"First impressions of the hotel was a horror show. We arrived in our family group of 3 families and the receptionist fled halfway through an already abysmal welcome to leave the poor night porter to deal with a major health and safety breach by reception. After an inordinately long time and late in the evening, our children opened the door to our apartment in the annex to a horrified family sleeping in our/their room. After making our desperate apologies to the poor family and trying to calm our own children amid a high-risk situation, we had to traipse all the way back to reception across the road to inform reception that they had made a major privacy and security breach that could have resulted in physical harm.
By the time we got an empty apartment that we had already paid € thousands for, we had experienced over an hour and a half of chaos at reception and were told to come back in the morning to ensure we could stay in that apartment. The first thing my eldest child (10) did was check the lock in the room and discovered it did not lock at all, so he asked to put a chair against it.
We had to come back in the morning anyway as we had paid for the gold band all-inclusive and the reception had no gold bands left. In the end, it took until late the next day before we could empty our suitcases at least.
I spoke with a manager the following morning to raise our serious concerns which included the security of the apartment as we had children and she apologised. Maintenance fixed the door so it could actually lock from the inside but we checked from the outside and realised that even when double-locked, anyone with a key card/wrist card could still unlock the door and enter the room. This obviously makes the double-lock useless and dangerous and no doubt is the same lock system throughout the already insecure annex and hotel. This major security weakness remained unfixed throughout the holiday and our children kept the chair against the door at night.
Otherwise, we had to ask for clean towels twice from reception and the shower gel remained empty throughout our stay and we purchased our own.
I’ll focus on the positives for a moment: housekeeping, bar and restaurant staff really lovely and hardworking, amenities clean, spa very enjoyable, location close to the amazing beach in a quieter part of the town which suited our family group. The hotel was a good base for exploring the area if you get a good price point.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we did get value as the hotel was geared towards squeezing out more money from visitors (although not upselling), keeping staff to a bare minimum, and cutting costs to the detriment of quality service and standards. Management was barely visible throughout the stay unless eating their lunch during busy service.
For example, there was a serious room towel problem for all of the families and other guests. Safes were charged and you paid for an exchange of pool towels. Regardless of your all-inclusive band, the hotel enforces a counter/token system for pool drinks in plastic cups – you cannot get another drink unless you return the cups or hand over counters. This obviously saves staff having to go near the pool areas and saves the hotel a few €, but it does not make it convenient for customers who would return cups anyway but who have to wait in line to get the return of counters/tokens. Also, the hotel forces all customers to queue for any served drink at the hotel outside at the pool bar opening even at night. Again, this means that the hotel can reduce staffing costs as the lovely main bar is not staffed. Table service is non-existent and we couldn’t even get a wine menu to pay for nicer wine which we don’t mind doing at any all-inclusive. In my opinion, all of this is ridiculous for any hotel, never mind a 4* hotel for which customers have saved up all year and paid € thousands.
There was not much food choice in comparison with other places we have visited on the island, the cuts of meat used were the less expensive variety, and choice decreased the later you arrived during service. There was no white bread or baguettes one day, and no butter another. Food was nice though but functional at times – our 3 families ate out and paid elsewhere a 1/3 of the nights even though we were all gold band all-inclusive.
We did experience a major difference though at the end of the stay when another manager – we assumed from head office – visited the hotel and there was an immediate buzz about service. Management became more visible, choice of menu expanded and even the food displays in the restaurant improved significantly in the hours after.
Too late for our stay unfortunately."
