Hotel Pensión Bonifaz

Three Rooms in 1935, and the Same Family Ever Since

Guillermo Bonifaz Córdova and Silvia Lagrange de Bonifaz opened a pension with three rooms beside the main square of Quetzaltenango in 1935, raised eight children in it, and kept adding. The house today has seventy three rooms and is still run by the family, which in a country where hotels change hands like currency is the first thing worth saying about it. Xela, as everyone here calls the city, is the capital of the western highlands: cold in the evening, neoclassical around the square, and far less visited than Antigua. The Bonifaz is its landmark address, and it wears the role without fuss.

Why It Works

We kept it for two things a newer hotel cannot manufacture. The first is the building: remodelled repeatedly over the decades but never stripped of its colonial character, so the proportions and the finishes still belong to the city rather than to a catalogue. The second is the position. Xela is a walking city and the square is its hinge, so staying on it means the market, the theatre and the arcades are all a few minutes away on foot. Add an indoor pool, which at this altitude is not a detail, and the case makes itself.

Why This Location

Parque Centro América is the most unexpected square in Guatemala: neoclassical rather than colonial, ringed with columns, the Casa de la Cultura on one side and the municipal palace on another, and busy from early. The Teatro Municipal is a short walk north. The Democracia market, where the highlands actually do their shopping, is a few blocks further. Outside the city, the day trips are strong: the hot springs at Fuentes Georginas above Zunil, the vegetable valley of Almolonga, the yellow church at San Andrés Xecul and the Santa María volcano with Santiaguito smoking below it.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: highland grandee, family run, warm against the cold

• Rooms: seventy three, in a house that began with three and grew through the decades

• Best For: travellers basing themselves in the western highlands, Spanish students on longer stays, anyone who prefers a hotel with a history

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the indoor pool, an unreasonable luxury in a city this cold and the reason to come back at the end of the afternoon

• Dining: restaurant with an international carte, bar, room service, and a dining room that has fed Xela for generations

• Amenities: indoor pool, event and meeting rooms, laundry, private parking, quality and biosafety certifications

• Attractions: Parque Centro América (on the doorstep), Teatro Municipal, the Democracia market, Fuentes Georginas hot springs, Almolonga, San Andrés Xecul, the Santa María volcano

Seventy Three Rooms Grown From Three

The family likes to recall what the first rooms held: two beds and a woven carpet between them, and not much else. What the house offers now is considerably more, but the growth was by addition rather than demolition, which is why the place still has corners and levels instead of a single corridor plan. Ask about the rooms on the square if the view matters, and about the quieter ones behind if it does not.

The Dining Room, the Bar and the Indoor Pool

The restaurant serves an international menu and has long been where the city eats for an occasion, which is a role a hotel earns rather than claims. The bar handles the evening. The indoor pool is the surprise: Quetzaltenango sits high enough that the nights are genuinely cold, and a heated room with water in it is worth more here than a rooftop terrace would be. Event rooms and a laundry make the hotel workable for a stay of a week or more, which is how many people use it while studying Spanish in the city.

What to Know Before You Book

Bring warm clothes: the altitude makes the evenings cold all year, and this is not a beach country at this height. Check in is early afternoon and check out mid morning. The hotel does not take pets and is not set up for wheelchair access, and the older parts of the building have steps. Parking is on site, which is useful because the streets around the square fill up early.