Elba Lanzarote Royal Village Resort

"This is a genuine review and since i've been back for a few days now, hopefully I can be more objective. We went for 10 days all inclusive at the start of August as a party of 7 - 4 adults and 3 kids aged 11, 11 and 7. In the weeks leading up to the holiday, I was getting pretty nervous about the stream of negative reviews. Especially from people who were still at the hotel. Genuinely this hotel is not the hotel from hell! As I say in my title - it was not as bad as I feared, but equally it was not as good as I hoped. There are issues and I don't feel like we got value for money. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate this hotel as a 5 or 6. It's very average. The good things are: ROOMS - the rooms are comfortable and have amazing air-con. The cleaning staff do a good job and gave us fresh towels daily. A slight negative was the safety deposit box which cost me 40 Euros - a high price to pay in my opinion. POOLS - refreshingly cold and big. Kids' slide was popular with the kids in our party. Pool activities if you wanted, but not pushed down your throat like at other places. LOCATION - nice, short walk to a stretch of shops and bars. Also close to a small waterpark called AquaLava which was good for a few hours. BREAKFAST - in my opinion, this was the best breakfast I've had at any all-inclusive. The choice and quality was very good - sadly not replicated with the juices or coffee - but credit where it is due, this was my favourite meal of the day. Now, for the bad things: SERVICE / STAFF - I notice the management themselves now admit this is an issue. The staff / guest ratio must be crazy. This is particularly noticeable in the restaurant and bars. In trying to rectify this, it's clear the hotel have taken on staff with zero experience of hospitality. You will witness this yourself at the bar or with waiting staff. I had the strangest iced coffee ever haha FOOD - this gets very repetitive. You won't starve, but expect to see the same dishes every lunchtime and evening. The speciality nights were pretty pathetic, just one small table dedicated to Mexican or Spanish etc. A lack of staff meant food regularly ran out. On one evening there were no food servers at any of the stations. A guy in front of me actually picked up a carving knife and started carving up the meat on the grill. ALLERGIES - at first glance I was very impressed to see a clear allergy policy with ingredients cards clearly showing allergens such as nuts, gluten and sesame. That was until I went to enjoy a bowl of mousse that was liberally sprinkled with peanuts. This was supposed to be a safe nut-free dish. Cutting a long story short, the cards only show the base ingredients, not additional garnishes! This information came straight from the chef - so if you do have an allergy, I wouldn't put too much faith in the cards or the brains of the people preparing the food. DRINKS - the drinks policy here is crazy and probably one of the biggest frustrations of everyone in our group. There is no self serve option at lunch or evening meal. Not even soft drinks for the kids. So you have to wait (and wait) for an overworked waiter to notice you. I'm not kidding when I say this could be 20+ minutes. In a more relaxed environment this might be an acceptable wait, but we are talking noisy canteen with no air con. Not acceptable for an all-inclusive hotel. ENTERTAINMENT - If you have little kids they will love the animation team who work very hard. You will recognise these because they are the only smiling staff! The adult entertainment was in the sweat-box theatre with zero air con, so we gave that a miss. OVERALL - we did have a good time and if the hotel addressed some big issues, we would come back. But I don't think they will. Simply acknowledging reviews is not the same as addressing them. I suspect the hotel struggles to make the all-inclusive concept profitable, which would explain the food and drink policy. As others have said, it's a lot of money to pay and unless you are coming out of season, it's not really the best value. We actually all said we'd have had a better time if we just went bed and breakfast, rather than all-inclusive. Most of the issues revolve around food, drink, value and service. If you are going though, I'd just say measure your expectations. It's not the worst hotel in the world and if you look past the frustrations, you will have an amazing time!"

