Tourist Etiquette in Mexican Hotels

If you don't speak Spanish well enough, the very first problems you will encounter when trying to deal with Mexican hotels will be when you try making a reservation in an area of Mexico outside the Prime Tourist Locations. When I was doing the research for "A Walk Through Mexico's Crown Jewel," I interviewed the staff at a fairly nice hotel in Guanajuato. I was introduced to a young college-aged girl who had a fairly good grasp of English. She was, however, only a part-time employee. No other hotel employees spoke English.

Even a casual reading of some of the online tour sites will show complaint after complaint regarding the "lack of English" in the hotel staff. What these forums spell out by the frumpy and discontented is they called the hotel; they were assured in broken English from the person on the phone that everything was a-ok with their reservation, and then when they managed to show up, everything was NOT a-ok.

One lady wrote in a very popular online travel forum that she was incensed first of all that she had to walk to her hotel in Guanajuato. Everyone seems to want to stay in the hotels that are in the El Jardin area because of their central location. There is little to no curbside service where these hotels are located. You will have to walk a little. Then, the woman complained that there was no elevator and she had to walk some more. Her overall summary of her experience in hotel in an area of Mexico not in the Prime Tourist Location was that, "They not only screwed up our hotel reservation but I know they really spoke English but were pretending they don't."

Tourist Etiquette Lesson # 1