“Not worth staying: Not really a lot of art, nice but incompetent service, poor food, highly dubious business practices.”
104 Art Suites is basically a nice, small hotel in one of Bogota’s safe areas, some 10 minutes driving distance to shopping malls, restaurant areas etc. Rooms are clean and organized like small apartments, with a kitchen area in your living room, a bedroom and a bath room. If you are an art lover, you might not really find a lot of art, there were exactly 2 pieces of artwork in our apartment, the rest of the hotel does not produce considerable more art or particular style, either.
However, the hotel and its staff have some serious shortcomings which are particularly surprising in the case of a “boutique” hotel where you expect to receive outstanding and friendly service:
First of all, the staff is quite nice but totally incompetent: One example: They recommended us not to believe the opening times of certain museums in Bogotá as mentioned on the museums’ webpages but to follow the staff’s own advice, with the final result that we found ourselves in front of closed museum doors. Another example, the staff does not have the slightest idea how to handle business cards because they insisted that an incorrect charge by the hotel on my business card could not be cancelled (I had to phone my credit card company to get assurance that any credit charge can be cancelled within 90 days by the person/company who made the charge in the first hand). By the way, it was not really a problem that our room was cleaned at 18:00 hours one day, but I think a small hotel should do better….
Second, the breakfast is poor and lousy: During our stay we always got served old bread (croissants etc.), some of the food served was expired as indicated on the corresponding packaging, the variety of the food offered in general was extremely poor (basically one type of cheese, one type of ham, two to three types of fruits, some few yoghurts and some minor complementary food).
The most important flaw of the hotel, however, is its highly dubious business practices: At arrival, you get the total cost of your stay plus a comparatively high additional amount (in our case approximately 150-200 dollars for minibar consumption during a stay of less than 4 days!) charged on your business card. As a result of it, we had a considerable surplus on our account at departure and wanted to have the original charge on my business card cancelled and a new charge on the real amount due issued, as is standard practice in hotels around the world. However, during more than half an hour the receptionist told us that this was not possible, any credit card charge could not be cancelled and the only way to settle our account was a refund in Colombian pesos or US-Dollars (at a highly unfavourable exchange rate). I guess that the 104 Art Suites tries to generate additional income by doing so, since we do neither live in the US or in Colombia we did not want to have a refund in any of these currencies and I therefore asked to speak to the manager.
The receptionist spoke to the hotel manager by phone but did not allow me to talk to him directly, as I wished to have done. Surprisingly, the manager did not seem to be interested in speaking to me, either and as a result of it, nothing was solved and we continued arguing and wasting valuable time. Once I had confirmation from my credit card company that the hotel was wrong on their credit-card practices, the receptionist immediately dropped her objections and asked me to provide the original voucher with which my credit card was charged. Since we were preparing checkout, luggage was already packed and the voucher somewhere amidst our belongings. We would have lost even more time (after the prior pointless discussion) to find and present the voucher to the receptionist. We therefore had to accept a cash refund in Colombian Pesos, something we definitively did not want.
Even though the hotel owed us money and I maintained the conversation with the hotel staff friendly but firm, the receptionist called the guardian of the hotel who stood next to me in close distance for the rest of time until we retired from the reception area. I felt that this as a major insult to me because we, my wife and I, had neither during our stay nor during the unpleasant discussion with the receptionist given the slightest reason to assume improper or even threatening behaviour of our part.
When receiving the invoice for my stay, I had to discover another highly dubious business practice: The hotel collects, according to its own information, a 15% surcharge plus taxes on everything that is charged on the invoice. For example: I asked to change Dollars into Colombian Peso at my arrival because banks were closed that day. The hotel surprisingly could not help me but offered an advance on my account. However, nobody told me that they were charging 15% (interest?) on this advance, that is: The hotel charges me considerably more than the actual cost of my room on my arrival, hands some of this, my money back to me before departure and charges me 15% interest rate on this, my own money for 3 days. As a former investment banker with some financial knowledge I would call that a classic rip-off, particularly if nobody tells you in advance about it.
The same seems to be true for any other transaction you want to have charged on your hotel-account: Since the hotel owed us money at our departure, the staff offered us to have the cost of the taxi to the airport charged on my hotel-account in order to reduce the balance in my favour. Again, nobody told me in advance that this would cause a 15% + taxes surcharge on the cost of the transaction.
The hotel is, as I mentioned, more or less o.k. but the owners and the staff have incorporated business practices that clearly show certain obvious and outright features of trying to take advantage of their clients in a way I have never seen before.
I have been many times in Colombia before and I have known that country as a fascinating place with very charming people. Even though I had experienced only some minor problems (and minor rip-offs) in the 104 Art Suites, I think it does not really make sense wasting valuable time in pointless discussions with hotel staff and having to get annoyed by the feeling that the hotel is taking advantage of you whenever it can. I suppose that one chooses a “boutique hotel” in order to find a supreme, personalized service, something I definitively did not experience in the 104 Art Suites.
For that reason and due to the fact that the above mentioned dubious practices seem to be systematic, I can definitively not recommend this hotel.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
