"Upon arriving at Barcelo, I was initially impressed with the hotel and the beautiful decor however, my disappointment started upon checking into my room. I had requested a single king bed for my boyfriend and I but was greeted with 2 double beds after entering the room. When I enquired about this, I was told that those rooms were completely booked. I found it distasteful that the check-in attendant didn’t at least make this clear to us during the check-in process, as if we were expected to take whatever was given to us. We should not have had to compromise our request because the hotel overbooked. However, we decided not to fight the matter since we were very tired from traveling.
Further, as black travelers, we are often concerned about racism when visiting new places, for our safety. We’ve been to a few countries and had different experiences but felt as though at Barcelo we were provided with an obvious difference in treatment when compared to the white/latino guests at the hotel. We were also the subject of many stares wherever we went. However, there were a few staff that were genuinely nice.
This has been our personal experience and we wanted to share this so other black travelers with the same concerns may at least be aware of what is likely to happen."
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