A Hotel In Granada Nicaragua I Don't Recommend - Hotel Dario

I loved my family trip to Granada, Nicaragua. It is a beautiful & colorful town with tons of surprises in every corner. For me it was a bit of a challenge & a mission, it was about achieving a fun family adventure and work. That is because many of my readers have been asking for recommendations on good hotels & activities in this Central American Country and I only recommend places I have visited & liked. So it was time to check it out!

As always the first thing I did was a research of hotels in the areas I wanted to visit to make sure I experience the best of Nicaragua. One of the hotels I contacted was Hotel Dario, I really liked the photos in their website, so I contacted them, after a few mails a date was arranged and my family was invited to come and visit the hotel for an afternoon.

My family and I were received by the public relations manager whose name is Daysi. She gave us a quick tour of the place. The first thing I noticed is that the rooms are quite small for the price they charge & no windows. I might have gotten that idea because I was staying at La Bocona Hotel where the prices where similar but the rooms a lot bigger so I couldn't avoid the comparisons.

However, it has a great location. It is on the main street of Granada & is surrounded by tons of restaurants. Although, be careful it can get super loud in the rooms since this is also the area for partying to all hours of the night.

All of those things weren't big issues for me but the real problem happened when invitation they made before to have complimentary meal was completely null and void when Daysi conveniently told the waiter - take care of her and left never mentioning our correspondences.

These kind of professional meetings are very important for me because that is how I build relationships with the managers of the places I visit. After we were done eating I decided to give the waiter a very generous tip, instead of a thank you I received a bill of what we had just consumed. To which I replied by telling him that I was invited. My first thought was: That's fine, obviously there was a small communication breakdown. So I said, no problem let's talk to Daysi.

When I talked to her she said that it was a lie (I have all the mail we had sent to each other) and I have to talk to the general manager. For me this was not a big deal because I didn't really care about paying for what we just ate & meeting the general manager was a good thing since we were in the process of creating a relationship.

So they called him and he instantly came on me with an attitude. "What's going on here?" he spoke loudly so that the staff would cringe at his voice. I asked him to go to the office so we could talk, explained the situation to him & told him that I'd be happy to talk business with him. But he decided to yell even louder: "I don't care what you talked about before, I am the only one who has any say here and I never heard of you." (he was CC ed on every email and I have proof of that too)

Even after I asked him a couple of times to go into his office to discuss it he continued yelling and playing the role of the alpha male, to the point that a few patrons who were sitting in the lobby had to leave. He even yelled: "YOU ARE RUINING MY BLESSED SUNDAY!"

Whatever the problem was it could have been dealt with in the privacy of his office. There was no need to act like an arrogant man who disrespects perspective customers that might bring him even more clients.

To me a hotel is much more than a place to stay. It's about the service and how my costumers will be treated. Plus, can you imagine how a bigger or true problem would be solved at this hotel? I'd hate to see that!

After traveling to many countries and staying in countless hotels I never found such horrible & unprofessional owners, managers and staff members.

Bottom line: I DO NOT recommend staying at this hotel to anyone! There are so many other wonderful options where the staff welcomes you with open arms.