Hotel Awa

This hotel sits right on the edge of the lakeside with views across to a volcano, makes best use of views with floor to ceiling glass windows. Excellent hotel with good restaurant and friendly staff. Very comfortable room looking out over the water. Hotel on lakeside road about thirty minutes from Puerto Varas, we took the local bus into town as it stops outside hotel, only 500 pesos each way per, person, worth a visit. Used the pool once, bit on the cold side! Can book trips and activities from the hotel if required as there is a travel desk. Nice hotel for relaxing stay out on it’s own.

Having endured a highly unpleasant and intimidating check in, we were shown to a wonderfully appointed suite overlooking Lake Llanquihue and Volcan Osorno. Having only recently been built, the hotel has a modern design with rough concrete as a key structural feature throughout. Sadly, for us, it soon became evident that the AC emitted a sharp, penetrating buzz at intervals of a few minutes. Despite the best attempts of the maintenance team over the next 2 days, the fault could not be rectified, though it was much improved. It transpired that the problem is a long-standing one and widespread. The hotel readily offers ear plugs to guests! During our 4-night stay other maintenance issues also came to light. The other issue was noise from other guests: the design of the rooms is such that the fireplace opens into a flue, which travels from top to bottom of the hotel – thus one is exposed to every guest’s arguements, amorous overtures and, most disturbing, screaming youngsters! When one is expecting to enjoy a fine dinner, with stunning views of the Lake and Volcano Osorno, it is disappointing to be confronted with an overly rich, pretentious menu of mediocre quality food. Further, it was mainly served by pretentious, inexperienced staff (though there were notable exceptions) – one charged us for 3 bottles of wine (c.f. 3 glasses!). The breakfast buffet is extremely cramped and becomes overwhelmed (and depleted). We feel much saddened to write this review as the owner / manager is very attentive and willingly offered us some recompense for the problems we had encountered - but that was not our goal in choosing the Hotel Awa!

This is a spectacular experience. The views and location are exceptional. Very friendly and welcoming staff. By second day everyone from managers to wait staff knew our names and went over and above to make sure we were well taken care of. Very special hotel in a very special place.

10/10 stars! We loved our time here so much, I can’t say enough great things. Super easy pickup from the airport, greeted by Basillio as soon as we arrived, had the chance to plan our excursions, offered a delicious welcome drink and felt at home immediately. Everyone we encountered was pleasant and helpful. Our guides Jorge and Sebastian were fabulous. Susan was fantastic and took time to check on us daily and make us feel so special. The food was great as well. Special touches every time we turned around! Highly recommend the AWA for your stay in this beautiful area!! We will be back!

This is a lovely hotel in a beautiful setting on the lake with modern interesting architecture. The rooms are very comfortable and large. We have a terrific view of the lake and fireplace in the room. The staff has been terrific. The food has been excellent also. We enjoyed a massage and took advantage of the spa. They were helpful in suggesting excursions in the area. The hotel is probably 20 minutes from Puerto Varas which made it a peaceful location. We were also closer to hiking and the waterfalls which was nice. We had a car which made it easy to visit places but I think the hotel will also provide transportation.

We arrived at Awa and were pleasantly surprised by the beautiful contemporary architecture and a gorgeous room with spectacular views. But then things started to decline. We asked about various options for outings. The employee said you have to leave by 830 am in order to be back in time for lunch. We said we wanted to sleep in. She said if you start an outing late, you’ll miss lunch, but if you do an outing in the afternoon, you can make it back in time for dinner. We didn’t care about having lunch or dinner at the hotel the next day. So we attempted to have front desk get us a rental car to do outings on our own and they said none were available. Asked us what time we would be back for lunch and dinner, we said we won’t be eating in hotel Asked again about rental car, they said none available. Asked about arranging a driver, said yes, a driver would be there soon (this was at about 9:30 am). 10 am – arrived in lobby to wait for driver. The employee kept saying bad traffic, delays etc. We checked on uber, could get one in 45 minutes. We told front desk this. They said no, driver will be here soon. At noon, we said we’re getting an uber, Front desk said no no, he’s getting very close. At 12:45 front desk said 2 km away. Finally arrived at 1:10 pm (3+ hour wait) . The driver had his phone mounted to windshield, and we could see last message from Hotel Awa with heart emojis . All very suspicious. We had a nice afternoon with driver, took us to waterfalls and volcano, then arrived in Puerto Varas for dinner by 5pm. Day turned out ok in spite of Awa’s interference. After dinner, went to the room, wanted to shower, no hot water; called front desk, sent someone up. The woman let the water run for a long time and agreed that the water wasn’t hot. Said she would take care of it. The next morning, we woke up, still no hot water. Went down for breakfast, stopped at front desk, they said there was no note left about us not having hot water. Had breakfast again, ok except the gravlax that was good the first day was very fishy today. Went up to room, a man was in the room, once again checking to verify that the water wasn’t hot. I told him that this had been verified the night before. He showed me the hot water heater in a small closet outside of the room, said it had failed. He said it would be working in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes later, still no hot water. Time to leave for airport. Hotel apologized for lack of hot water and agreed to comp us the ride to the airport. Fine but would have really liked to have had a shower. Note about the in-room safe – they had one but it wasn’t attached to anything, so someone could just walk out with the safe full of valuables.