“Scammed”, that’s how Giselle Muñoz feels after spending the end of the year at the Hotel Grand Memories in Cayo Santa María, north of the province of Villa Clara. The Cuban tried to get out of the routine on December 31 last and only found shortcomings and disappointments at every step in the state facility, as reported in Facebook in a text accompanied by a video.
Organizational problems were added to the supply problems of the five-star and all-inclusive hotel, as read on the promotional pages. After waiting hours for the room to be delivered, Muñoz says on his Facebook profile that when he entered he found that it was occupied. “The luck was that there was no one coming out of the bathroom naked or in another more embarrassing situation.”
“I quickly left and went back to the folder,” continues Muñoz, adding that he was able to settle in with his family at 7 pm in another room. “The air conditioning did not cool, the refrigerator did not cool, the shower did not have hot water, the television did not have a remote control or it was visible because it had a split screen, and the coverings smelled like a mouse nest,” he describes.
The young woman, a resident of Sancti Spíritus, went back down to the reception and asked to speak to the hotel managers: “so that they would give me my money back because it was December 31st and I had not yet settled in the hotel. They told me no you could, the most they could do was give me a few more hours to stay on the day of my departure “.
“It is unnecessary to remember that money is ‘very hard’ to get to throw it away like this, it is not five pesos, it is a lot of money”
Even with much disgust, Muñoz had no choice but to go to the end of the year dinner that the hotel had prepared, but if he thought for a second that the stumbling blocks were over, he quickly fell into a rage. The shortage that is spreading through the island’s markets has also reached the hotels.
“No pork, no food, practically, no staff to serve and supply the number of customers,” describes the young woman what she experienced in the restaurant. He also remembers that “people were anxiously waiting for apples and grapes”, because, he insists, customers paid “a nutritional supplement that included fruits, fruits that I never saw”.
“Several people had to go into the kitchen to claim the food and fruits and then a cook came out to distribute a sad box of grapes for so many customers,” as can be seen in a video that Muñoz shared on his social networks, according to what he says. , “so that no one dares to say that it is a lie.”
“There were blows, shoves and everything never seen before by a handful of grapes, which in the end all fell to the ground because the same people broke the box trying to take them away.”
“It is worth remembering that money is very hard to get to throw it away like that, it’s not five pesos, it’s a lot of money, “insists Muñoz.
Last December 24Another client who identified herself as Rachel Cruz on the Tripadvisor platform also complained about the poor quality of the food and the organization at the Grand Memories in Cayo Santa María. According to his account, his visit on Christmas Eve turned into a “nightmare”, into a “complete madness”.
“My girls were knocked down to get an apple from the buffet. For my little boy there was nothing suitable for his food. We tried to go to eat and we spent three long hours in the endless queues. You asked for something and he was exhausted. The food cold and poorly prepared “, he describes.” Terrible, I do not recommend it to anyone. “
Something similar lived Gina, who worked hard all year 2021 in her position in a Miami pharmacy with the illusion of saving for the end of the year with her family in Cuba. The plan seemed perfect: sun and sand on the most famous beach in Cuba, Varadero. Along with her brother, two nieces and her mother, the emigrant arrived in the last week of December at the Roc Arenas Doradas hotel in the Matanzas peninsula.
“I was going to rest and give a fun time to my family but we ended up fighting for the food and stressed by the queues”
“I spent the four days queuing, queuing for the buffet, queuing for breakfast and queuing at the reception to leave my complaints,” Gina laments. The hotel, managed in a mixed way by the Cuban State and the Spanish chain Roc Hotels, has four stars that some clients question. “It gave me the impression that they had accepted more guests than the amount of food they could have.”
“The very limited food options and the very poor preparation, but the worst thing for me was to see that as soon as they noticed that I was a Cuban living in Miami, they treated me very differently from how they spoke to my mother, my brother and my friends. nephews”. For Gina, “it was frustrating that I was going to rest and give my family a fun time but we ended up fighting for the food and stressed by the queues.”
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