Hotel Boutique Naif

The staff was friendly. Richard was very helpful and was easy to communicate to because he speaks English well. The coffee and sweet bread were very good and the facility was alway clean. The hotel and the area the hotel is in feels very safe. From the hotel there is a beautiful view of the volcanos which was relaxing to look at in the early mornings. I would definitely stay again!

Great staff, great location, great views, etc. Went there about a week ago, arrived at around 1pm so they held our luggage while we walked around (you can let them know in advance and pay $10 per hour if you want to check in early). No a/c in the room but they did have a fan. January weather was perfect because it gets cool at night so not sure how hot it gets without a/c in the summer. The water in the shower heats up a lot at night when the weather is colder and doesn't heat up much during the day. Breakfast is at the restaurant right across from the hotel and it was delicious. They do couples massages for about $35 per person and it was GREAT. Shuttle to and from the airport was $25 per person but we paid $17 for an uber to take us to and from. No currency exchange nearby but they have ATMs, although they charge a high fee.

Pros: spacious, clean rooms surrounding a charming garden. Breakfast on the terrace, friendly, helpful staff, central location near to everything, they made me breakfast to go when i had an early start. Cons: terrible acoustics, I could hear my upstairs neighbours bodily functions. Anyone walking past the room may as well have been in there with me. All of which challenged sleep.

We stayed at Naif for a couple of nights and - other than the Wi-Fi which was very weak in the rooms, we were happy with the hotel and service when first arriving. They allowed us to change rooms to one with more natural light and offered us free complementary breakfast at Hector’s across the road - a great cafe/bar. However, things went bad when we had some laundry done by the hotel. We had to fill in a form listing our items - in total we had slightly less than a shopping/carrier bag of clothes. We presumed the prices were in Guatemalan quetzal as that would have come to a total of Q120 - equivalent to UK£12.35 or US$15.30. This is consistent with every other hotel in central and South America where we have had laundry done in the last 12 months (five countries in total). However, when we picked up the laundry we were shown the small-print on the form that said the price was actually in $USD, meaning we owed them $120 for one shopping bag of laundry. We could not believe it and could not understand how/where this cost had come from. We asked to speak to the manager on the phone but she only insisted that it was hotel policy and our fault for not reading the small print. We acknowledged this fault but politely tried to understand why it was so expensive. However, when we asked her this she then accused us of ‘insulting’ her and the hotel - a very bizarre way to talk to customers. We refused to pay and continued requesting an explanation for the cost over email - asking to see an invoice for the company that had laundered the clothes… or anything that could help us understand. We were told it came from ‘gas, electricity, specialist cleaning products, etc’ which felt completely nonsense. She then offered us a discount ($85 rather than $120) but said it would have to come out of her pocket. Again, we asked what would be coming out of her pocket - what cost? But she continued to dismiss us and blamed us for not checking the form close enough - at one point even saying ‘every mistake comes with a consequence’ - just one example of the aggressive and unprofessional way that we were spoken to. In the end, we settled on $45 - on the condition that we could cancel our remaining nights’ stay without being charged a cancellation fee. $45 is still crazily expensive for one shopping bag of laundry but with our credit card details on file, there was not much we could do. So watch out if you stay at Naif. The hotel is nice but these costs - and the way we were spoken to when politely asking for an explanation - were not ok.