"The hotel is clean and presentable in both rooms and communal areas, but there’s not much wow factor to the entrance which is twinned with service you get on check-in.
The check-in experience felt sterile, lacking any warmth of service and not that helpful for families who have had incorrect allocation of rooms (the other family in our party). We heard of multiple families that didn’t have enough beds in their rooms or our friends whom were forced to “upgrade” to a one bedroom room instead of interconnecting rooms.
There was a very limited explanation at check in pointing to a QR code fact sheet (which might I add half of the timings are incorrect). It was like they couldn’t be bothered or didn’t have the multi lingual expertise on front desk to cater for different nationalities.
There are some exceptionally warm staff in the hotel (housekeeping, bar staff and some people at restaurants that helped getting tables for our large party) but there are some whom are less so. The check-in staff need work the most. Service needs to be consistent and helpful to be five star. It’s the little things like smiling and greetings that are lacking - most interactions are very transactional in nature.
One à la carte per week is vaguely written on fact sheets and your website is misleading (and not typical of other five star resorts where you are allowed one à la carte per restaurant not total). This is not typical of other five star resorts where this is commonplace. When explained by guest relations, it was apparently because the hotel is very full. However, instead it rather feels like the hotel has developed far too fast - and is too large for the à la restaurant facilities on offer (we overheard staff saying the hotel was half the size a year ago).
The hotel is trying to be sustainable but not really succeeding. There are recycling bins but not even staff separate plastics from other waste. Water is all in plastic bottles. There are no refillable water stations either. Basic measures that other hotel chains are often doing to prove they are actively trying to be sustainable (not just writing a policy).
The resort feels like a concrete jungle filling every nook and cranny of their plot with “stuff”, but is lacking many green areas or open space. Yes they have palm trees and borders but it feels far too cramped in a small plot where natural landscape has been deprioritised. Feels very artificial and over-developed, due to the resort growing too rapidly in size in a very narrow plot (which isn’t their fault). It just lacks design consideration.
The food varieties in restaurants are repetitive and cuts of meat are low quality. Butterflied chicken at every meal with hundreds of bones, or sinewy beef entrecôte “steak”) is standard at every buffet. The desserts never have labels because they always have zero intentional flavour (just artificially coloured gelatinous concoctions in a variety of lurid colours).
For someone with an onion allergy (which I appreciate is rare) it is difficult to cater in Mediterranean cuisine. So I don’t expect there to be loads of variety and I work around it. There are attempts with QR codes to list out ingredients which is great and for coeliac and gluten free it had dedicated stations which is great.
I was given a spiel by guest relations who were very kind and helpful for my onion allergy. I had to sign a waiver (but this all felt very transactional in the end to cover themselves not a genuine desire to cater given my experience of à la carte restaurants).
For à la carte restaurants you have to supply your food order for your party before booking which felt antiquated. There was apparently no availability in the whole of first week of our stay either (lucky we were staying 11 nights). However we spoke to another group and were given one on their second night.
Given we had to give our food orders ahead of time I was given the impression that they would prepare dishes to cater to my allergy. However, both restaurants visits had issues. At the Manual Turkish restaurant I was told what things did and didn’t contain onion which was great. However, over three quarters of the dishes prepared had onion in which was disappointing given they had ample time and opportunity to make adaptions (that were promised but not delivered).
They don’t serve good quality international brand spirits and drinks at every bar, only the new piano bar; where cocktails are much better quality than everywhere else. Their staff
Animation team are great - really welcoming and inclusive with lots of staff and variety of activities. Only point is for 8-12 year olds there feels like less choice; there are lots of adult activities and lots of young children activities but not so much in the middle. My son struggled to feel included without a parent present.
Regarding service, it tries really hard in so many places but it is unfortunately not on par with other five star reputable chains that have reliable and consistent quality and standards with a warm and smiley service.
For the price it is ok value - as it isn’t as expensive as others in this bracket (it’s at the lower end) so you get what you pay for. The issues they have are resolvable they just need to ensure service and quality is not compromised in favour of vast growth. Although it may have new facilities (padel courts, patisseries, shops, new stages); if you can’t get the basics right you are not prioritising the right services."
