Spring Hotel Bitacora

"Originally, I was going to give this hotel two stars. One for cleanliness and one for the entertainment staff who do an amazing job. But then my daughter showed me something she’d found in her room and asked me what it was and I removed the star for cleanliness. A vape pen means they probably hadn’t cleaned the room much before our arrival. Before I launch into the rest, I do want to stress that the entertainment team are amazing and one or two of the staff are nice. One of the restaurant team, a cheerful man with glasses and a moustache was very funny. And on our first day, a lovely bartender was smiley and helpful. If I’d known that was the last smile I’d receive I would have made a note of his name. I realise that many hotels are torn by the fact that they depend on the British tourist for their income when a lot of “Brits abroad” can be a bit objectionable. But I did not see any bad behaviour at THIS hotel. So why then, was I spoken to like absolute dirt on at least eight separate occasions? Outside the hotel, Canarians seem to be welcoming and friendly but the staff here are breathtakingly rude. One man actually clicked his fingers at me when I tried to order food from the screens which unknown to me, he had arbitrarily decided to close. Clicked his fingers! At a guest! The outside bar staff and the (male) grill chef were astonishingly rude. Slamming trays down, scowling at customers, getting orders wrong and then telling people to queue again as it was their fault. I don’t like to name check individuals but Bruno is special so I will. He is one of the rudest people I have ever met. On many separate occasions I saw him walk off mid-order, snap at people, lecture guests who were hesitant, shout “next one” as if we were dogs and on two occasions, openly sneer at guests in Spanish to a colleague because he assumed were all too stupid to understand what he’s saying. We saw an elderly lady hesitate for a fraction in her drink decision and Bruno yelled “next” over her, a truly venomous expression on his face. She and her husband looked so upset, it was horrible. What an unbelievable bully. But he was not alone in being almost indescribably rude. I puzzled over this situation until I had a realisation on day three. If you’ve ever been to a bottomless brunch and had terrible service because they’re trying to stop you having drinks, you will recognise the vibe of the Bitacora. Any illusion of all-inclusive is just that: an illusion. The fact that there are only ever two people serving means queues are so long, it’s not worth bothering to try and get drinks more than once or twice, either at the outside or the evening bar. With the two drink limit (soft or alcoholic by the way) per person, which is terrible if you have two children with you and it’s thirty degrees by the pool, of course they can offer premium brands like Grey Goose. You have to queue for between sixty and ninety minutes in total to get three drinks. There’s just no way you could get close to the amount you pay for all-inclusive. The table service is erratic or non-existent. The outside grill is deliberately designed to put people off as it takes about 45 minutes to get food at actual mealtimes. In the restaurant, if you finish your plate, they instantly whip it away, including cutlery so you have to seek out one of the short-tempered servers if you want more. This is not being efficient, it’s a deliberate tactic to limit food intake. They don’t clean outside during the day so the pool area is covered with rubbish and empty glasses. Another off-putting tactic. Staff are invisible unless they want to arbitrarily apply some rule that literally ten minutes before, a different staff member has contradicted. We hired a kettle, assumed we could use cups from the restaurant and did so for the first four days. Then a different server (the finger snapper) saw me leaving with cups and stopped me as if I was a teenage shoplifter, took them and gave me paper cups. It’s been a long time since I was made to feel like a badly behaved child, so well done to the hotel Bitacora for reminding me of that particular joy. It was an illustration of everything about this horrible place. There is an attitude that their UK guests are not much more than cattle. We can be bullied and prodded and laughed at and there are no consequences because there’s always another batch waiting behind. I realise that this is an angry review. But when you spend £5000 to be treated like trash, it can make you a tad annoyed. I’m sure the management will deny all of this in their response but I would urge people to think very, very carefully about where to spend their money. I did not complain to the hotel at the time because although I was often teetering on the brink of tears in shock at the situation, I was determined to not let my children and husband feel let down. So I queued and faced the disdain, I asked any questions and dealt with the hostility and I didn’t take a note of everyone’s names who spoke to me like dirt and constantly confront the manager, because we were stuck with nowhere else to go and I don’t want my children to remember this holiday with disappointment. And anyway, how do you even begin when it’s the entire culture of a place that’s at fault? So we ate out for the last few nights and mostly skipped breakfast, went to the beach instead of the pool and saved our holiday by basically avoiding the hotel as much as possible. When we checked out, I was waiting for the “we hope you enjoyed your stay” so I could tell them very politely what had spoilt it. But of course they didn’t say that. The woman on reception simply took back the cards wordlessly and turned away without so much as a “thanks for the money, now shove off”. The absolutely appropriate ending to a gob-smacking week. I suspect some of the issues are relatively recent and I would hazard a guess that in a year’s time, this hotel will have many more negative reviews that will be far more reflective of the kind of place it now is. Perhaps instead of being passive aggressive in their response, the management could take a moment to ponder whether some of their recent guests might actually be telling the truth."

"Bedbugs ruined an otherwise good stay. Moved to another room but now dealing with hassle of bringing our clothes/luggage back into home while not trusting that they're not infected. Hotel did not offer any compensation outside of a new room while we were there."

"Visited this hotel for 10 nights in September. I have travelled to Tenerife at least 2 times per year for a good few years and have never had any major issues to complain about, but this hotel needs to close to have a deep clean and buy all new sleeping furniture. On arrival at the hotel, we checked our bed, baby and toddler beds for bedbugs as we had read about these in a group I joined just before coming. Beds seemed fine and so did the rooms. However, I was awake half of the night scratching, but thought I was just being paranoid, until the next morning when we woke to bedbugs visible on the top of the bedsheet. Reported to reception and after being told that it wasn't possible and having to show pictures to prove it, we were told the policy was to hand all our belongings over to be put in a freezer for a few hours and change room. Second room... Got to 2nd room and pulled all the beds apart to check mattresses. This time the black marks from bedbugs were visible all over the mattresses. Luckily we hadn't taken our luggage into the room. We were then moved to a third room. Third room... Again, pulled beds apart to check mattresses - all seemed fine. I was awake most nights checking my covers and my little ones covers (11months old and 2 year old). It wasn't until 2 days into staying in this room that I started to notice bites on my arms. I used my torch on my phone to have a closer look at the mattress and I was sure I could see tiny bedbugs (googled them and they matched). We had been in contact with Jet2 from the start. They tried to tell us that they didn't have any other reports from customers about bedbugs since February (which was total lies and I showed her other people's comments about reporting bedbugs). The rep then was almost siding with us telling us to make sure we left a review about it. I must say, other than the bedbug situation (which was a huge problem for us), the hotel itself is amazing. The entertainment is great. My wee girl loved the kids disco and Victor was amazing with them. Both kids loved the pools (plenty of sunbeds) and they spent a fair amount of time at the park/softplay area at the back of the hotel which is a great space for children. The food was just okay. We always found something to eat but it was pretty samey all the time and too many fish dishes."