"The only reason i am giving this hotel a 3 star is purely for the staff!
I'd just like to make the point that we didn't go expecting 5*, and go to 'budget' hotels not expecting the ritz, but expecting some key things that we just didn't get here.
Rooms:
As we expected from previous reviews, the rooms are dated and abit bashed but tidy... I say tidy because both of our 2 ground floor rooms had tiny little ants everywhere. These bugs have since followed us home in our luggage, meaning all clothes we washed over there to try and limit the washing needing done on return home are now having to be boil washed.
Rooms were swept, bins emptied, beds made & bathroom sprayed and cleaned daily. Mopped couple of times during the 10 days we were there, and towels changed on a Monday, Wednesday & Friday.
Both bathrooms had faults, one was a sunken tiled shower with a curtain and the hot and cold piped backward. This room flooded everytime you showered meaning you had to sacrifice one of your towels as a bath mat to avoid the bathroom turning into a pool.
The other had a bath with an overhead shower, the bath has been installed backwards causing us to nearly slip on the bath slope several times when showering.
Food:
We are a family of fussy eaters so I don't feel we could review this fairly, all i could say is yes, the selection is smaller than other hotels we have previously been to. BUT, there was always a selection of meat, veg, salad and basic items such as pasta, pizza, chips & soup at lunch and tea times.
For breakfast there was the usual full English items and either churos or pancakes, the only thing we would've liked more of at breakfast would be more of a fresh fruit selection, (melon, peaches, mandarins ecs.).
Every night is a different theme (on rotation) so there is a different food selection most nights, the Asian nights were our favourite!
At all meals the food was a palatable temperature (not boiling hot but not cold) and the puddings mostly consisted of various types of jelly, 1 type of cake & profiteroles, with odd days having marshmallows.
The staff where amazing! always clearing away used plates & glasses and were very friendly.
Drinks:
Hot & soft drinks are self serve at the pool bar from 10am - 6pm, alcohol, water & kids cock tail (the Sanfrancisco- red grenedine with fresh mixed fruit juice) are ordered at the bar. Never had to wait more that 5 mins and staff were very friendly.
At meals fresh juice was self serve but soft (fizzy) & alcohol had to be ordered at the bar, queues varied based on what time you went to eat.
Pool:
THE POOL IS FREEZING! i can't stress this enough, the pool is the coldest pool we have ever been to. We have vacationed in the cannerys a good few times now and are aware that the pools are on the cooler side due to the wind, BUT, this pool is on another level of cold, take your breath away kind of cold!
It was so cold that our 3 year old couldn't tolerate it, and subsequently developed a fear of going in, leading to him spending the bulk of his holiday with limited entertainment through the day. Our older children were able to tolerate it in stints but were very cold and shaky after being in, especially our 5 year old who had to be immediately wrapped up and placed in the sun to warm up.
I would say that if you are travelling with children under 4 then the pools may be to cold for them to FULLY enjoy their holiday.
The render on the pool itself is completely blown on the top portion of the pool, and you can feel the whole floor move when you walk on it, parts throught out the pool have also come away compleatly exposing sharp sides and the concrete below. It is however cleaned every night and the area around the pool is generally tidy.
Sunbeds are locked up every night an not unlocked until what is ment to be 10am but generally ranges between 09:15 - 09:45, there is no desperate scramble for beds nor is there dramatic running to get towels out, but if you arrive later for a space around the pool (past 10ish) you are going to be disappointed, as there is, as is the case with 99% of hotels, a limited amount of beds available.
Entertainment:
The Entertainment is very scarce but what there is, is good. The male entertainer is brilliant through the day, on the days he does the aqua dancing and pool entertainment. The blue pool mat was brought out for around 20 mins on several of the days and the kids loved it! An inflatable assault course and bouncy castle come on 1 of the 10 days, these were amazing, its just a shame they don't do these more often.
Evening entertainment leaves alot to be desired, and is limited to what I can only describe as the worst set up entertainment room we've ever seen! Its more like a night club bar and absolutely not suitable to be the core evening entertainment room at all. The hotel does have a big function hall with a stage that could be used for shown ecs., where visitors could sit at a table and enjoy their evening, the hotel is not utilising this at all. We don't like to compare hotels to other hotels, but, the Elba Lucia seriously needs to sit down and figure out where they're going wrong with their evening entertainment line up and fix it asap!
We've never known a hotel have such a limited evening entertainment that is entirey made up of their 2 entertainers doing the best they can with visibly limited resources and a singer that comes in a couple of nights a week, especially when they're a family hotel.
Location:
Very close to the airport (less than 10 min transfer) and arround €15 in a taxi if you want to save on the coach transfer fee. The hotel has a great vue for seeing planes coming in to land with small children who find that interesting, not much around in terms of shops but there is a cluster of restaurants a 3-5 min walk away.
Free shuttle to the shopping center at 10:20, 11:20 & 12:20 but the last return from the center back to the hotel on the free shuttle is 12:10. A taxi is only €4.90 back though.
A taxi into Caleta is €3.50 so i wouldn't say the location is a deal breaker.
Room extension:
Out flight home wasnt until 20:30, with the transfer not coming until 17:45. As we have 4 children and nowhere to go we requested to extend our room until 3pm. We were told that they do not offer this service during July & August, but we could store out cases in their secure room and still use all the facilities and towels as normal, showering in the hotel gym showers.
We took this on the chin as, if they don't offer it, they don't offer it.
We later got talking to another guest around the pool and she had actually been allowed to extend her room until 3pm for reasons i'm not going to get into, but weren't dissimilar to our own experience, this understandably infuriated us as it felt one rule for one and one for another! Our sunbeds were directly outside our room and we could see that our room wasn't actually cleaned after us leaving at 12pm until after 14:30 and didn't have new guests in it by the time we were leaving at 17:45, so not being able to extend our check out time was not down to availability.
The nice little video they play on the hotel television, showing the other hotels the franchise owns shows that the Elba Lucia seems to be the forgotten work horse of the Elba chain! Judging by how much we paid for our stay, and timesing that by how many other family's where there, it doesn't seem that the revenue the hotel is bringing is actually going back into the hotel its self.
Hopefully this will change one day as with some renovation, or just some general attention from the franchise, and a complete overhaul of their entertainment package it could be a really nice hotel."
