I enjoyed my stay at the Gran. I found the service (especially in the restaurant) to be excellent. Daily live music, wonderful breakfast buffet overlooking the city, and a fabulous cafe Americano were highlights. My room was not fancy or newly decorated, but it was clean and well-kept.

It's an old hotel, badly in need of renovation. I would definitely not recommend it and would not have chosen it if I had been making my own plans. I was with a group, and we each had our own rooms, and that was very illuminating--every room was different. Mine was small but adequate, with a tiny window and a functional albeit noisy AC unit (of the old swamp cooler type). Another person had a room much like mine but smaller. One of our party one floor up from us had a large room but the AC unit was completely nonfunctional. Another person had a truly appalling room that was so tiny she could barely turn around, no AC, dirty, and one tiny window overlooking a very noisy street corner. All of our rooms were noisy with the window open, so even semi-functional AC was a plus--these rooms were all hot. But one of our party had a room that actually looked like one of the pictures on the website--a spacious corner room overlooking the square in front of the hotel with windows on two sides and a bathroom in good shape. So, apparently, it is the luck of the draw. The desk staff were actually quite helpful and friendly to us, and the common areas were nice. The location was great and that was why we had it. We walked a lot around town and it seemed very central. The breakfast was adequate and there was plenty of food, but one of our party mislaid his breakfast ticket and you would think he had lost the keys to the crown jewels. What a fuss! Overall, my experience was OK, but the place is definitely not worth the price.

We stayed in the Gran Hotel the last 3 days of our visit to Costa Rica because of the central location in downtown San Jose. We enjoyed the nicely decorated square where we could watch the gathering of people enjoying the Christmas decorations and bringing their young children to feed the pigeons. The location put us in walking distance of the local points of interest. Our room was on the front side of the hotel and it was nice to be able to look out upon the square but beware of the noise. I was forced to wear earplugs in order to sleep. Even after the noise died down, the traffic light "chirped" the entire night. Taking a shower was a challenge - constantly adjusting the water going from cold to hot to hot to cold. There is a certain quaintness to this old hotel and service from employees was cordial, price and location was right but don't expect modern.

First let's start with the room: Boiling hot with no AC, cracked caved-in tile in the bathroom, no hot water and a trickle at that, bed as hard as a rock.
Now let's move on to the customer service or complete lack there of.
Our flight was delayed and we would be arriving in Costa Rica a day late, so we requested to change our reservation to our last night in San Jose through Orbitz. Was on the phone with Orbitz multiple times to request and confirm the reservation change which they ensured us went through. When we arrived at the hotel they said they had never received our reservation through Orbitz. I showed them the printed confirmation to no avail. They suggested we contact Orbitz to which we replied to use their phone. The front desk staff said they were unable to make international calls, which is laughable for a supposedly top tier hotel. They told us to go outside and find an internet cafe. Did not offer to hold our bags. After getting in touch with Orbitz again we returned to the hotel to finally get into our room. We were then told the hotel was 100% booked. Finally someone from Orbitz contacted Dixon, the operations manager who said he would work something out for us. We waited a total of 2 hours standing in the lobby until we were finally given a room. We requested an upgrade for our wasted time and were merely given nods and smiles in reply. I would be scared to see what our original room looked like if the room we were given was truly an upgrade. It was one of the most uncomfortable rooms I have ever stayed in in my life.
Instead of being treated like guests we were treated like unwelcome beggars. An overall awful experience.