"This was our second visit, and despite the overall experience was as good as last time, there are definitely a few areas for improvement.
Firstly the negatives …
The coffee/tea facilities in the room are very basic - a kettle, a few tea bags and 4 sachets of poor quality coffee. We had to ring reception on an almost daily basis to get the coffee and milk replenished, often having to call three or four times before some was brought to the room, and despite constantly asking for regular coffee we were still always brought decaffeinated! It would be a nice touch to put inexpensive coffee pod machines in each room. There is no reason why the mini bar shouldn’t be refilled every day for all inclusive guests, rather than just once at the start of the holiday, although to be fair you can easily bring drinks up to the room from the bar. Minor points but considering the cost of the holiday I would expect these things to be standard. There’s also a half an hour gap whereby both bars are closed on the Royal level, which again as all inclusive we would expect refreshments to be available at all times during the all inclusive period. The food in the buffet restaurant was fairly varied and mostly tasty, particularly the grill section where the chef cooks your choice of meat or fish in front of you. However the temperature of the hot holding food wasn’t great, more often than not lukewarm and a couple of times we found cooked items to be still frozen in the middle. Soup was always cold as heated underneath by a tea light which had usually gone out. The service was also quite slack, we often waited ages for drinks to be brought over and tables were left uncleared for long periods of time. This is more to do with not enough staff for the number of guests and not a reflection on the staff themselves. They were very friendly and working as hard as they could. The à la carte restaurant, however, was appalling, the last time we visited we ate there every night, but this time we went to the Mexican night and it was absolutely dreadful. We had the sharing platter which was just frozen tasteless deep fried things and some greasy chicken wings covered in a cold bbq sauce. For mains my partner had the burger which was simply a burger on a dry bun and I had the fajitas which were soggy, cold and unappetising, and on inspection contained just three bits of chicken, both accompanied by a small portion of limp tepid chips. The waitress agreed it was awful and apologised profusely saying the chef was new, I replied get the old one back!! We didn’t stay for dessert and cancelled our bookings for rest of the week. We also got an apology from the management, which was appreciated but we were very disappointed as we were looking forward to trying all the different cuisines on offer.
However there are a lot of positives!
The staff are all lovely, attentive and friendly. The pool area is very well maintained and always plenty of sun beds available despite most guests ignore the ‘do not reserve’ signs. They are also really comfortable and plenty of fresh clean towels every day. Very clean toilets by the pool also and a great bar! Room service was excellent with towels and sheets replaced every day should you request it. Cartons of fresh water left in the room every day. The air con was effective and the bed and pillows amongst the most comfortable we have slept on. Lovely hot shower with very good water pressure with an overhead tropical shower head and a smaller detachable one. We didn’t notice any outside noise as reported by other reviews on here, our room was on the corner of the second block on the second floor and had lovely views over the pool area with the sea beyond.
The hotel could do with a lick of paint and some modernisation but this didn’t detract from our overall enjoyment. I would recommend this hotel but for us a week was enough just based on choice of food and things to do, which we feel could become very repetitive after a few days. Again though big shout out to the staff, they really do work their socks off to make your stay a pleasant and enjoyable one."
