My husband recently returned from a business trip at this hotel. This is his review:

Camino Real is a classic, historic hotel. The lobby area and the magnificent, domed bar are beautiful. However, everything goes down hill from there.

The only things that are not painfully slow at this hotel are the elevator doors. You better be quick or they will close on you.

Restaurant service was awful. The restaurant has a buffet, so the wait staff should not have too much to do. I walked in and stood there for quite some time while the person behind the register worked out some problem with a customer. The manager walked up to me and asked if I had been helped, to which I replied “no.” He just stood there and looked annoyed. I finally said “one for dinner,” at which time he started looking around for a table. Most were vacant. He saw a small table, which needed cleaning, so he cleaned it up and directed me to it. I sat, and then sat some more. No wait staff approached me. Finally a woman with a plate of food approached the table and just stared at me. I realized that this was her table and she had gone to the buffet for a refill. I surrendered the table and just stood in the middle of the dining room, looking for help. I stopped a very harassed-looking waitress and asked for a table. She pointed in the general direction of a group of tables, so I walked over and selected one, and waited for some service. The harassed-looking waitress finally walked toward me with a glass of water. She looked at the glass suspiciously and then said that she would get me another one. When she came back, I told her I would get the buffet. I was afraid that ordering from the menu would be just too much for her. The buffet was OK…nothing special. It was clear that the bread and salad areas needed refilling, but nobody attended to them. Of course, the waitress never came back to check on me or bring me a bill. I saw that there was a long line at the register, so I walked over and found that none of these people had gotten a check. The young man at the register seemed baffled by it all and took forever. I tried to pay with cash, but he had no change. I used a credit card and escaped.

My room was on the seventh floor with a nice view of Juarez. It was spacious, clean and had nice-looking furniture. The bathroom looked a little beat, and there was no stopper in the sink, which was a problem for shaving in the morning. A colleague told me she did not have stopper either. The showerhead was one with variable spray, but it was stuck on a hard spray, which required me to duck about in the shower or suffer pain. Air temperature control in the room was bad. It was either too cold or too hot. I’m glad I was there in February, and not in the Texas summer.

The room-cleaning staff did not show up until almost 6 P.M. the first day, so I told them not to bother. I saw only one cleanup cart for the entire floor. No wonder it took them so long, and the staff looked exhausted.

For me, the most annoying thing about the hotel was the free, but lousy wireless service. There was no Ethernet in the rooms. There was open wireless, and a number of secure wireless options, for which they would give you the password. It didn’t make any difference whether it was open, secured, or in the meeting rooms. It was s-l-o-w, just like dial-up used to be. Essentially, it was useless. This surprises me because this is billed as a convention hotel, and it is across the street from the El Paso Convention Center. It is a hotel for business people, and today’s business people need a reasonable Internet connection. The front desk folks seemed surprised that I was not happy with the wireless, but there have been a number of negative reviews on that topic, among others.

The food service in the meeting area was good. A particular treat, however, was the practice fire alarm in the middle of a presentation by a speaker flown in from Washington, D.C. Wonderful staff communication.

I cannot recommend this hotel. It is very clearly understaffed, and at least the restaurant staff is poorly trained. It is worth a look on the first floor, since it is a beautiful historic hotel. Don’t miss the impressive domed bar. Stay somewhere else.