Hotel Albemarle

I only leave negative feedback when I feel there’s a huge gap between what the hotel claims and delivers. The guidebook recommendation to stay here is outdated and inaccurate. They are charging three star prices for a bad hostel experience ||To start on a positive the location is excellent, the beach is right there, and the hotel staff (excluding the manager) were fantastic. The concierges were helpful and super kind. ||The negatives, however, vastly outweigh the positive. First, the hotel is infested with bugs. Our bed? Ants. The bedroom floor? Ants. The breakfast buffet…hope you like ants in your bowls and flies and gnats with your toast. |I’m sure the manager will argue that it’s a rural hotel and so bugs are expected. The occasional bug absolutely, but this is an infestation. For example, we left a wet swimsuit for an hour on the bathroom counter and came back to it covered with thousands of ants. We stayed at other beach side hotels ON Galapagos with zero bug issues. The problem is with the hotel. ||The hotel lacks basic amenities one would see in a hostel. The ocean side view room doesn’t have any chairs to sit in to enjoy the view. Your options are the bed or floor. Good luck if you want to try to open your doors to admire the view or smell. The balconette doors are so rusty and unsafe to open it required the front desk to close. The hotel doesn’t offer any beach chairs or loungers like the other hotels do down the street. Can you rent a beach umbrella? Of course not. Why would a beach hotel offer basic beach amenities? ||Well at least I can get a peaceful night sleep right? Well, if ants in the bed don’t bother you, I hope you don’t need dark to sleep because you won’t have it. The curtains don’t fully cover the window and there are glaring Christmas lights right outside. Not to mention the lack of privacy. And this was one of the rooms we upgraded to. Our first room literally had no windows and looked and smelled like a jail cell. ||The WiFi is straight up unusable. Yes, it’s remote but the WiFi was better and fully functional on the shuttle boat in the middle of the ocean. We also had totally fine WiFi elsewhere on the island.||The pool is decorative, unheated, and gross. They don’t lock the hotel and there is no one there overnight to ensure security. I don’t care how safe it is, the hotel should be locked at night. The decor and fixtures are dated to the 1970s. They make it look like there’s a restaurant on site. There isn’t. It’s a sister hotel you have to walk to. I’m pretty sure the breakfast buffer gave my wife food poisoning. ||Finally, when we left three days early the manager refused to refund our money as a normal hotel would. ||In short, if you plan on spending anytime on Isabella at your hotel relaxing or lounging at the beach stay somewhere else! This hotel gets every little thing horribly wrong.

Excellent location. Room was a generous size but smelt musty and damp. The room's internal location near the cleaner's service room was noisy at times, especially with the single window open. We loved our Isle Isabela experience but wouldn't choose this hotel again, considering value for money.

Location is great and staff were awesome. But had issues with our room like showers were hard to set at a temperature. They are either scolding hot or cold. Rooms were clean and beds were great and we slept very well.

Lovely hotel in the centre of town. The beds are amazingly comfortable and the view over the coast from the sea view rooms is amazing. The small pool area in the courtyard is very relaxing. Water refill points are available throughout the hotel.

My friend and I stayed here for two nights. The good parts about this hotel included the great location on the beach, and the staff was very helpful in planning tours in advance of our visit. However, the quality of the rooms was far lower than should be for the price we paid. The bathroom in our room was atrocious. There was mold all over the shower walls, rust all over the mirror and sinks, one of the sinks leaked on your feet when you ran it, and overall smelled very bad. We complained about these issues to the staff and got no apologies, a simple “would you like a different room”. We changed rooms and the new room had a broken toilet handle and the bathroom also smelled, though slightly better. Another thing to note is the noise from town carries very well into the hotel, so if you’re a light sleeper I might look somewhere else. This all was very unacceptable for the price we paid for the hotel.

Very nice hotel with an ocean view. Nice pool. Breakfast was good. Friendly staff. All great!

Was a great place to stay on Isabela Island! The room was super spacious, and being right on the beach was such a bonus—we could hear the waves at night, which was amazing. It’s really close to restaurants, and Concha de Perla was just a 15-minute walk away (or a quick taxi ride away). The staff were super helpful, arranging a trip for us and even offered custom breakfast items (the regular breakfast was pretty simple). The bathroom was basic, but it did the job. Overall, it’s a great spot for a beachy, convenient stay!

We LOVED our stay at the Albemarle. The rooms (including the bathrooms) were recently updated and are gorgeous, we had a stunning view of the beach, and Gabriela took great care of us. We’ve heard that some people commented on the noise, but we found that closing our bathroom door (that has small open windows close to the ceiling for venting and gave out on the pool area) fixed the issue. We found it to be excellent value for your money. The second photo is a view of the hotel walking back from the restaurant on the pier.