Hotels near Santiago airport or in the city? What to do for about 5 hours?

[gam888]

We are considering the Sapphire Princess to South America in March. It finishes in San Antonio, Chile. We are catching a flight home from Santiago to Canada. Thinking of joining an excursion on disembarkation day with the ship. It's a 8 to 9 hours excursion and they will drop you off at the Santiago airport. In order to join the ship excursion, you need to be on a flight leaving later than 9pm. But our flight leaves at 7:30pm  So we are thinking of staying in a hotel and catching a flight home the next day.  We are debating if we should book a hotel at the airport that has a free shuttle,. So after Princess drops us off at the airport after the excursion, we can take a free shuttle to the hotel. Since we don't need to be at the airport the next day until around 4:30pm (our flight departs at 7:30pm), we will have at least 4 to 5 hours the next day to do something. So don't know if it's convenient to take some kind of transportation from the airport hotel to Santiago city to spend some more time there, and then back to the airport hotel to collect our luggage from their storage, and take their free shuttle back to the airport. Or, should we book a hotel in Santiago itself. But we would have to get to the hotel in Santiago ourself after the excursion with Princess, because they are not going to drop us off there obviously. Could you please share your experience where you stayed if you did a post cruise visit in Chile. Any hotels you would recommend, we just need a clean place to stay for 1 night, no need for luxury hotels. We are concerned about the transportation issue. Also wonder if there is time to do a hop on and off bus, or hire a local tour company to do some sightseeing for maybe 4 hours before heading back to the airport. Thank you in advance.