"# Elba Lanzarote Royal Village Resort – Honest All-Inclusive Review We stayed at the Elba Lanzarote Royal Village Resort for 10 days on an all-inclusive basis. Overall, we had a mixed experience. There were some things we really enjoyed, particularly the pools, the rooms and the location, but unfortunately the poor service really let the hotel down. For the price we paid — over £5,000 — I don’t feel the overall experience represented good value for money. ## Food The food was average. There was plenty of choice, so you certainly wouldn’t go hungry, but nothing really stood out and it became quite samey during our 10 days. There was a children’s food area with things like chips and hot dogs, as well as vegetarian options, a salad bar and a main area where they had a different theme each evening. Unfortunately, I felt they could have made much more of an effort with the themed food. It never really felt particularly special or exciting. Breakfast was okay, although the self-service coffee and juice were nothing special. Proper coffee would have been a nice addition. The lunch bar was also okay but, again, the food was quite repetitive. The all-inclusive ice cream was served in little pots and was available in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. They were fine, but a little more choice would have been appreciated. The highlight of the food was definitely the steak restaurant. The food there was excellent. The children all had burgers, which they said were delicious, and we shared a T-bone steak which was cooked beautifully and was genuinely very good. I would definitely recommend booking the steak restaurant. The only disappointing thing about the steak restaurant was that it was actually the lunch bar area converted into a restaurant. We had expected it to be a completely different or more special area of the hotel, so that was a little underwhelming. ## Service Unfortunately, this was the biggest issue for us and the main reason I wouldn’t recommend the hotel at the price we paid. The service was very poor. Throughout the 10 days, at practically every meal we had to clear dirty plates from tables ourselves and clean the table before we could sit down. This happened even at times when the restaurant wasn’t particularly busy. Almost every table seemed to have plates left on it. The staff appeared to be completely overworked and, at times, visibly stressed. I genuinely felt sorry for them because it seemed like there simply weren’t enough staff to keep up. We heard lots of other guests complaining about arriving at the restaurant and being unable to find a clean table. We also had to queue every day to get drinks. I couldn’t understand why soft drinks and beer weren’t self-service, as this would surely have made things much quicker and reduced the pressure on the staff. The same problem existed at the outside lunch bar. There were regularly dirty plates left on tables and guests had to clear them themselves to find somewhere to sit. On one occasion, I overheard someone complaining and the woman working behind the bar explained that there was only one person working in that area. I can’t say I ever saw anyone specifically clearing or cleaning the tables there. The staff who were actually serving the food, such as making omelettes in the morning, were very good. However, in the evenings it could be difficult to get anyone to come over when we wanted drinks for the table. There was also one incident that really concerned us: my husband found a piece of glass in his food. We considered complaining, but after hearing so many other guests complaining about various issues, we honestly felt that there was little point. I was just extremely grateful that it wasn’t one of our children who had found it in their food. ## Rooms and facilities The rooms were lovely and were cleaned to a high standard every day. We were really pleased with our room and particularly liked the area outside our room as well. The outdoor pools were good and our children really enjoyed them. There were two saltwater pools, a normal pool and a shallow splash-park-style pool. There were also two slides. Unfortunately, one of the slides was out of service for our entire stay, but the other one was working and was good fun. There was also a small outdoor play area, which was a nice addition. We visited the spa and had a massage, which was good. The spa itself was a little disappointing, though, as there wasn’t a huge amount there — essentially a sauna and an indoor swimming pool, which had children playing in it when we visited. ## Entertainment The evening entertainment was very repetitive. It was largely the same every night, apart from when they brought in outside performers, which were noticeably better. The children’s mini disco was particularly disappointing. It was exactly the same every evening, with very little dancing and not much to keep the children interested. Our children were bored after about 10 minutes, so this definitely could have been improved. ## Location The location of the hotel was one of the positives. There were beaches nearby, as well as shops and restaurants, and the marina was only a short bus journey away. We really liked the surrounding area. ## Overall There are definitely positives to this hotel. The rooms were lovely and well maintained, the pools were good, the location was great and the steak restaurant was excellent. Our children really enjoyed the swimming pools and slides, and there were some things we genuinely liked about the resort. However, the service was a major problem throughout our stay. Having to clear and clean tables ourselves at almost every meal, queueing for drinks and seeing how overstretched the staff were really affected our experience. The food was acceptable but quite repetitive, and the entertainment could also have been much better. Would I recommend the hotel? **Personally, I don’t think it was worth the £5,000+ we paid for 10 days.** If the service had been better, I think our overall opinion would have been very different. There are some good facilities and the location is excellent, but for the price, we expected a much higher standard of service and a better overall experience."

