HAVANA, Cuba. – She thought she would have the best Christmas of her life, having paid close to 6,000 pesos a day (about US$ 80) for a double room at the Roc Arenas Doradas Hotel in Varadero, but she ended up experiencing “a nightmare.” That’s how Dunia describes her three-day stay at that hotel facility which, in spite of claiming four-star status, could rate as a cheap highway motel due to the dismal service, in the opinion of some clients.
On the travel platform Tripadvisor, the negative ratings -like Dunia’s- abound, most of them written by Cuban clients, mostly, between November 2021 and the early days of January 2022. The complaints explain that those clients believed the promos of the Majorcan hotel chain and Cuba’s travel reservation desks, only to be totally frustrated, angry for having been duped at Christmas time.
“They promise much more than they can realistically deliver,” Dunia believes. She has rated the hotel facility in Varadero as 1 on a scale of 1 to 5, only because the website does not allow clients to enter a lower rating. There are also no possibilities in Cuba’s courts for filing a lawsuit for fraud against any foreign or domestic hotel chain for lack of adequate laws –or for not abiding properly to the ones that exist- that protect the consumer.
Filthy hotel rooms, disheveled and poorly decorated; broken air-conditioning systems, lack of hot water in the bathrooms; an overcrowded and delayed check-in process; old furniture; poorly-served and poorly-elaborated meals; total apathy from the service personnel; discrimination against Cuban clients in comparison to foreign clients; in short, a long list of calamities that indicates how bad the tourism product is, designed with malice to empty quickly the pockets of the very few Cubans who can afford these hotels, and not to inspire them to return as satisfied customers.
“Very poor service, I left quite disappointed,” writes Darian, a Tripadvisor user, adding: “One had to stand on line to have a cup of coffee, the guest rooms were terrible, no manners (among staff), the food was awful, and when I approached the bar to ask for a drink, the bartender was on the phone while people waited to be served.”
Another Cuban Tripadvisor user, who identified himself as Ale C, rates his stay at Arenas Doradas as “a disaster” and also mentions the awful quality of meals, as well as poor service on the part of the staff. Those same two negative comments were given by user Kenny Jesús, who as early as November 2021 warned that the hotel was in no condition to be opened, that the swimming pool was filthy and lacked chlorine, and that “discontent among workers, like lack of motivation” was noticeable.
However, conditions at the Spanish Roc hotel chain’s Arenas Doradas is by no means the only case. The same applies to the Grand Memories in Varadero, managed by the Canadian company Blue Diamond, with more than a dozen hotel facilities in the island, which have received many client complaints, especially during the last few days now that a video is circulating on social media that describes what a disaster “the Christmas celebrations” were at that place.
Typical of those vacation days were people fighting for food at a buffet table, and insults exchanged between waiters and clients, as if far from being a five-star hotel, it was a crowded neighborhood joint where Cubans fight among each other violently to purchase food products on a daily basis.
“The hotel offers the worst service, there is no cleanliness (…). The guest rooms are in bad condition, and they sell it to you as a five-star hotel. The water in the swimming pool was green. Connection to Internet, the worst. The television sets do not work. There are no lights in the bathrooms, and the food was worse than in a worker’s mess hall. The bathroom in the pool area was so dirty it was embarrassing,” were among the complaints another Tripadvisor user named Stephany, mentioned.
“I do not agree that foreign tourists get ahead of Cuban nationals just for being foreigners, Cuban nationals get hurt (…), the check-in is slow and on top of that, when you’ve been standing there for long hours and you hear that foreigners should be serviced first because they are foreigners, your day is ruined, after all, we are both paying,” Tripadvisor user ‘eleufridolafontana688’ commented a few days ago about the same hotel.
Foreign brands, like Iberostar and Meliá, who have a larger presence and greater investments in the island, as well as better ratings on travel websites on the Internet, also have negative criticism and bad ratings from foreign and Cuban clients due to the bad conditions in several of their installations and mistreatment on the part of the service staff, in contrast with the complements and positive evaluations those same hotel chains received in other countries in the region, like the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Such differences in the tourism product that is sold leads us to think clearly about where the guilt lies, since the problems seems to be not so much the result of poor administrations but of the management on the Cuban side who owns the hotels and is responsible for the training and contracting of personnel to work there. The Cuban side is also responsible for supply mechanisms and for abiding by the financial commitments that the foreign side has accepted because they are obligated for mere political reasons to sell on the national market part of its tourism product in currency that has no value, such as the Cuban peso.
“We cannot do any more with what we have,” admits the director of another four-star hotel in Varadero under condition of anonymity. His hotel is a target, also, of negative criticism on social networks.
Our source states: “You’ll find different opinions, all of them justified. Some clients arrive the week we received delivery of supplies, but others arrive when we have nothing (…), it’s not always because of mistakes, but because of plans that are made based on the number of foreign clients. When the deals are completely in national currency, everything gets adjusted to that currency. The differences lie therein.”
However, José Luis, a worker at the Arenas Doradas Hotel, indicates that the reason for the poor quality of services is the general discontent of workers due to their low wages and to the fact that the national clientele leaves very little profit margin. He also stated that, even for foreigners, the deals offered were not the best they could be, neither was there variety in the last days of the year. He feels that this crisis will extend for a longer period of time.
“The greatest criticism is toward the services, the mistreatment, the fact that staff feels bad, they receive no stimulus, they leave because there’s nothing to find. There’s practically no maintenance personnel, sometimes we have to clean the swimming pools ourselves because cleaning staff that is contracted leaves after a week, there is only one worker left for all the maintenance. It’s not like before (…). One compensated with the tips or with whatever one could hustle here and there. Cubans not only leave no tips, but they come to raid the place. Cubans take very seriously the “all included” clause, and will hustle even for a sliver of soap. They are like leaf-cutter ants and leave nothing behind along their trail (…). Foreign clients are given priority, but they don’t get different food, it’s the same, the problem is that there is nothing available, I wish you could see the warehouses, it will make you want to cry, we cook whatever there is on a daily basis. And nothing will improve. Things will get worse,” is this worker’s conclusion.
For the moment, the stories will not cease on social networks about the bad experiences tourists have in several hotel facilities in the island. With the goal of avoiding or alleviating these bad experiences, groups are created on Facebook and WhatsApp, where people search for advice or issue warnings, as the last resort left in a country where the regime controls everything to its benefit, and to the detriment of the majority. Make no mistake about it: the customer is seldom right.
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