Stayed at El Carmen for two nights whilst on a tour of Central America.
Hotel was located in an excellent spot in Antigua. Has a very pretty roof top area, with lovely views. Room was on the small side, but bed was extremely comfortable, with tv (cable) provided in rooms.
We'd arrived at the hotel at 4am (from an overnight bus from Flores) and the poor gentleman who we'd woken up to check us in, did so with a smile on his face and in a very friendly manner!
Only complaint would be that rooms unfortunately had no air-conditioner or fans. As the room windows looked into the interior of hotel (which was a big sun-room type of thing), the rooms became hot and stuffy towards the end of the day.
Other than that, stay was hassle-free. Recommended hotel.

Yes, those older (2008) bad reviews are still true, read them if you don't believe me.

Positives - The room was not very clean (by first world standards), but still acceptable. The included breakfast was decent. The location is great - the middle of the town.

Negatives - Room windows face into the hotel not outside + no air conditioning = you get to hear all the noise in the hotel because your window is the only source of cool air. The "Hot Tub" was never open and probably never has been used - although you will be charged for it on your bill. TV signal was garbage. Hot water appeared sporadically for about ten second intervals during showers. And worst of all, just like their other customers mentioned on here, the manager did not honor the Expedia price (Why even use expedia if they lie?) and added a bunch of mystery charges to our bill. After many threats about calling all the credit card companies and reporting this hotel for credit card fraud, our price was finally reduced. This took about 45 minutes of arguing.

To put it in perspective, this was the only hotel that attempted to be crooked at all during my whole trip, so I don't believe it is normal practice in Guatemala to rip people off. Only at El Carmen.

This should probably be anybody's last resort - although I'm unfamiliar with the other hotels in Antigua - but they couldn't be any worse than El Carmen!

Our experience with Antigua was a very positive one but to say that this hotel contributed to it would be an outright lie. The photos on the expedia website are completely false. First off, the hot tub on the roof has no water in it and it's probably because they are incapable of heating water properly. We had no hot water during our three night stay there. We also had to switch rooms because the carpet was so incredibly dirty that....well, it defies a reasonable explanation. We were moved to a room close to the stairs to the roof that should probably be converted to storage because it is just feet away from where the staff are allowed to hang out so you can hear them talking constantly. The hotel was most certainly beautiful at one point but that time has surely past. It is in need of a face lift, a new webmaster, and a new manager.

We booked the El Carmen Hotel for three nights stay on the hotels website and printed out the confirmation. When we arrived at the hotel the manager at first denied that we had made any reservation in spite of having the reservation printout in front of him. Then he told us that our reservation was for another hotel the El Conquistador - news to us! He also showed us one miserable room with no windows on the ground floor that at first was available for one night only. Then it was available for three nights. As we felt we were being given the run around here we tramped way to the other side of town to check out the empty El Conquistador. Looked okay but the whole place was bouncing from construction going on outside. Thoroughly fed up we headed back into town. On the way we checked out the Hotel San Jorge - perfect. Stayed there for four nights and give it top ratings all round. Forget about El Carmen.