"I wanted to write an honest review because, before travelling, I read quite a few reviews about Alba Lanzarote – Royal Suites Family Area and honestly started to panic a little! Having now been, I can say that it really wasn’t as awful as some reviews made it sound. It just wasn’t as good as I had hoped for from a 4-star hotel. I’d give it 3.5/5. We did have a nice holiday and, importantly, the issues we experienced didn’t ruin the holiday for my son. I would absolutely return to Lanzarote, but I personally wouldn’t choose to stay at this hotel again. The good The staff were friendly and the animation team were fantastic. There were lots of activities and they were genuinely good fun. The pool area was lovely, with lots of different pools for children, and we always managed to find a sunbed, even in the afternoons. I did notice some people putting towels out before breakfast, but there were still beds available when we wanted one. Our room was quite big and the air conditioning was excellent. It got properly cold and was very easy to adjust to a temperature that suited us. The hotel itself was generally quite clean apart from the issues with crockery and glasses mentioned below. The resort and pool areas certainly didn’t feel dirty or neglected. We also really appreciated being able to leave our luggage somewhere after checkout and being allowed to have lunch on our final day. Food & drinks There was a lot of choice at the buffet and some of the food was nice, although some things were definitely better than others. My son is extremely fussy with food and found the food particularly difficult, so there wasn’t always much he would eat. The restaurant staff work incredibly hard and are constantly on the go. I actually felt sorry for them because they were clearly trying their best, but they simply couldn’t keep up with clearing tables and keeping everything spotless when it was busy. This was probably my biggest disappointment. It was often difficult to find clean cutlery, glasses and plates, and quite regularly there would be food stuck to them. This isn’t something I’d expect from a 4-star hotel. There were also some refrigeration issues. Milk at breakfast was warm and the ice cream was basically slop. The coffee from the machine was terrible. During the day, the pool bar is the only bar open and drinks were often warm. The cocktails were premixed and weren’t particularly nice. There were queues for drinks, although not constantly, so you just had to pick your timing wisely. Housekeeping We had one incident where we noticed blood on the sheets and had to ask for them to be changed. I want to stress that this was a one-off rather than saying the whole resort was dirty. On another day, our towels were removed by the cleaner but weren’t replaced. After waiting a few hours, the cleaner eventually brought us clean towels. On one occasion, the cleaner also left a dirty wet cloth on top of a pair of shorts I had left on my suitcase, which was a bit frustrating as it left my shorts wet and I couldn’t wear them again during the holiday. Again, these were isolated incidents, but they’re not things you expect at a 4-star hotel. A few other things The indoor areas of the hotel were far too warm, particularly the theatre, which became very uncomfortable during the evening entertainment. The mini disco was also a little disappointing for us. It’s less of a traditional children’s disco and more children’s party songs with the kids copying dance routines. My son is autistic and found this confusing because he wanted to dance and do his own thing rather than copy the moves. This obviously won’t bother every child, but it wasn’t what we expected from a mini disco. If you’re staying in a Junior Suite, you also have to pay extra for the safe, which I thought was a little mean for a 4-star hotel. Location We actually really enjoyed the marina. There were some lovely cafés and shops and it was probably our favourite place to wander around locally. I’d say the marina and Flamingo Beach are both more like a 15-minute walk than some reviews had suggested, and in the heat it definitely felt further. We visited Flamingo Beach but, personally, I wouldn’t spend a whole day there. There were quite a few stones nearer the water which made standing there uncomfortable at times. I wish we’d tried a different beach while we were there. Overall I don’t want this review to put anyone off if you’ve already booked. If you’re reading reviews and panicking like I was before going, I really wouldn’t. It isn’t an awful hotel. There are definitely things that need improving, particularly the cleanliness of crockery and glasses, refrigeration, drinks and some of the basic 4-star standards. But there are also lovely pools, plenty of activities, a great animation team, friendly staff and a generally clean resort. We had a nice holiday and my son still had a great time, which is ultimately what mattered most to me. For me, it just wasn’t as nice as I had hoped it would be for a 4-star hotel, and there were too many little things that took the shine off it. 3.5/5 from us. I wouldn’t stay here again, but I would definitely return to Lanzarote."