Hi there,
As you may have read in other posts, we decided to give Colombia one last chance after Bogotá and Medellín turned out to be crap. Also, I had visited Cartagena as a child and had no bad memories of the Walled City.
Initially we had planned to spend a month in Cartagena, then we thought of spending only two weeks and in the end, we decided that only one.
The cheapest we had seen was an accommodation for two weeks at $800 and it already seemed very expensive to us. Just when we went to book, it was no longer available, and we only had accommodations from $800 a week.
An absurd price to be Colombia, for the standard of living and for the salaries of that country.
We arrived and the first thing is that the host writes to tell me that the previous guests damaged the washing machine and that they would come the next day to fix it. She should have told me before the check-in in case I wanted to cancel the reservation.
Later, I realized that the apartment was very dirty and that there was even a snot stuck to one wall. I notified the host and sent her all the photos.
The next day she sent the cleaning lady and by noon the apartment was clean, and the washing machine fixed. The lady also apologized to me “because she didn’t know what had happened to her”.
I summarize the good / bad of the apartment:
The good
- Relatively well located to visit the Walled City on foot (30 min walking from the accommodation).
- Good internet: excellent speed and never crashed.
- Well equipped kitchen for long stays.
- 24h security which is extremely necessary in Colombia.
- Apartment was relatively new and spacious.
- Air conditioners worked well.
The bad
- Terrible cleanliness: dirty kitchen and even kitchenware, dirty floor, neither the cushions nor the bedspread were washed before our arrival, dusty surfaces.
- Very noisy. Despite being on the 28th floor, there was a lot of noise from traffic and buildings under construction.
- Very windy, which was a nightmare because there was an unbearable noise.
- To use the services such as gym, pool and sauna, you have to book through an app and there was very little availability. Then we realized that people did whatever they wanted without reservation.
- Too expensive for what it was.
- No workspace.
After this stay, I realized that the hosts of the Airbnb accommodations in Colombia care very little about how you are in the accommodation; once they receive the money, they forget about your existence. On Airbnb, it is normal for the host to write to you a couple of days after you arrived to see if you are okay and to know if you need anything. In Colombia that does not exist. In fact, they don’t even write to you to explain how to check-out, where to leave the keys or if someone comes to pick them up.
Paying so much money to have dirty and poor-quality accommodations with no hospitality.
But ATTENTION, I gave it 3 stars in the review, and I objectively pointed out the good and bad things as you have it in this post. Then I see that this miserable hostess left me a terrible review saying that I sent her photos of dirt and crumbs “that escaped the naked eye”.
You can appreciate the length of the review and the hate just because I told her the apartment was dirty. Also, I told her in the most sympathetic and understanding way possible because I know that sometimes cleaning services can fail. Also, I think it is in her interest as a hostess to know that they are not doing the service that she is supposedly paying for.
But the woman leaves me a review with all the intention that I cannot make more reservations on Airbnb. Really, you can’t be that miserable and evil.
Also, if you read the review, you realize that she is admitting that the apartment was dirty only that it doesn’t matter to her and that she is annoyed that I reported it. I wonder if her house is also full of crumbs and snot stuck to the walls.
This is another big problem Airbnb has. There are policies that encourage you to report cleaning failures to get a fix, whether it’s getting it cleaned for real or getting the cleaning fees back.
But if you do, you risk getting a bad review that can hurt all your future bookings. What happens then? That as guests we must shut up and bear all the crap and all the faults that the accommodation has.
Here I leave the link to my YouTube channel: