Mexico hotel star ratings: Are they real?

It was a couple of weeks ago that I decided my kid should get some pool time before the start of school. How could I make this happen?

First, I needed to make it happen in Veracruz. My partner has been working there for a few months now, and we wanted to hang out with him. Besides that, swimming in a place where the water isn’t ice cold was also a priority!

But public pools aren’t really a “thing” around here, and water parks in my area — balnearios — tend to be either really pricey or really grimy. Both, of course, are always crowded.

Some hotels will offer a day pass to use their pools, which is what we typically use in Xalapa. This usually consists of either a flat per-person payment or a consumo mínimo, a minimum per-person restaurant bill. The fancy hotel I had in mind, sadly, was 800 pesos for just an adult day pass. Yikes!

I initially began looking around the Facebook pages of the downtown hotels I knew of. This is, I’ve found, the best way to figure out which hotels you can swim at without having to pay for a room. Soon, though, I had a better idea: why not just book a room and be able to nap and relax right there after? Besides, this would also give us two days of pool time — kind of. I congratulated myself on my genius idea and got to searching.

I settled on a hotel right in downtown Veracruz that showed a four-star rating. The pictures of the pool were gorgeous, and indeed, the pool was gorgeous, if simple. And the deal was fantastic, especially given the rating. Score!

The lobby was grand, the staff friendly. They let me park in their hotel parking and start using the pool before check-in time, keeping our bags behind the desk. Because I do not wish to bad mouth the hotel to everyone, I will not be naming it. This article is simply a quick heads up regarding a lesson I learned there: hotel star ratings aren’t actually standardized. That means that who or what has determined a star rating is anyone’s guess: it might even be the hotels themselves.

I suppose I should have been suspicious when the price of a four star hotel seemed so reasonable. But there’s construction work being done around it, so I figured they were lowering their prices temporarily to get people in the door.

It’s not the first time giving the benefit of the doubt hasn’t worked out for me.

Again, the lobby was beautiful. So far, so good. The front-desk staff was nice enough, but dressed casually. Hmm, I thought. Well, it is hot out there. When they stashed my bag on the floor behind the desk, though, I started to feel suspicious.

But no matter! They were going to let us use the pool! We grabbed our swimsuits, asked for some towels and headed over.

Absent dressing rooms near the pool, we changed in a regular bathroom, careful to not let our clothes fall into the toilet. Not the most comfortable situation, but whatever. Accustomed to luxury hotels I am not. And besides, my kid had the time of her life in that pool!

When we retrieved the room key and headed up by the old, rickety, elevator, I became suspicious. Four stars for a hotel that has clearly not been updated in the past 30 years?

The room was pretty to look at. But there weren’t enough towels, the beds and pillows were rock-hard and the bathroom had not been thoroughly cleaned.

Later I called down to reception on the ancient phone for room service, but the scannable menus were evidently not the ones they had down in the restaurant. No, I would not like to pay 450 pesos for three empanadas and a cup of tea.

The biggest sin to me, however, was the absence of a coffee maker. No fridge or microwave I could live with, but this was unforgivable.

We made the best of it, and I grouchily waited to leave for breakfast to get coffee.

But my kid —  she loved it. She looked right past the grimy bathroom with nary a bathmat in sight, and relished the bathtub. She slept soundly.

In the end, I think I got about what I paid for.

But if we stay there again, I’m packing my coffee maker.

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.