Melia Dunas Beach Resort and Spa

"Having previously visited Riu Funana and Riu Palace Santa Maria in April this year , we are huge Sal fans and were excited to visit another “5 star resort” on the island . First impressions were actually very promising. We knew not to compare to the Palace as the price point was much lower . The hotel welcome was very warm with the dancers and greeting from all reception staff . However every negative review that you read is absolutely correct and must be taken seriously. The rooms are filthy . As in long term poor cleaning that require a thorough deep clean. Not just a quick wipe over . The bathroom bin hadn’t even been removed from the previous guest. Room didn’t get cleaned until 5pm some days which was when we wanted to get changed . Very frustrating . Towels weren’t replaced . Water not enough , had to beg at reception for more . Just added to the everyday stress that shouldn’t be on your mind when on holiday at a 5 star . Buffet is horrific . Hotter than outside . Flies , food uncovered and doesn’t seem to be replaced . We managed to get in the alacartes after complaining at reception . However my husband got ill day 4 which ruined the holiday for us . We have a 5 year old and 9 month old so I was then terrified of us getting ill . The kids pool was ok , suited us however it was very run down with broken tiles . Extremely dangerous . The other red flag was the fact that there is no life guard at any of the pools . Furthermore there doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge . The pool got extremely busy , so may ball games , kids jumping in etc , people drinking . With no one to manage , it’s a serious incident waiting to happen . It doesn’t feel very safe with that amount of people . Extremely concerning . Basically repeat of every negative review !!! I wish I listened and went back to the trusted Riu . Will never got to a Meliá again ."

"Disappointing overall, the reviews were unfortunately accurate. Before booking Meliá Dunas, I had read quite a few negative reviews. I genuinely thought some of them might just be people looking for faults or trying to claim compensation. Unfortunately, they were pretty accurate. The biggest issue is that the whole resort feels poorly managed and badly in need of some proper attention. The food was extremely repetitive. And I don't just mean from one day to the next, it was repetitive within the same meal. The dining hall is huge, which initially makes it look as though there's an enormous selection, but once you actually walk around you realise that the same dishes are repeated several times throughout. If there was, for example, a particular chicken dish in sauce, you'd often come across that exact same dish another three or four times in different parts of the buffet. It gave the impression of a huge buffet without actually providing the variety you'd expect from one. For such a large dining area, the actual selection was surprisingly limited. There were supposedly "themed" evenings, but apart from perhaps a couple of different additions, the food was largely the same as every other night. Desserts were particularly disappointing. A lot of them seemed to be essentially the same basic sponge cake with different icing or toppings, presented as different desserts. There was some fruit available at lunch and dinner, although it wasn't always in the best condition. And then there were the flies. Everywhere! Not just flying around the dining area, the actual buffet food you were about to serve yourself from would have flies sitting and crawling all over it. You'd walk up to take some food and there they were. Absolutely disgusting and incredibly off-putting. The dining hall itself made the whole experience even worse. It was unbelievably hot, with seemingly no effective air conditioning. Trying to sit down and peacefully enjoy a meal while having sweat running down your face was extremely unpleasant. It honestly felt as though the restaurant was almost designed to make you eat quickly and get out, rather than sit comfortably and enjoy your meal. In Cape Verde, you'd expect the main indoor dining restaurant to be one of the places where you could escape the heat. Somehow, it seemed to be one of the few places where you couldn't. Combine that heat with flies crawling over the buffet food, and mealtimes became something to get through rather than something to enjoy. Cleanliness was another major problem. The resort generally could do with a serious deep clean, but the rooms were particularly poor. Even seeing the rooms immediately after the cleaning teams had been through was enough to make you go "ew". At one point our cleaner actually emptied the contents of our ashtray over the balcony, meaning we then spent the rest of the holiday looking down at our own cigarette ends below. We also had to contact reception ourselves for basics such as towels and coffee. The pools weren't much better. The outer edges, where the