Casa Santurce

Price and location

Didnt have water for the first day (shower, sink, toilet)

The staff was good-nature, gracious, kind, friendly, hospitable, sociable, jovial, and devoted. Special mentioning to the manager Yvette who went beyond and above her duties as a manager and should have complete, 100%, control over the management of the property and running of the hostel. Noah and Lara, volunteers, are simply the best and making sure the guests are cared for and issues are voiced. These 3 hostel workers and the new friends I found kept me from leaving the hostel for other accommodations.

Upon my arrival, I was not given linens and a towel, which other guests received. Prior to my arrival, I specifically asked if the hostel has AC, the room has two small AC units that do not work and the filter appears to have never been changed. The light upon the sink did not work, the water was consistently off and when on it had little to no pressure, therefore often guest could not shower, wash their hand, or even flush the toilet. The walls did not go to the ceiling leaving a gap (uncomfortable because of the fear of animals coming in). The outdoor kitchen was extremely dirty, not sanitized, and often visited by insects, stray cats, and birds; the refrigerator was unkempt with spoiling foods; cabinets unkempt and dirty; no dishes and poor cooking equipment; stove barely function well enough to cook food. The hostel has no common area to sit other than a few chairs and tables in the outdoor kitchen area, which you can not sit when the sun is shining on the outdoor deck or raining. The outdoors steps to the 3rd floor have no covering and when it is raining there is no protection.

The volunteers that are left and the manager are great! Noah and Lara (the volunteers) are very friendly and making it a very nice and fun place to stay. Yvette (manager) does everything in her power to help out and make it a great stay if it wasn't for them and the awesome people I met I would not have stayed longer then 1 night

The real boss is all over the place and doesn't really know what he is doing. Everyday day there was trouble with the water and all the guest had to wait for hours for him to come and fix it so we could have a shower and could flush the toilet for a period of time before it was broken again. Showers were cold. When stuff got stolen his priority was hanging lamps instead of checking the cameras (what he still didn't do, so all our stuff is still missing and the thief is probably still in his hostel, but I guess that is not important enough). As soon as you talk about it the defense is: we don't have proof... NO, when you don't look at the cameras you don't know if you have proof. When things needed to be done the guests had to put pressure on him to ectually do something about it, where it obviously should have been done as soon as it came to his attention. After years of experience in hospitality it was painful to watch how poor this place is managed. My advise: put Yvette in complete charge of this place. She knows what she is doing and has a great sense for hospitality. She can make it a succes but as long as her hands are tied by all the weird priorities and rules of the bosses, this place is never gonna be as successful as it could be. I'm sure that at least 95% of the people who were there when I was there are never coming back to the hostel. It's a shame. But I would definitely reconsider as soon as I hear that Yvette took over the place as a real manager instead of the cleaninglady that they made of her now. In my eyes that isn't in a job description of a manager...