"We booked GF Noelia in Puerto de la Cruz for a peak August holiday, knowing that it was a 3-star hotel with fairly average reviews. We booked half board and weren’t expecting anything luxurious or fancy. What we did expect, however, was reasonably good, safe food and the basics you would normally expect from a hotel of this type.
I want to start by saying that the hotel staff were excellent throughout our stay. Everyone we dealt with was pleasant, friendly and very helpful, including room cleaning lady and the management. In my opinion, the staff were doing their best with what they had to work with.
Unfortunately, the food was a major disappointment.
We arrived late because of a delayed flight and a very long transfer, with GF Noelia being the second-to-last hotel on the shared coach transfer. As half-board guests, we expected the usual sandwich tray or something similar to be available for late arrivals. There was no food available at all, so at around 10:05pm we had to go out and find dinner with our children. That was particularly disappointing after a long journey.
Breakfast was very limited. There was usually one decent pastry, but it would disappear within minutes and often wasn't replenished. The other pastries were frequently stale, hard and unpleasant. On the positive side, the breakfast food we did eat appeared safe and there were enough basic options to get by.
Dinner was more problematic. Dinner started at 7pm, but when we arrived at opening time, several dishes were already empty. It could take until around 7:20pm for them to be replenished, and the only pizza option sometimes wasn't ready until around 7:30pm. This was frustrating because we wanted to finish dinner and take the children out to enjoy the evening and the beautiful sunsets, rather than spend a large part of the evening waiting for food.
There were two types of meat or fish cooked to order each night, which in principle was a good idea. Unfortunately, on several occasions they were undercooked. I repeatedly had to use Google Translate to ask the cooks in Spanish to cook the food properly. On one occasion the chicken was visibly pink inside, and on another occasion the fish was undercooked. There were queues at the cooking station, and it seemed to me that the cooks were under pressure to serve people quickly. I also didn't see temperature probes being used to check that the meat and fish were properly cooked.
For us, one of the biggest disappointments was actually something very simple: ice cream for the children. We never expected a huge dessert selection, but we did expect basic flavours such as vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. Instead, coconut and lemon seemed to be available most of the time, with strawberry or vanilla appearing occasionally and chocolate only rarely. Our children were very disappointed, so we ended up buying ice cream outside the hotel, at around €2.70 per scoop.
The yoghurt desserts were also often unpleasant-tasting, and some seemed very close to being off. The cakes were similarly disappointing. The bread rolls were extremely hard and there were only a couple of varieties.
To be clear, we were not expecting a luxury buffet. We knew we were staying in a 3-star hotel and were perfectly prepared for simple food and limited choice. What surprised us was the overall quality and, in particular, the lack of some very basic things that even inexpensive family hotels usually manage to provide.
My impression is that the hotel is under considerable pressure to keep its costs down. Whether this is because of the way package holidays are priced and structured, or simply the hotel's own budget constraints, I obviously can't say for certain. But it felt as though cost-cutting was taking place in areas such as food quality, replenishment and the number of staff available to prepare and serve food. It was a shame because the staff themselves were genuinely excellent.
We still enjoyed our holiday because we made the most of it and had decent lunches outside the hotel. Puerto de la Cruz is a lovely place, and we enjoyed exploring the area. Including going to loro parque the capital Santa Cruz and la Oro tava valley. Local taxis were around €5-6 to go to town center, you could walk one way and take the taxi back.
For us, though, the lesson is that we probably wouldn't book this hotel or this type of hotel again. Next time, we may look at cheaper destinations such as the Costa Blanca or Costa Dorada.
GF Noelia could be a perfectly adequate 3-star hotel if expectations are kept low, but based on our experience, I wouldn't recommend it when the food is such a weak point. The staff deserve praise; unfortunately, the food and catering operation let the hotel down badly."
