Barcelo Santiago

"I was not permitted to upgrade to all inclusive from half board as my room mate did not wish to upgrade. I thought this was unnecessarily inflexible and below average customer service. The food was mostly good but there were undercooked sausages at breakfast and over cooked omelettes. The grilled food at dinnner was inadequate in choice and quality. No one wants to eat frozen fish on holiday. There were significant queues at the coffee machines as a couple weren’t working and nothing was done to enable them. Roast meats were often overcooked and under seasoned. Salads and desserts were mostly excellent. Pool bar and staff excellent. Rooms were excellent. Overall very happy except for significant aberrations with buffet food at breakfast and dinner"

"Good hotel in superb location. Friendly and helpful staff. Comfortable rooms with amazing views. Buffet style food that is usually ok though very busy. "

"The hotel is immaculately clean, lovely rooms with super comfy bed & great shower. Pool area was very nice, lots of available sunbeds so need to be up with the larks to reserve one! Food was excellent with bags of choice at every meal - we did have a couple of issues though with uncooked meat & fish that was still frozen when served from the grill. The restaurant has a couple of issues that need sorting pronto! The queues for tea/coffee at breakfast are ridiculous - it takes 20 minutes to get a simple cup of hot water for tea, this became really irritating. Just provide either standalone hot water dispensers or serve it to the tables. Also on a couple of evenings the outside area of the restaurant was closed due to bad weather which meant having to queue up for a dining table for over 45 minutes - there are simply not enough tables for all the guests. The tables are poorly laid out with a lot of wasted space in the dining room & with only one restaurant you have no choice. We ended up queuing each night from 6.10pm just to get a table! Crazy. Same with the reception bar -just not enough tables & chairs for the volume of guests. Although the staff work very hard, there aren’t enough of them - on a few occasions we had to clear our own plates to give us space for the next course. All of that said the breakfast options were top drawer - an omelette station, every possible cooked item you could want & lots of fruit, although some of it still frozen. It’s annoying yoghurts & ice creams aren’t labelled so you don’t know what you’re selecting. Great pool bar with generally good service, sometimes a bit slow mixing the drinks but really nice vibe in there with comfy seating further down the terrace with fabulous views. All in all a great holiday & I would go again despite the minor issues."