BMB Suites Apartamentos

Used BMB apartments for 4 days on and off between travelling around the country. As a base to see the city this was perfect, the rooms were cleaned to a high standard and of good basic quality. Bear in mind the price this is not a luxury hotel - the shower and bathroom was to a good clean standard and the apartment comes with a kitchen sink, tv, fridge and safe; there is a swimming pool but it does get busy with residents from the rest of the apartment block. Location is right in the heart of the city with alot of restaurants cafes and a supermarket within walking distance. The main plus with these apartments were the BMB staff, our main point of contact were Valeria and Juan who spoke English (Santiago is Spanish speaking with most not speaking a lick of English)and made our stay much more productive than if we had opted for another guest house or even hotel. All in all I would definitely recommend BMB for a stay in Santiago.

BMB Suites is not in any way, shape, or form, a hotel. It is instead an apartment rental service. On their website where we booked our stay, a pleasant lobby is pictured but this is nothing but a deception. In actuality this lobby belong to the "Huerfanos 1400" building and is not associated with BMB Suites. When we first entered "Huerfanos 1400" we immediately smelled a strong wreak of flatulence and it turns out that day the building had a sewage leak. This would be the first of many red flags. The next would come when we entered the elevator. Here we saw posters warning of cockroaches and active fumigation in the apartments (see pictures). Locating the reception office was difficult; it was on the second floor of building B in an unmarked room indistinguishable from other apartment rooms on that floor. There was no sign on the door to even indicate a place of business was present. The reception was helpful enough but English was quite limited and some staff members did not speak any. Once in our room we discovered a number of disappointments. The windows were very dirty and covered in grime on the outside. There were mysterious stains on every single chair in the kitchen, as well as several large ones on the carpet throughout the apartment. Mold was also apparent in several spots on the walls of the apartment (see pictures). On turning on the bathroom light we were greeted by the intense continual shriek of the broken bathroom fan; both a ridiculous and hilarious event. And the WiFi was also junk. There were so many competing access points - over twenty - in the building using the same spectrum (2.4 ghz) that the interference was so strong that I could barely get any access even a couple of feet from the router. Forget streaming anything, even browsing was impossible. We also encountered cockroaches, one appearing in the bed room, and one in the kitchen several hours into our stay. Fed up we decided to cancel our four night stay and approached management with our list of complaints. This proved impossible however, as the cancellation policy prohibited us from even receiving a single day's refund. In fairness we knew what we signed, but a hospitable service will make concessions if their accommodations are unacceptable or defective. Incidentally, the hot water was turned off in the building that night due to maintenance - a good hotel might not even rent out rooms for that day. One infuriating aspect to BMB Suites was the amount of work it took to communicate with management after we had checked out. The individual at the service desk - lets call him N -, told us that only his manager "J" would be able to offer us a refund and that we should a) email him or b) come back later in the day. If this sounds bogus to you in today's world of cellphones, that's because it was. Therein started a long cat and mouse game where we continually tried to get in contact with J before finally giving up. Over a period of two weeks, we emailed the man multiple times, left our phone number with N several times, and continually called their office and for this effort, we never received even a single reply regarding our request for a possible refund. Can you comprehend how absurd a situation this was? Can you imagine if you had a serious issue with your stay and you had to "email" the manager for a resolution? And what if you had to chase management for days just because they decided not to show up or because they could not be contacted under any circumstances? If a sewage leak, ongoing fumigation, cockroaches, dirty surroundings, and a lack of hot water are not enough to get management's attention, good luck with them helping you with anything else. We cannot strongly recommend enough avoiding this total con job. There are other places to stay that are close by and of similar cost that there is absolutely no compelling reason to choose BMB Suites.

I booked this hotel via British Airways holidays. I’m actually really surprised how this passed BA’s criteria. There are four blocks. When you arrive you have to find the office which is in zone B and not the main reception. Whilst I can say the staff were very kind and tried to be helpful, they don’t speak much English so you almost need to know some Spanish. My apartment was based on floor 20 in Zone A and you consistently have to wait long periods for a lift. The apartment was in very poor condition. The portable AC unit kept breaking down, utensils were broken. I was booked on a B&B basis but no breakfast or food was provided. There were no instructions or fire procedures and it felt unsafe. The safe had no batteries in to be able to use it so I had to purchase my own. The pool area on the roof was good, along with the downtown location and staff but in general, I don’t recommend this place to stay.