chlorinated water doesn't reach, were absolutely filthy and clearly overdue a proper scrub. You can actually see the grime in our normal holiday photographs, and we weren't deliberately taking pictures of faults or trying to document problems. The resort generally looks tired and outdated: missing tiles, deteriorating umbrellas and sun loungers, dirty pool areas, etc. Allowing people to drink in the pools doesn't help either, as used cups are constantly left around the pool edges, making everything look even more dirty and untidy. Arrival didn't exactly start things well either. Check-in took far too long for seemingly no reason. We had three hungry children with us, including a baby, everyone was hot and tired, and we just wanted to get changed, eat and finally enjoy the pool. One of our rooms wasn't even ready. We tipped the luggage staff €10, expecting our luggage would at least arrive reasonably quickly. It took around 45 minutes. Had we known, we'd simply have taken it ourselves. From arriving at the hotel to finally being settled in the rooms and able to come back out again, the whole process took around 3 hours. Reception knew we had hungry children with us, including a baby. There was absolutely no sense of urgency or consideration. If I had been in their position, I'd have been finding a couple of biscuits, a cookie, anything at all for those children while they waited. It's such a small gesture, but that's what hospitality is supposed to be about! One particular member of reception staff, Alankeli, seemed to have a permanent expression of "girl, WHAT?" whenever I asked him anything. 😂 It genuinely felt as though every question was an inconvenience. And unfortunately that leads to probably my biggest criticism: the customer service. Hotels can be dated. Food can be average. Things can go wrong....BUT excellent customer service can make you overlook an incredible number of shortcomings! Here, it did the opposite. This was genuinely some of the poorest customer service we've experienced on any of our holidays. Most staff rarely smiled and generally looked stern, tired, bored or simply uninterested. During the first couple of days we tipped everyone, and I mean everyone: housekeeping, bar staff, restaurant staff, etc, but eventually stopped, except on very rare occasions. It made absolutely no difference. There was no extra warmth or attentiveness. It felt as though nothing could motivate many of the staff to actually provide a welcoming experience. There were rare exceptions. Some staff would say hello when they saw you walking around the resort, which was nice and appreciated. Ironically, probably the most pleasant person we encountered was the gentleman trying to persuade guests to upgrade to VIP. Unfortunately, after experiencing the standard service, I wasn't particularly tempted to hand over more money to discover what their version of "VIP" might mean. The children's facilities were another huge disappointment. The baby club was filthy. Simply NO other word for it. We stayed for approximately two minutes before leaving because I simply wasn't comfortable having our baby in there. The kids' club wasn't much better. Essentially a table to draw at and some battered toys. For a resort marketed so heavily towards families, I expected considerably more. Evening entertainment was generally awful. Repetitive, boring and simply not particularly entertaining. Judging by the atmosphere most evenings, we certainly weren't the only people bored. There were a couple of notable exceptions. The magic show was fantastic, genuinely entertaining and exactly the sort of thing the resort needs more of. The drumming group was also enjoyable and something different. The main animation teams performances, however, wasn't for us. The girl and boy dancing when we first arrived at the hotel was also a lovely touch. Unfortunately, that's roughly where the lovely touches ended. The resort itself is enormous, which is both a positive and a negative. There's plenty of space, but the layout feels incredibly disorganised. Rather than having sensible clusters or "hot spots" with several things together, everything seems scattered around. The beach is one way, slides another, restaurants elsewhere, shops elsewhere again. You spend a surprising amount of your holiday simply walking from A to B. With three children, including a baby, that becomes old very quickly. Something else that became almost comical was constantly seeing the word "luxury" used in the hotel's own advertising, including the promotional material playing on the TVs in the rooms. Luxury was probably the last word I would have used to describe our experience. Between the tired surroundings, missing tiles, deteriorating sun loungers and umbrellas, dirty pools, poor room cleaning, flies all over the buffet food, uncomfortable dining area and the general atmosphere of the resort, it felt like anything but luxury. After a few days, every time the word appeared on the