanation as to why. With the events all starting Friday October 27th, you can imagine the outrageous rates hotel rooms are going for now. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip as a result. I am still waiting to be refunded ... The rooms have been removed from all the booking sites and I can't find any news articles saying if anything catastrophic happened so I'm not sure why they'd cancel reservations a week before the biggest event of the year without any explanation or apology email.

We spent two nights in this hotel in the Zona Rosa area, which is a relatively safe zone. After reading some reviews we had very low expectations but in fairness this is a modern hotel with clean and spacious rooms. The beds were very comfortable and the bathrooms were excellent. The language was at times a small challenge, but one to expect in these parts of the world. The breakfast was fine, with a good mix of traditional and Mexican items. A good place to bad yourself on CDMX.

Room was ok, but windows look at the wall, AC is a noisy in-room stand alone unit. No coffee maker or coffee available when restaurant closed, no plugs near the bed. Half-hearted room cleaning— e.g. no toilet paper….a list of admittedly minor issues, but service not appropriate given the price. Charged 50% extra for a morning arrival— again, not what I expected at this price point, but fair enough if the room were up to par. I needed to shower and change ASAP. But, No iron/board. Tried to call, but phone was out of batteries. Went downstairs and stood in line to ask for iron. A mini ironing board eventually arrived…. You get the picture. All that said, nice location and nice art. Breakfast was good. So, 3/5.

The hotel could be a nice one if level of service was not so poor . We stayed two nights at the terrace suits the best rooms in hotel and in reality quite nice even if with some design flaws like the toilets . The problem was service since we arrived , reserve made 12 h in advance was not in hotel ....after 12 h drive at 10 pm there was nothing to eat in hotel ...redtaurant closed at 5 pm and no room service ....next day breakfast only starts at 8 and by t way is extremely poor . Cleaning of rooms was a disaster no towels , no new shampoo, no toilet paper and no information of reception phone to call and ask . Could be a nice hotel if minimally managed ....like this is a nice building and clearly not a nice hotel

The siutes were OK but had a lot of scuffs and knocks, tears in the wallpaper and in general it could do with a bit of a face lift. Worst was the staff, they either got it wrong or just couldn't give a fig. At reception they seemed disinterested a lot of the time and we were given the the wrong time for breakfast at the weekends. We had organised an early pick up based on this information so it was a major problem. We were up at 6.30 for a nonexistent 7.00 breakfast and then were the first for an 8am breakfast and weren't served until at least 1/2 an hour later, neither the staff nor the food were ready. Some breakfasts were taken downstairs in the bistro as they needed 3 days to prepare for an upstairs function and these meals were different every day, sometimes from a menu others from warmed dishes on the bar with extras available. The day of the function we were told that anything like fried eggs or omelets would cost extra even though it was supposed to be included in the price of our stay. They basically couldn't be bothered. They tried to compensate for their breakfast time mistake by providing us with a coffee machine with just one coffee pod that was never replaced and didn't work when we tried to use it. Housekeeping was erratic, we never knew what was going to be renewed. Someday we got face cloths and hand towels, others just a hand towel between us. We had slippers and bathrobes in our room, my daughter had neither. We actually had to ask for more loo paper at reception and they questioned our need - we had run out! I had to go down to reception to ask how to contact them on the room phone as there was no information about either the hotel, the neighbourhood or the city in the room. The worst thing though was the erratic and unidentifiable noise in our room. For four days we had the sound like an electric drill that was intermittent but often in our room and the hotel thought we were crazy to complain. It wasn't until one of the security guys came to our room late at night that he was convinced of the problem. Unfortunately on our 5th and last night a very loud and persistent buzzing hum woke my husband at 1 o'clock in the morning and was identified by reception staff as coming from a close by building. This was amplified by the lack of closed doors on the top floor, lasted for a couple of hours and was then blamed for the mystery drill like noise in our room. I'm sure this was not case but more likely to be an air lock in the hot water pipes that were buzzing loudly for hours in a closet just outside our room. It woke us several times every night. Our stay could have been so much better but sadly wasn't so I don't recommend this as a place to stay and avoid the upper floor if you want a quiet night's sleep.

SERIOUS ISSUES - AVOID. I booked and prepaid the hotel through *******. Upon arrival at the Hotel, the staff had my booking reference but claimed ******* had not paid them, and made me pay for the room a second time. I have since called ******* on a weekly basis over a month and a half to get this resolved. ******* says they are unable to reach the hotel, as it is *not responding* to any of their emails, and the hotel manager wont talk to them. Based on the advice of my local travel regulatory agency, the only recourse will be to file a claim in small claims court in order to get a refund.