Originally Posted by
mykel67
The R & C property there is the most expensive R & C property I’ve ever come across!
If you're talking about Awasi, I highly recommend it! Been to Atacama thrice, and stayed in the Awasi twice, and the service has always managed to delight. It feels a lot more private and luxurious than Explora in execution. While Explora runs group tours and is in the habit of saying "no" to anything that diverges from their preset plans (even things that we had agreed to prior in writing!), Awasi assigns each room a private guide and tends to be more accommodating. This culture permeates to the rest of the service staff as well. Just some examples:
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- We were organizing a particularly complex border crossing from Salinas Grandes at the tail end of COVID border closures. No one had requested such in a long while. The Awasi reservations staff based in Santiago were flailing and of no use after a week's back-and-forth. We wrote to the GM of Awasi Atacama in frustration, and the entire transfer was sorted within a day, and entirely comped. Excellent service recovery.
- We don't drink, and are very used to disappointed looks from sommeliers. The sommelier at Awasi (Alvaro?) took it upon himself to present us an array of teas and infusions for dinner, and even let us try a homemade experiment on the last day. When we mentioned that we liked his infusions, he gave us a small assortment of teabags filled with his creations on our checkout day.
- At their Iguazu property, we enjoyed the chef's homemade sriracha, and mentioned offhand that it'll be great to see it at the other properties. They improvised with some different chiles found in the desert, and had a different homemade sriracha available upon our arrival in Atacama.
- While different guides have quirky personalities that may or may not jive with one's personal preferences (haha is it just me?), they have always been exceedingly earnest. They've held my mother's hand on tricky ridge hikes, made multi-hour drives to Calama when my partner came down with a toothache, and randomly stopped by roadsides to pick peppers for me to taste when I made an offhand remark about them.
I've seen the odd review on Tripadvisor asserting that Awasi tries to get bad reviews expunged, but my personal experiences have been excellent.