Where to stay in Mendoza: best areas and accommodation to be avoided!
Not sure where to stay in Mendoza, Argentina? I feel you! It’s not a minor decision. Check out this guide to the best areas to stay in Mendoza.
Looking for accommodation in Mendoza is not as easy as it may seem at first. Having been in the city several times, we got to know the best areas to stay in Mendoza and its surroundings (or neighborhoods) but, like the title says, we’ve not always had such luck with accommodation.
In this article we’ll tell you where to look for accommodation in Mendoza city and what you should avoid to have a positive experience. At the end of the article, we’ll propose options of stopovers in case you’re planning to travel through this beautiful Argentine province.
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Where to stay in Mendoza, Argentina: 4 best areas
The center as the best area to stay in Mendoza
If you want to be near tourist zones like restaurants and have great public transport connections, the best area to stay in Mendoza is the city center. In this area we’ll find accommodation suitable for all budgets, from economical lodgings to five-star hotels.
Speaking of location, we should look for hotels rather close to the main park, so that we’re near most things to do in Mendoza city.
Another good option would be the area of Avenida Arístides, where there’s plenty of bars and brewpubs, especially if we’re planning to go out at night (though it may be noisy if we’re light sleepers). Anyway, this area being very close to the center, you’ll be able to walk most of the time.
💯 Wherever you stay, I advise for you to go on this free walking tour (english) starting at Plaza Independencia, in the center of Mendoza, to learn more about the city when you arrive (or this city tour pick you up from your hotel). Highly recommended!
Recommended accommodation in the central area of Mendoza for different budgets:
- Park Hyatt, in front of the main park, five stars, one of the best hotels where to stay in Mendoza.
- Diplomatic, 300 meters away from the park, on Av. Belgrano, five-star hotel.
- Villagio hotel, three stars, 100 meters away from the park.
- Nutibara, 100 meters away from the park, three stars.
- Abril, economical option where to stay in Mendoza in the central area.
Chacras de Coria, accommodation in Mendoza near capital city
Chacras de Coria is a good alternative where to stay in Mendoza if we’re looking for a nice and more exclusive environment near the capital city.
It is located 12 km to the south of the city. There’re many private neighborhoods in this area, and lots of alternatives of good restaurants, such as Sr. Frog, Dantesco or El Gallego, depending on your tastes and budget.
Moreover, one of Chacras de Coria features is its wooded land, perfect for summer days. They also offer accommodation with swimming pools and big parks.
Having a vehicle is the best option to stay here. If you do, I can assure you it’s one of the most wonderful areas to stay in Mendoza.
Recommended accommodation in Chacras de Coria
There’re many alternatives of accommodation in this area, but I’ll give you some options that I really like because of their facilities as well as their greenery. Also, all of them count with a pool, perfect for summertime travelling!
⚠ In such case I truly recommend that you make your reservations in advance because vacancy for houses, apart hotels and lodgings is sold out really fast, not only in summer but also at weekends and holidays.
Here are three great options offering double rooms, two of which include great breakfasts:
Casa Lopez | La Masía | Postales Green Aparts (no breakfast included as it’s apart-like)
If you’d like more independence, there’re other options of houses or apartments within the area, which include a pool, such as Loft Chacras or Mini Casa.
If there’re several of you travelling together, it would be a great idea to rent one of the houses offered in the area with several bedrooms, as well as parks and pools, where there’s comfortable accommodation up to six people.
Luján de Cuyo
If we’d rather not stay in the middle of the capital city, but we must be connected and we’d like to visit wineries in Mendoza, it could be a great idea to stay in Luján de Cuyo. In fact, it’s really close to Chacras de Coria but, depending on where we stay in Luján de Cuyo, it’ll be easy to move around if we don’t have a vehicle.
In this area we’ll find options for all tastes, from hotels located in the city center, such as El Quijote Aparts, to even lodgings in vineyards, like Villa Mansa hotel.
