"We’ve just returned from our stay at this hotel, and unfortunately, I wouldn’t rate it as a 5-star resort. In my opinion, it’s closer to a 4-star hotel at best.
I’ll start with the positives. The hotel itself is absolutely stunning. The décor is beautiful, luxurious, and gives a true 5-star first impression. The rooms are incredibly spacious, which was perfect for our toddler, and they were cleaned daily to a very high standard. Our maid was so lovely and friendly, and she did a fantastic job throughout our stay.
The facilities are excellent, with plenty of pools, water slides, and activities to keep children entertained. Our little one never got bored thanks to the great kids' club and the rides that operated at certain times throughout the day. The complimentary shuttle to the beach was also a great addition.
One tip I would highly recommend is having lunch at the beach snack bar. It's table service with a menu, and it's included as part of the all-inclusive package. Sadly, we only discovered it during our last few days. It was a much more relaxing experience than the busy pool snack bar and buffet restaurant. We also had a wonderful waitress there each time we visited who was absolutely fantastic.
Unfortunately, for us, the negatives outweighed the positives, and because of that we most likely wouldn't return.
Firstly, the hotel seemed to cater more towards other nationalities than British guests. While this obviously isn't the hotel's fault, the behaviour of many other guests had a huge impact on our holiday. Every day we experienced people pushing, queue jumping, and generally showing very little consideration for others. Simple manners such as saying "please" and "thank you" seemed non-existent. It became incredibly frustrating over the course of the holiday. Most staff members simply allowed this behaviour to continue. The only exception was one young man working at the Pool Terrace Bar, who politely told queue jumpers to wait their turn behind us. He deserves recognition, and I only wish I'd caught his name.
The buffet restaurant was, quite honestly, chaos. Finding a table was stressful enough, but then queuing just to see what food was available could easily take 20 minutes because of the crowds and people pushing in. This simply isn't the level of organisation or service I'd expect from a 5-star hotel.
To make matters worse, the food itself was extremely disappointing. The selection was very repetitive from day to day, and much of it was bland or poor in quality. By the end of the holiday we were struggling to find anything appealing to eat. For a hotel advertising itself as 5-star, we expected a far better variety and standard of food.
My suggestion would be to seat guests on arrival, as is common in many other 5-star resorts. Elsewhere we've stayed, staff would show you to a table, take your drinks order, and if no tables were available, they'd advise you of the waiting time. Here, you were left to search for a table yourself, which was often difficult. Even once seated, tables frequently had no cutlery, and getting a drink often meant repeatedly trying to catch a member of staff's attention.
That said, we did have one exceptional waiter during dinner service. We deliberately tried to sit in his section each evening (the seating area at the far end beyond the buffet), as he always made sure we had everything we needed and provided excellent service.
On our final day we also experienced an issue with the minibar. After it had been restocked, we returned to find that a can of Coke had exploded. It appeared that whoever had stocked the minibar had simply thrown the burst can into our bin without cleaning anything up. Coke was all over the floor, inside the fridge, and splashed across the mirrors. The mess had clearly been left behind without any attempt to clean it, and the drink wasn't even replaced. This wasn't the fault of our maid, who had already cleaned our room beautifully before the minibar was restocked, but it reflected very poorly on the minibar staff.
The most upsetting part of our holiday, however, was an incident involving my brother-in-law. He has dark skin, and while ordering lunch at the pool snack bar, two young male members of staff at the toastie station greeted him by smirking, laughing, and handing him a banana in what appeared to be an attempt to compare him to a monkey. He handed it back, but they continued laughing amongst themselves.
We didn't report the incident at the time because, rightly or wrongly, we were concerned about how our food might be treated afterwards. However, it left my brother-in-law feeling uncomfortable and upset, and it completely changed how we felt about using that area of the hotel. Racism has absolutely no place anywhere, especially in the hospitality industry, and this behaviour was completely unacceptable and deeply unprofessional.
Overall, the hotel has beautiful surroundings, spacious rooms, and excellent facilities for families, but the poor organisation, disappointing food, inconsistent service, lack of crowd management, and the deeply upsetting incident involving my brother-in-law overshadowed the positives. Sadly, despite some wonderful members of staff, we won't be returning."
