This hotel has the potential to be a great hotel, but fell short in some important areas.
First, the good. The grounds at Hotel Atilan are indescribably beautiful. The verdant gardens are carefully manicured and teeming with roses, hydrangeas and other vibrant flowers. The exotic caged birds just add to the charm, and the view of Lake Atitlan and its surrounding villages and volcanoes are simply breathtaking. I took scores of photos and still never captured the sheer majesty of standing on the hotel lawn and looking across the lake. It is the experience of a lifetime.
Inside the hotel, though, the experience is just average. We had a triple room with 3 beds. The mattresses were comfortable, but only had a scratchy wool blanket and a single thin pillow. The room was stuffy, given the humidity of the rainy season. I didn't expect air conditioning, but there was not even a fan available. Although we had a triple room with 3 people on the reservation (with 3 suitcases at the foot of each of the 3 beds), housekeeping consistently left us only 2 sets of towels.
The bathrooms were pretty nice but the shower didn’t drain properly. The worst part was that there was no hot water when we woke up early one morning to leave for the airport, and the front desk was not staffed so we could not find anyone to help us.
The owner (?) has her 3 pet shi tzus running around the property. The breed is accurately named. As we sat in the indoor lounge/bar area at about 9 one evening, my friend commented that it smelled funny. We dismissed her until she looked next to her chair and saw a pile of dog poo. So unsanitary! This is an area where food is served!
Plus, the service at the bar was unbelievably slow. The mojitos we enjoyed on the first day we arrived were the best I've ever had, but when we returned that night a different bartender made them differently and they were undrinkable. It took us 25 minutes from the time we ordered to get those bad mojitos. The desserts we ordered - macadamia nut pie and tres leches cake - were really really good though.
We did not eat dinner at the hotel, but lunch and breakfast were both fine. I didn't find them to be anything remarkable and the prices were far higher than in Pana. The setting, though, is unparalleled. I would (and did) pay top dollar (quetzals) for toast and jam to be in that setting.
The service was OK, if not overly friendly. It would have been nice to have a concierge or someone informed on site to make recommendations for restaurants other than the hotel's own, and two very expensive ones in Pana.
Finally, we had a bad taxi experience. It’s too complicated to explain here, but I would just offer that you should ask the hotel to call you a taxi (not a tuktuk if it’s raining) and refuse when they offer for you to use the hotel’s own taxi service.
On two unrelated occasions, the hotel arranged for us to use a driver named Benjamin for a day trip to Chichcastanango and then the next day for our drive to the airport. He was an excellent driver, and exercised a greater degree of caution that the other drivers on those treacherous mountain roads. His van was clean, spacious, and new. He was very polite and informative. I would highly recommend using him to get around in that area.
All in all, the setting is ideal. I didn’t see anything better in Pana and would be willing to put up with some inconveniences for this location. However, it's a hotel that really could be great if the management would just make an effort.
