SBH Costa Calma Beach

"This hotel is a joke. We've been facing too many problems, it would take ages to describe. That included rude questions and comment regarding disability. Good sides? Tasty food & nice lady that cleaned our room, but the rest is far from our standard. Even as bad as unwashed cups, dirty plates, or a hair on the 'fresh' pile of plates. I cannot see how this hotel got 4 stars. All inclusive? Here it means: go & buy your bottle of water. Sic!!"

"Location wasn't an issue. The atmosphere around hotel, I found a lot of staff very rude. On arrival, very disorganised, just hadn't a piece of paper. Very poor customer service. The room itself was nice. But the left had broken for 4 days, meaning I was having to walk 6 flights of stairs. 5 times I asked to change rooms, but kept getting refused. Even though 13 days prior to arriving I asked for a room close to facilities due to a knee problem. Lidia on reception was exceptionally rude. If it was rated a 3 star would be good value. Definitely not a 4 star hotel. The pool area was so dirty at times. Definitely not enough cleaning. Very for facilities in the hotel, no arcade for kids just afew snooker tables, air hockey table which literally had bare wires hanging out the wall. The entertainment was the worst ever, very poor."

"First the positives: I'm tempted to say none, but to be fair the food was palatable with fresh vegetables each day, 3 different pools and a stony/sandy though not particularly nice beach adjoining. Negatives: Where do we start? 1. Not enough sunbeds ! Why is that difficult to over provision by about 10-20 per pool so there's a nice choice rather than everyone having to get up at the crack of dawn to reserve. (Not "allowed" - yet always condoned) 2. The Parasols were old and tatty, many were broken and would not stay up. No chance of angling them to shade at different times of day. This was very frustrating (often having to go without a working parasol completely) when children trying best to stay out of the sun during middle of day etc. 3. The bars were all understaffed, the wait times for a drink were at times ridiculous. We just want to walk up to a bar be served in 3 mins and get back. Not stand queuing for 15-20 mins every single time! The pool bar often ran out of drinks or cups with the barperson always closing the bar to replenish rather than calling someone else to do so. 4. There was no overlap on bars. The 2 away from the reception closed too early (at 6pm when people wanted drinks there till closer to 7pm) , whilst the Garbi bar didn't open until 6pm, There was no bar at all by the shallow pool (either the Cofete Bar (not open till 7pm or so) or the the snack bar there which was permanently closed. 5. The maintenance was terrible. Loads of cases of walls peeling away, broken tiles, broken Parasols as mentioned. In the far section , one of the lifts was broken the entire time we were there, the other one then broke 3 days from us leaving and despite the reception saying someone was coming to fix - no-one did - so for 3 days people leave had to lug suitcases up or down stairs on leaving. 6. Some Staff on reception were pleasant enough (some were not exactly empathetic) - but even if they were every time a complaint was raised the reaction was almost "well what can we do?". We normally rarely have to complain about anything on our holidays - but here we were constantly having to complain about things every day. The general feeling was that the Management was not on top of the operation at all and either had no idea of the many issues or couldn't care. 7. We arrived as a family of 4 but were allocated rooms a long way from each other on different floors different sides of the building! (and that was only after we asked to be closer!) (we had even specially requested adjoining rooms and Thomas Cook confirmed the hotel had received the request) but the hotel said it hadn't. That's irrelevant anyway. Why would a hotel not pre-plan to put families together - we haven't been split before? 8. Food. The food was pretty bland - no spicy offerings. The only chance to have a nicer meal was to a sister hotel like Monica (which we tried but were consistently told was full and to come back...) we did finally have one evening there and it was very nice! but only one evening in 10 to have a decent meal is disappointing. Considering this is a 4 star hotel, it falls way below the standard of any 4 star hotel we have stayed in and considering how much we spent for the 4 of us it was very disappointing."