"We stayed at INNSiDE Alcudia for a week with our 9-month-old daughter, travelling with my partner’s parents, and overall we had a great stay. It’s a stylish, very clean and genuinely family-friendly hotel that we’d happily recommend. Most of the negatives below are relatively minor and are intended as constructive feedback rather than complaints.
Our first impression was very good. We arrived at around 1pm and were pleasantly surprised to find our room already available despite check-in officially being from 3pm. The gentleman on reception was friendly and welcoming and made an effort to make us laugh with a few well-timed remarks. A welcome drink would have been a nice extra touch on arrival, but certainly not something we expected.
We’d requested a room in a quieter part of the hotel as we were travelling with our baby, and this was kindly accommodated. Our room was spacious, modern and spotlessly clean, with plenty of storage so we could properly unpack and put the suitcases away. The beds were large and comfortable, the blackout curtains worked very well and a cot was provided for our daughter.
The large fridge and microwave were particularly useful when travelling with a baby, and the swivel TV is a clever feature. There’s a good walk-in shower, although no bath. The air conditioning kept the room at a very comfortable 21°C and we barely touched the controls all week.
Housekeeping was excellent. The room was cleaned and beds made every day, bottled water was replenished daily and towels changed every other day. One very minor omission was that there was tea in the room but no coffee, and no milk provided for the tea.
Soundproofing between floors could perhaps be better. On some days we could clearly hear children running around and furniture being dragged in the room above us. My partner’s parents were staying in another part of the hotel and experienced more evening noise, particularly when a DJ was playing in the bar area, although this generally finished by around 11pm.
Breakfast was one of the highlights. The restaurant is huge and the selection is excellent – cooked breakfast, pastries, breads, cheeses, cold meats, gluten-free options and pretty much everything else you could want. The breakfast staff were particularly lovely and regularly made a fuss of our daughter, which was really appreciated.
One tip: go before 9am if you can. Earlier in the morning it was spacious and relaxed; once it became busy, the atmosphere was very different. Some guests’ buffet etiquette and general awareness of others left a little to be desired, but obviously that’s hardly something the hotel can be blamed for.
The hotel is very easy with a baby. There are highchairs in the restaurant, ramps throughout, lifts to the rooms and breakfast area, and getting around with a pushchair was never a problem. There were plenty of other families with young children but, importantly, the hotel never felt overly rowdy or overcrowded.
The main pool was clean, although fairly cold, and the non-slip surface surrounding it was appreciated. The baby pool could do with some attention, however – areas such as the grout were discoloured and looked a little grubby compared with the otherwise excellent cleanliness around the hotel.
We also appreciated that finding a sunbed generally wasn’t a battle. The Bali beds, however, seem a slightly questionable use of quite a lot of poolside space. They carry an additional charge and were rarely occupied during our stay.
This became particularly frustrating on one day when the hotel cordoned off one side of the pool for a photoshoot, taking several normal sunloungers out of use. Guests who consequently couldn’t find loungers started using the empty Bali beds, only to be moved on unless they paid the supplement. This included a family behind us with a baby who couldn’t have been more than six months old.
Given that paying guests had lost access to loungers because of the hotel’s own photoshoot, allowing temporary use of the otherwise-empty Bali beds as overspill would have seemed the sensible and hospitable solution. This was probably the only occasion during the week where we felt the hotel’s approach to guests was genuinely poor.
Otherwise, the staff were overwhelmingly friendly, polite and welcoming. The breakfast team in particular were excellent. Service at the pool bar occasionally felt a little less warm than elsewhere in the hotel, but this was very much the exception to what was otherwise a really positive experience with the staff throughout our stay.
Food at the pool bar was good. The smash burger was particularly tasty and a very generous portion, while my partner became a big fan of the frozen mango daiquiris! Prices aren’t cheap, but neither are they outrageous for a four-star resort hotel.
The beer pricing is slightly annoying: €4.75 for a small and €5.75 for a large, yet because of the reusable plastic pool cups, the “large” doesn’t feel particularly large. More importantly, some of those plastic glasses really need replacing – several had rims that were chipped or looked chewed. At nearly €6 for a beer, that’s an easy detail for a four-star hotel to improve.
There are a few other small things that could be improved. The smoking area near the lifts used to access breakfast is very poorly positioned. Waiting for the lift with our 9-month-old while being surrounded by cigarette smoke wasn’t pleasant, and moving the smoking area away from such a busy thoroughfare would make a significant difference.
Likewise, using a leaf blower or pressure washer before 8:30am seems unnecessary at a holiday hotel where guests may understandably want a lie-in.
Some of the rugs around the foyer, although generally taped or secured down, could also be better fixed as the edges can potentially become a trip hazard.
Location-wise, we thought the hotel was well positioned. The beach is only around a five-minute walk away and is lovely – clean golden sand with beautiful shallow turquoise water, making it particularly good with young children. There’s a small supermarket immediately outside the hotel and plenty of other shops, bars and restaurants within a few minutes’ walk.
Port d’Alcúdia itself is around a 30-minute walk away, but there’s enough around the hotel that we never felt we needed a car.
There’s a nice international mix of guests – British, Irish, Spanish, German, Dutch and others – and the hotel generally has a relaxed atmosphere. Evening entertainment is fairly limited, so this isn’t somewhere I’d choose specifically for nightly shows or live music. For us, it was more somewhere we’d happily return to after going out for the evening, which suited us fine.
There’s also a half-decent gym for a resort hotel and more than enough equipment to get a holiday workout in.
One final tip: pack mosquito repellent. Neither of us usually gets bitten particularly badly, but we both did here. There are a number of waterways and canals around the surrounding area, which may contribute.
Overall, we had a great week and thought INNSiDE Alcudia offered good value for money. It’s beautifully decorated, spotlessly clean, spacious, very easy with a young child and staffed by genuinely lovely people.
The criticisms above shouldn’t detract from the fact that we really enjoyed our stay. They’re mostly relatively small things that could make an already very good hotel even better.
We probably wouldn’t rush back to Alcúdia itself simply because we’ve preferred some other resorts we’ve visited, rather than because of anything particularly wrong with this hotel. We would, however, happily stay at another INNSiDE by Meliá hotel in future."
