This place is unbelievable. My father and I had been staying at Hotel Centroamericano a few blocks away when I suggested we book a night at Bahia Suites for a change of scenery, as it was only $10 more for an extra half-star (whatever sense that made). I used my iPhone to book a room for the next night and went to sleep. When we arrived, the gal behind the desk kept looking at the computer and said she couldn't find the reservation, but she was behaving very suspiciously, whispering into the ear of her colleague. I showed the confirmation email to her on my phone. Still acting strangely, she said ok and gave us two room keys. We put our luggage into our GROSS, disreapaired room, for which the /only/ lights were oppressive bare compact fluorescents on the ceiling above the beds perfectly positioned to glare into the eyes of anyone lying in his or her back, and ventured out for a long, exhausting day to the Gatun locks, Castillo San Lorenzo, and surrounding areas, noting the comparative nastiness (not a square foot of clean wall in the building, sketchy arrangement of furniture to conceal holes on walls, etc) of the hotel with its inexplicable extra half-star over the clean, handsome interior of Hotel Centralamericano. When we returned exhausted, the 20-something gal Abril F. behind the counter signaled us to tell us with a huge smile that there was a problem with our reservation and that I should take another look at the confirmation email. I did, and realized that when I booked the room, I had booked it for that night, now the previous night. Because the hotel was so vacant and it was no loss to them, there was an awkward moment of confusion because it should go without saying that they could understand the mistake owning to the peculiar date (Feb 28th) and credit us for the night we checked in. This is where things got outrageous. The gal behind the counter, Abril, absolutely unmistakably took pleasure in informing us that no such credit would be given, regardless of the fact that the hotel has differed no loss whatsoever. When we said okay then, we'll go get our luggage and sleep elsewhere, she took even greater pleasure in informing us that we would not be allowed to recover our luggage from the room it was moved to(!!!) unless we paid for an additional night. There is no way to exaggerate this: her confident extreme snarkiness, her ear-to ear grin, her exaggerated cutesy voice sarcasm, barely suppressing laughter, was unbelievable. This woman is a lunatic. Neither of us could believe our eyes to confront such gratuitous malice. The only way to imagine her mannerisms is to imagine a person finally in a power position above the perpetrator of some terrible atrocity done to her family decades ago. We were exhausted and needed to get to sleep in advance of a long drive the next day, so instead of calling the police, we just handed over a credit card, got new keys, loaded our luggage into our car, and called hotels.com to dispute the charge, a frustrating, fruitless process that exposed multiple lies on the part of the Hotel Bajia Suites staff, most significantly that she necessarily knew the mistake I had made before she allowed us to check in that morning. The dispute was left unresolved because the agent repeatedly telephoned the hotel while I stood in the lobby on hold only for Abril to refuse to answer their calls, all the while grinning from ear to ear as she looked straight into my eyes.
While I disputed the charger the phone in the lobby, my father took a short nap in the room, and it is important to note that my view of the physical condition of the hotel itself is not colored by this event. Both rooms were absolutely disgusting.
My extremely well traveled father was so put off by this outrageous event that I had to spend the next day convincing him not to fly home early. Neither of us can quit talking about how these people acted toward us, and we both are exceptionally polite people who go out of their way to embrace other cultures and spread friendliness. We are amazed. Beware!
