Keep in mind this hotel was built in the 1500's, so the rooms are small and poorly lit. It is charming, if you like old convents. We didn't expect luxury, and we were not disappointed. Our room had a peculiar smell to it. Staff very friendly and accommodating. Because I believe this hotel is just average, I will seek another place to stay in Puebla.

My family and my sister-in-laws family (2 adults and 2 kids in each family) stayed at the Camino Real in Puebla at the end of August. We booked 3 rooms for 2 nights on-line and when we arrived after a five hour bus ride from Oaxaca, were told that they could not honour our reservation for the 1st night because they had guest stuck in Puebla because they could not fly out to Cancun due to the Hurricane. These guests were scheduled to fly out the following day so they would have room for us for the 2nd night of our reservations. Although disappointed, I understood and appreciated the Hotel's actions. They arranged for us to stay at the Nh Hotel (several blocks away) and had their van drive us all over there. In the morning, the van came by and brought all our bags back to the Camino Real, and the hotel had our bags put into storage until we checked in later that afternoon. I guess they felt bad about the inconvenience because they put us up in 3 beautiful, large rooms with large washrooms. Obviously, these were not the "standard" rooms that we had booked and we enjoyed the upgrade. The Hotel is beautiful but the lighting is not very bright in the evenings and I can only imagine how someone who may not be very steady on their feet, would handle the uneven floors. We did not eat at the restaurant as we thought the price was high. The front desk was helpful in arranging our 1st night at the Nh Hotel (everything was taken care of and the Nh Hotel was ready and waiting for us). We enjoyed our stay in Puebla and at the Camino Real and would stay there again but not at the full rack rate (we paid $69 US for each room).

I stayed in this hotel for Christmas, and even they were very helpful setting up an extra table for Christmas dinner, (there were no more tables available), I was very disappointed with the room, it is old, you can easily notice the lack of maintenance, and it was worst because I compared the hotel with the Camino Real Oaxaca, both are the same brand and both are considered colonial hotels, but there is a huge difference between the 2 of them.

The hotel is in a beautiful historic building that has been well-maintained and preserved. The fact that it was a convent also means that it is somewhat austere. There is no landscaping in the huge courtyard, and no place to sit down and relax, except on on couch in the small lobby area. It would be nice if the hotel put seats outside each of the guest rooms that open out onto the courtyard. This would be a particularly nice amenity for quests given the fact that many of the rooms lack windows, other than the windows that are part of the doors that open out onto the interior courtyard. One wierd thing about the way the hotel quotes prices on their website--they quote a price in U.S. dollars, but then run the charge through in pesos. I don't have a problem with this in itself, but they convert to pesos at a artificial exchange rate that means that, in effect, you are not paying, say $135, but, rather, about $142. I know that the difference is small, but I find the whole thing very sneaky and unbecoming of a large hotel chain. You expect to pay a commission of some type when a hotel actually exchanges currency for you, but here all they are doing is quoting a price in dollars and not actually exchanging anything. If they want to quote a price in dollars, they should run it through in dollars, or in pesos at the official exchange rate. When you add on the cost to the guest of having the pesos charged on his credit card converted into U.S. dollars, the real cost per night iof a $135 quote is closer to $146. I discovered this when I checked out and found that I was being charged 1450 pesos per night for a room quoted at $135. When I asked about it, the manager agreed to reduce the bill. Normally, I like staying in hotels in historic buildings, but in this case, I think I would have preferred the NH Hotel in Puebla, It is a beautiful, new, sleek, and very modern building.