"This hotel was very good until we arrived at New Years Day. I’ll come to that shortly:
Reception:
Checking in was good and the reception staff were very helpful during our week at the hotel.
Room
Our room was very clean and nice. Only 4 coffee pods for each stay are a bit of a downer. The idea was to get you to buy the pods from the mini market. The fridge is too small to even stand up an average size bottle of water. The TV was in the sitting room and nothing in the bedroom, which is a shame. The connections are on the wall but no TV. The bathroom is very large with a great shower.
Pool
The pool is nice but has one major problem. The sunbeds are in a very poor condition. We were lucky because we stayed at a time when the hotel wasn’t full. If you plan on going at peak time, be warned. If you don’t get to bed early you will be on a sunbed with two metal bars running across your back and legs. If you manage a week without needing an Orthopedist, you have done well.
Bar
Despite the app saying that two bars were open, we never ever saw the one at reception open, which was a shame due to the queuing needed at the bar. In peak hours you could be at the back of a queue with 12 or more people in front of you. Unfortunately, the bar is very small with room for two people serving. Most of the time only one person would be serving. Despite this the bar staff were very friendly and good at their jobs.
Entertainment
We didn’t see much entertainment, but what we did was quite good. We prefer to have a later dinner, so we missed a lot of entertainment while eating. The New Years Eve entertainment was good with the singer, acrobats, saxophonist and juggler around the pool area. The DJ played a few songs that should have only been played in private. Kids do not want to hear someone singing about what he’s going to do with a girl tonight, absolutely shocking playing that with children around. The music played by the DJ only improved when the time got to about 11:30. He then started to play party music which got people dancing.
Restaurant
I would like to give the restaurant a very good score but something that happened on New Years Day has left a sour taste in my mouth. I’ll come to that soon. Overall, the restaurant was very nice, the food was very nice although the breakfast wasn’t to my taste. Hotdog sausages in the morning just doesn’t do it for me. The food was cooked to a high standard, and the staff were very attentive to our needs. We found some really nice new tastes on this holiday and would like to thank the staff for being so helpful at times.
OK, Here’s the problem that we had while staying over the New Year. New Years Day was a disaster from lunch to dinner. The reason for this is not the staff’s fault, it was the fault of the manager who was helping out in the restaurant at night, we shall call him Mr. Fawlty for want of a better name. At lunch time we visited the restaurant for a quick snack before hitting the sunbed again. On visiting the restaurant everything looked normal until I went to look at the food. The food was 90% fish which is no use to me because I have an allergy. The only meat dish was some type of beef hotpot which wasn’t to my taste. I ended up with a chip roll for my lunch. The annoying thing was most of the food put out was leftovers from the previous night’s gala dinner. Even the cakes had the 2026 sign of them. I spoke to the manager on duty who was very helpful and even got the chef out to speak with me. He offered to cook something but at that time I had already eaten enough chip butties to keep me going. Then came the evening dinner and the run in with Mr. Fawlty. On arriving at the restaurant, you could see a queue of people waiting for a table, the first time we had seen this. We joined the line and couldn’t see any staff at all. Eventually Mr. Fawlty arrived and asked the people at the front how many people there were. He then went and cleared a table for them. On his way back he stopped and spoke with an 8-year-old girl for about a minute. Meanwhile the queue of people is growing. We were now second and we had another 3 families behind us. The same happened again, Mr. Fawlty cleaned the table and sat the people down. After speaking with the young girl again he approached us. The same again, he went to clear the table. Now all this has taken about 15 minutes, and any untrained eye can see the problem. There was a lack of staff due to it being a bank holiday. Eventually a waitress came out, and he told her to take us to a table that someone was already sitting on. At this point I asked to speak with him. I asked why he didn’t have any staff on, and he told me while walking away, you need to complain to the Spanish Government. Now you see why I used the name of Mr. Fawlty. I don’t think he was trained in waiting on tables because he didn’t know what he was doing. He then left the restaurant, leaving his skeleton staff to cope. Frankly, they did a better job without him. Then I went to get my food only to find fish from the previous night all over the cheese. Lobster and cheese might be OK for some people but not for me. I did manage to get some chicken that night, but the whole episode left a bad taste in my mouth.
OK, I understand that people like fish and I probably would also, but they don’t like me. My biggest complaint is the management didn’t staff the restaurant sufficiently for the number of guests staying at the hotel. Blaming the Spanish Government isn’t going to help the hotel. How about paying the staff an incentive to work a bank holiday? I know Spain has 14 bank holidays, but I would assume most of the staff are paid at the lower end of the pay scale and therefore might me happy to work for double time or maybe even a day off at a later date. The fact that the hotel charged me twice the amount to stay over the New Year and then didn’t staff correctly leaves me feeling annoyed and upset. We priced the same hotel in the middle of summer, and it was half the price we paid. The hotel are happy to take twice the money but won’t pay any extra to the staff to make the guests stay memorable and enjoyable.
We really enjoyed our holiday until New Years Day. The hotel is clean and the food is very good; the staff are great. The management should take the blame for not staffing correctly. Also Mr. Fawlty, if you are reading this, learn some manners and pay the staff correctly to keep the service to a decent standard."
