Castell dels Hams

"In a 4 night stay we was moved to three different rooms due to ongoing problems, had a broken phone in one room, and was left without air conditioning from 2am until 10am with no staff member available to help. An official complaint form was submitted before leaving and we saw several other guests doing the same, which suggests we weren't the only ones experiencing these issues. Advertises a spa, but when we spoke to reception got advised that it has been closed since 2020 due to a stipulation with the spa company, which we were told was externally sourced. This meant we left feeling more stressed than when we arrived and extremely disappointed as members of staff were very dismissive, regularly telling us there was nothing they could do to resolve our issues, and truthfully they did not. The hotel's location was okay, with a small nearby beach offering boat tours and a shuttle service provided by the hotel, but unfortunately the shuttle was a small minibus that only ran every few hours, often resulting in guests competing for the limited spaces. The hotel itself was generally very quiet and clean, although there were birds nesting on many of the balconies, which meant they were often covered in bird droppings. However, I actually found the nesting birds to be quite a charming and unique feature. Overall, I don't feel like the hotel represented good value for the price we paid, especially given the numerous issues we experienced throughout our stay, causing a severe lack of enjoyment. Had these problems not occurred, I could have viewed the stay differently."

"Good points: Food is great. Amazing freshly made pizzas. Not huge amount of choice but everything hot and tasty. Sunloungers always available at any point of the day. People don’t reserve them, so plenty to choose from. Courtesy bus to the beach, book online through a QR code ( would be better if ran in the evening too) Entertainment staff work incredibly hard. There wasn’t a great deal of entertainment in the evening whilst we were there as understandably they were showing the World Cup 2 of the nights. They had flamenco dancers one night which seemed popular and the other night the entertainment team did a great show, with fire and dancing in the pool. Pool area is very pretty, with lots of pine trees. Negatives: Not the cleanest hotel. Reception area and dining room were fine, but outdoor spaces were often dirty, bins not emptied etc. Our room was dusty and had cobwebs. The ceiling was very mouldy. Air conditioning very poor throughout. We stayed in one of the bungalow rooms for 2 people. Room is extremely small, with no room for 2 suitcases. ( lovely terrace though with 2 Sunloungers, parasol and 2 chairs) No designated smoking area, so guests are smoking and vaping everywhere, round the pool ( ash and cigarette ends everywhere) In the entertainment area, and on balconies. We tried watching the World Cup at the entertainment area but gave up as couldn’t see it for all the cigarette/vape smoke. Only the pool bar was open for our entire stay. Indoor bar did not open. Other information: We heard a few stories from other guests of things being taken from rooms. The vast majority of the guests are French. You can walk into Porto Cristo in about 30 mins. It’s a grass verge initially and then path rest of the way. Until you get into Porto Cristo there are no shops/ bars / restaurants. You can catch the local bus from Dinoworld into S’illot/Sa Coma/Cala Millor, however it does not stop there on the return, you would need to get off in Porto Cristo and walk back or get a taxi."

"Not really sure where to start with the experience I had at this hotel. I stayed here for a week with my boyfriend. We had a terrible experience at this hotel for multiple reasons. We read the reviews beforehand and knew that the guests would be predominantly French but didn’t think this would be an issue, however we were very wrong. I have also been to a Palia hotel before and had a good experience so I was hoping it would be the same here, again though, I was wrong. Room When we arrived check in was quick and simple which was nice, however we didn’t feel particularly welcomed but we weren’t too bothered by this. The room was nice and clean, spacious too, however after a shower I realised that not only did the hairdryer not work but it also tripped the electricity in the room. We told reception and they quickly sent someone up to look at it however he spoke no English at all so it was not easy to communicate. After showing him the issue and demonstrating how it tripped the electricity he just turned the electricity back on and abruptly left. We thought he might be coming back but he never did and we decided to try again another time as we were both exhausted and just wanted to sleep after a long day of travelling. Though, after experiencing other dismissive treatment by staff we later decided to not bother. Another thing to note is that the air con was not particularly great, a ceiling fan I think was not enough to cool us down in the 35+ degree heat whilst we were there. Food/Drink The food was also a huge disappointment at this hotel. It was catered obviously mostly towards the French as the hotel was predominantly French but the cutlery and tables were dirty nearly every single time we visited the buffet. As well as the food being horrible it wasn’t labelled properly, I am a vegetarian and there was some unlabelled pasta sauce that looked just like tomato, I chanced it which was my own fault and it ended up having meat in it. If you have allergies I would not risk it as I don’t know what else might be unlabelled or labelled wrong as well. There sometimes were not enough tables for the amount of people trying to eat which left us standing around waiting for people to leave, was really chaotic. Another thing that was really annoying was the French guests cutting in front of you when you are obviously in a queue. They just didn’t care and all did it. The outside dining area was very nice, however, the amount of bird droppings everywhere made it feel dirty so we didn’t sit out there very much. The cocktails at the bar were not nice at all and some of them were hardly bearable. Pool The pools were decently sized and would have been great if not for the amount of leaves and dead insects that were usually floating in it. When it was clean we found it fine, but didn’t go in a lot of the time when it appeared dirty. There were a lot of sun beds which was good as you never struggled to find some free, however they were often dirty with bird droppings too which did make it harder to find one that was clean. The staff at the pool bar we found were quite rude. Appeared fine until you spoke and it’s as if when they found out you were English they refused to make eye contact and gave you your drink without paying you any attention, obviously wasn’t a huge issue but added the awful atmosphere we felt at this hotel. Atmosphere I really don’t know why this was but it felt as if we couldn’t do anything or go anywhere in this hotel without people staring, giving dirty looks or just blatantly trying to aggravate us. As I previously said too, the people cutting in front in the buffet did nothing to help this. It became so bad that we just didn’t feel comfortable or welcome at all in the hotel and I understand that there is not anything the staff can do about this but I want to warn others as to not end up like we did. There was another English family that we heard from our balcony one night complaining about the hotel as well as a man complaining in reception another day, so we know it was not just us having issues. Entertainment The entertainment team seemed like they tried very hard and they put on a good show in the evenings however as it was all in French or Spanish we couldn’t understand anything they were saying. A huge problem we found during the evening entertainment was also the bird droppings, we went around every single chair one night as we came down early and there was not a single pair of seats that were both clean and so we usually sat on a clean sun-bed instead. This did not seem to bother others though as when the entertainment actually began the seats were always full. We were never approached to join in activities until the day before we left we were asked if we wanted to join but we did not mind this as we were not interested anyway. They did seem to go up the French guests every time though. Location The location of the hotel we found to be a problem despite not thinking we would mind the distance from the beach and town when we booked it. As we did not feel comfortable at the pool area/stage most of the time we wanted to be able to do something else other than sit there. But with the hotel having nothing close by we couldn’t even go on a walk that lasted longer than 5 minutes. The only way to get to the town and beach was walking about half an hour along what was essentially a motorway. The free shuttle was a nice thing but often times it was over booked and people had to be left behind which meant we had to fight for seats when it arrived. It only took about 5-10 minutes to get to the actual town of Porto Cristo and it was lovely. If anything it made us regret the hotel choice more. Though it is quite small there were plenty of restaurants and options of boat trips and such from the port and we never felt uncomfortable like we did at the hotel. I have tried to be fair in this review, all I want to do is make sure that people don’t have the same experience as us because we wasted a lot of money on a holiday where we were just counting down the days till we could go home. We were aware of the hotels three star rating and have been to other three stars in Spain and had great experiences. Please I advise you if you are not French then don’t bother booking this hotel as you could spend your money on a much better holiday."