A missing hotel in Puerto Rico

Note: If you’re among the few who subscribe to this blog and forgot. Hi. 👋 We’ve done some travel post-pandemic, but I haven’t been good about writing since before. Trying to get back at it, maybe even catch up on some missed trips eventually.

We had chosen India for our next trip. It’s a large and hectic country, so we decided to travel with Intrepid so that we would have someone else taking care of all the details. 

Of course, that was before the Indian government was alleged to have ordered some assassinations, including one in Canada, and then got really pissy when it was suggested that maybe this wasn’t ok. So, no visas to visit India for us Canadians, and here we are in Puerto Rico. 

While Puerto Rico is much smaller and more laidback than India, we still opted to travel with Pacifica Aventuras rather than go it alone. We had so much fun with Kolt in Nicaragua that we couldn’t pass up the chance to travel with him again. 

Kolt was waiting when we landed in San Juan. He took us straight to a beach and handed me a cold beer as we sat in the sand.

We were off to a good start, already in full vacation mode. After a swim, we headed to the hotel. 

Umm, where did the hotel go?

You would think that if a hotel is going to change its name, they might, you know, inform the guests prior to their arrival. Not the hotel formerly-but-kind-of-still known as the Sheraton Old San Juan. 

While most of our trip was planned by Kolt, we had gone off script with the first hotel and booked it ourselves as we had some loyalty points to use. Everything seemed to be following the standard process. We got the email to check in on the app before arrival. Done. Used Google Maps to get from the beach to the hotel. Done. 

Except, when we arrived at the address, there was no Sheraton. Maybe Google Maps was wrong? After circling the block a few times, we were pretty sure that the blue building with “The Rumbao” on top of it was the same one that was a yellow building with “The Sheraton” on top in the photos. Maybe they moved and hadn’t updated the website, or you know, guests?

We asked at the Walgreens in the bottom of the building: “Oh, yeah, they moved,” was his response. Confused, we called the hotel. The guest services line went unanswered to a full voicemail box. The reservations line went to some poor guy in Omaha who just gave us the same address and seemed very confused by our questions. 

Eventually, Google pointed us to a LinkedIn page for Hotel Rumbao, which linked to the Sheraton Old Town San Juan. It turns out that this is just the world’s worst rebranding/renovation of a hotel.

Entering the lobby wasn’t reassuring. There was caution tape and tarps everywhere and the front desk was a fold-up table. It looked like a mashup of a boiler room call centre and something Dexter would set up. 

The worst part, in my opinion, is that the confusion could easily have been avoided with a quick email to an incoming guest and a banner on the website. “We’re going through some exciting changes and getting a new name. The Sheraton Old San Juan is becoming Hotel Rumboa. It will be great when it’s done but please excuse the mess in the meantime.” One marketing person and a project manager could fix this very easily. But what do I know? 

It wasn’t all bad. The room was fine and we quickly settled and crashed for some sleep before an early start the next morning.