TV it honestly felt like a joke. You can't repeatedly call something luxury and expect the word itself to create a luxury experience. And finally, our group ended up with vomiting and diarrhoea affecting both adults and children during the holiday. I cannot definitively say what caused it, so I'm not going to claim the hotel food was responsible. But paired with everything else we witnessed regarding hygiene and cleanliness, particularly seeing flies all over food we were expected to eat, it certainly didn't leave us feeling particularly reassured. The one positive I can give Meliá Dunas is the price. Overall, what we paid for the holiday was reasonable. Had we paid substantially more for this experience, I would have been absolutely furious. But perhaps there's a reason it can appear cheap. The frustrating part is that this resort actually has so much potential. The size, grounds, facilities and overall concept could make it a fantastic family resort. It needs investment, a serious focus on cleanliness and, above all, proper management. I don't particularly blame individual staff members when the attitude seems this widespread. When an entire workforce appears tired, disengaged and unmotivated, you have to start looking at the people responsible for managing, training and motivating them. Overall, just dissatisfaction from beginning to end. Combined with the illness across our group, unfortunately I couldn't recommend Meliá Dunas and wouldn't return. It may appear cheap, but in our experience, it was cheap for all the wrong reasons. Those negative reviews I read before travelling and decided not to believe? I wish I'd listened."

"⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The hotel is absolutely huge, so be prepared for a lot of walking! You can get buggies from reception, but generally you have to wait for one and getting one back the other way is very hit and miss. One thing I would say is don’t expect the same standard as a European 5-star hotel. We went with this mindset, and I think that made our experience much better because we weren’t constantly comparing it to European 5-star standards and feeling let down. There’s plenty of choice in the buffet, but it is boiling in there! Air conditioning in the buffet restaurant would make a HUGE difference. If you can go early to breakfast it makes for a much more enjoyable experience, we walked down to the far end every morning which did not seem quite as busy. The à la carte restaurants don’t have a huge amount of choice, which is absolutely fine, but I would recommend checking the menus before you go. We were a little surprised by some of the choices on certain evenings. Having said that, the limited menus do make things much more efficient, as the food comes out very quickly, which is definitely a bonus. If you can upgrade to VIP, absolutely do it! It made the food choices so much more varied, and Bikini Beach is an absolute must! 🌴 We had Evaristus looking after us, and he was absolutely amazing. He booked everything we wanted without hesitation and even replied to me on his day off when we decided we wanted a different dinner reservation (I didn’t realise he was off! 😂). He really went above and beyond.Evaristus C Onwuekwe The only thing that was a little annoying with VIP was that children aren’t allowed into the VIP breakfast or pool area. Luckily, we went as a big family, so we just took it in turns to go for breakfast. 🧴 Towels are a bit of a problem. The cleaners take the towels from your room and don’t always replace them. My advice is, unless you really need to change them, guard them with your life! 😂 Pool towels are €20 to hire and you can change them daily, but do expect quite a queue at 10am when the towel hut opens. We tried going at different times during the day, but found it was either closed or they had simply run out of towels, which was really frustrating. The process is also worth knowing about: you pay at reception first and receive a voucher, then take the voucher down to the main pool to exchange it for your towels. So it’s not as simple as just turning up at the pool and getting one. 🏖️ The beach is absolutely beautiful, and you can use any of the sunbeds. Just be aware of the guys trying to sell you trips and other things. They’re all perfectly fine, but you do need to be firm and say, “No thanks, we’ve already booked,” and they leave you alone. 🦟 Mosquitoes are a BIG problem! We took Jungle Formula spray, Avon Skin So Soft and plug-ins for the room, which worked really well. One evening my daughter forgot to spray herself and ended up with 17 bites on her legs! 😩 So definitely come prepared. Overall, we really enjoyed our holiday and had a great time. There are definitely a few things that could be improved to make the hotel feel more like a true 5-star experience, but if you go with the mindset that it’s more of a 4 star standard, you’ll have a great time! We’d recommend it — especially with the VIP upgrade. ❤️"