Uspallata, accommodation right on the mountains in Mendoza
Staying in Mendoza in the Uspallata area is not suitable for everybody, as many people would rather visit the Alta Montaña path just one day, from the capital city. But if you’d rather spend more time in the mountains or take some trekking tour up Mount Aconcagua, it’ll better for you to look for accommodation near such area so you won’t be coming and going, as it’s a number of kilometers away.
And Uspallata is a perfect base in such cases.
One nice alternative is Terrazas de Uspallata, which offers mountain-front cabins for up to four people. There is also a central hostel, in case you’re looking for more economical options.
Potrerillos would be another great alternative where to stay in Mendoza, close to the mountains and the reservoir lake. Look for accommodation in Potrerillos here.
Where to stay in Mendoza if travelling through the province
In order to travel around the center and north of the province, I’d choose the city as a base or any other of the best places to stay in Mendoza I mentioned above.
Any of these locations will make it easier for you to take the Alta Montaña path, visit the best wineries in Mendoza, go to Villavicencio, and more.
To visit the south of Mendoza, it would be convenient to set two different bases, to avoid too long journeys when visiting each area:
- Malargüe.
- San Rafael.
In the case of Malargüe, it’d be a good option to look for accommodation in the center (check this one!). If we prefer to stay right on the mountains, Las Leñas is only 80 km away. We and our family have stayed at this set of apartments there, and prices are really affordable out of holidays.
In San Rafael, we stayed in the center a few times, at different lodgings: this hotel and this one with spa. Both of them turned out to be really comfortable options for taking different tours during daytime and walking to restaurants at night.
On our last trip to the south of Mendoza we chose a more natural environment, and stayed at El Cañón del Atuel, some cabins next to the river. The landscape was wonderful, but you must bear in mind that food and activities outside the cabins are more limited. You can check availability and prices here.
How long to stay in Mendoza?
It all depends on the activities you’re planning, as there’s plenty of things to do in Mendoza.
If you’re only visiting the city and its surroundings, five days should be enough for the must-see attractions.
If you’re staying longer, you could spare days to move around the capital city and then to travel through the south of the province. By staying five days in the city and four in the San Rafael or Malargüe areas, you should get a great overview of all that this province has in store.
Inexpensive accommodation in Mendoza (to be avoided!)
We are fortunate to have visited lots of times the beautiful Mendoza, and we’ve tried all kinds of lodgings. They were all good, except from those times we looked for economical alternatives (they say if you buy cheaply, you pay dearly).
In three different occasions, economical and comfortable accommodation turned out to be a fiasco. Even now, if we find inexpensive inns in Mendoza, we’re very skeptical and we’ll read till the very last opinion.
I’ll tell our two worst experiences. To put this into context, it was winter and we arrived late at night both times, so we were more than willing to spend the night there.
Introducing our bad experiences
In one occasion, we had made a reservation at this central inn because of three reasons: price, excellent location, and really good reviews.
When we arrived, we discovered it was an elderly woman’s house. She was letting some bedrooms (which we liked at first, since we had stayed in living houses before, like in Cuba, and our experiences had always been excellent).
After she let us in our bedroom, which seemed alright at first glance (there even was air conditioning and a TV), we noticed that there were cookie crumbles all over the bed. We opted not to say anything, because the woman was pretty peculiar. We simply rubbed them off and lay on the quilt in our all-day clothes (like we used to sleep in India.)
The bathroom wasn’t clean and the woman would yell and complain all the time. And she was also such a meddler.
There was a moment when, as we were tired after the journey, we agreed not to cook and to have dinner at some restaurant. The woman horned in our private conversation and said we weren’t allowed to use the kitchen, although she did offer it at the time of the reservation.
Hadn’t it been 10 p. m. and freezing outside, we would have gone somewhere else. She even opened our “private” bedroom door three times though it was closed to say anything (no knocking or anything, as if at home!).
And the last straw came when she started yelling at us for renting the cheapest bedroom (like, it was her that set the price) and she wanted to change it. As we definitely opposed, she had no better idea than indicating on the Booking platform that we had not stayed there (known as no show). We would, therefore, be charged a penalty fee for making a reservation and not showing up without having cancelled, which was obviously not true. We had to provide evidence proving we had slept there, and I wanted to leave my review on the platform no matter what.
Luckily, we had made a reservation for just one night, and the following day we moved to a vacant hotel (this one). It was way better and not that expensive.
Horror hostel
Our second experience was even worse.
We were on our way back from Chile and the border was collapsed, hence we would arrive really late in Mendoza. We decided to make a reservation for one night in the city center, at some cheap hostel as we would only sleep over and move to the Luján del Cuyo area the following day.
We didn’t have much time to choose lodgings in Mendoza, so we chose a vacant private room at this hostel. Reviews were good and its location was great, on Av. Godoy Cruz by Plaza Independencia.
When we arrived, we were really politely assisted, but the room didn’t look like the one on the website at all. However, it was so late that we left our backpacks and went out to have dinner before stores were shut down, as it was a business day.
Back at the hostel, we found a bed bug on the bed. We couldn’t believe it was a bed bug, as they hide from light (though the room was rather dim). We started checking the room out and there were bed bugs all over the walls and on the mattress edges. It was 2 a.m., but there was no way we were sleeping there, even if we ended up in the park freezing to 0°C.
We took photos as evidence of our complaint and went downstairs to find someone to assist us.
When we told the desk boy about it, not only was he surprised, but he also said the hotel had already been fumigated due to this problem, and offered us another room with the same number of bed bugs per square meter. We must as well acknowledge the boy’s willingness to help us, and that he told us to go back the following day for a reimbursement.
We went and searched for new lodgings that late at night and ended up at a cheap, old hotel, but at least it was clean and that was all we cared about by that time.
The following day we had to return to the horror hostel to get the money back, and we saw a German girl having breakfast and complaining about “mosquitoes” that had bitten all over her body at night. Unfortunately, I had to inform her that those weren’t mosquitoes and that she better checked her mattress.
Questions about economical accommodation in Mendoza
After our terrible experiences with cheap accommodation in Mendoza, we came up with two questions you may have made too:
- Why did these lodgings have so good rating?
- Why did reviews mention nothing about this?
To be honest, we didn’t seem to be the very first people in the world to have negative experiences at these two places.
Of course, we did research about it.
Regarding the elderly woman’s house, for some reason Argentinian tenants would usually rate her positively, but when we looked through reviews in other languages on Booking, we found that foreigners had had experiences as bizarre as ours (and their ratings were the worst, of course). We have some theories as of the reasons, but that’s it: theories.
Regarding the horror hostel, our guess is more certain. The hostel has changed names several times, so there always were new profiles where previous bad comments were gone, but if you do some more research you’ll find many people complaining about bed bugs.
All positive reviews were just too recent, rating 10 (that place didn’t stand a chance of being rated 10), and from Argentinians. Maybe they were friends making reservations just to leave ratings? All foreigners’reviews were awful, but if averaged with so many new reviews from Argentinians, the final rate was higher than 8.
In conclusion: how to choose inexpensive accommodation in Mendoza?
The only thing I can advise you is what we ourselves would do. If possible, try to swell your budget. And then don’t only look through the reviews, but also check how many there are and read them up, till the very last. If you notice there’re few of them or that all of them are recent, sounds fishy!
Moreover, it is a good idea to arrive at a common time during the day, in case of any inconvenience.
Have you ever had a similar experience with cheap accommodation in Mendoza?
I hope this post about the best places to stay in Mendoza Argentina was useful to plan your trip. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. And if you found the article useful, you can help us a lot by sharing it on your social networks, thank you!
