"We recently stayed here and came away feeling quite disappointed. The hotel has excellent facilities, but unfortunately the level of service, staffing and cleanliness simply doesn’t match what we would expect from a premium 5-star hotel.
There is a lot to praise. The hotel is large and spacious and, despite being very busy, it never felt overcrowded. There are plenty of pools, bars, restaurants and food areas. The kids’ aqua park was fantastic and our toddler absolutely loved it. She also enjoyed the kids’ disco every evening, and the concerts were genuinely very good.
Unfortunately, the biggest issue is staffing and management.
The hotel is clearly understaffed, particularly in the restaurants and there doesn’t seems to be any management around to direct the staff. Almost every time we went for food, we had to find someone to clear a table left by previous guests before we could sit down. Then we’d wait for cutlery, wait to order, and wait again for drinks. On several occasions, drinks took around 30 minutes to arrive after several mentions.
You could see the frustration building among guests. Staff were clearly overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up with clearing tables, taking orders and delivering drinks. At times, it felt like staff avoided eye contact because they knew they had too many people waiting. This isn’t the fault of individual staff members — it’s a staffing and management issue.
The QR ordering system around the pool is a great idea, but what’s the point if drinks take over an hour to arrive? The same happened during the concerts. The concerts themselves were excellent, but waiting an incredibly long time for drinks really took away from the experience.
The cocktails were also very inconsistent. Depending on who made them, the same cocktail could be excellent one time and completely undrinkable the next because it was so overly sugary. There needs to be much more consistency in how drinks are prepared.
The sun loungers were another major disappointment.
We paid a premium price to stay here, yet if you hadn’t reserved your sun loungers by around 9:30am, finding one around the pool was extremely difficult. Worse still, when we asked staff for help, we were essentially passed from one person to another with comments along the lines of “it’s not my responsibility, you’ll need to find someone else.”
That’s simply not the level of service I’d expect from a 5-star hotel. There should be someone responsible for managing the pool area and actually helping guests.
Cleanliness also needs significant improvement.
When we first arrived in our room, we found a dirty tissue and a nail on the floor, and the room generally didn’t look as though it had been properly cleaned after the previous guests.
To be fair, this was handled very well by Guest Relations. We raised the issue and two cleaners came straight away and completely re-cleaned the room. Guest Relations were actually one of the positives of our stay — whenever we had a question or raised an issue, they were helpful and responsive.
Unfortunately, we also noticed cleanliness issues in the restaurants. Some of the plates and white cups had visible food marks, and we found ourselves checking through them to find clean ones. For a hotel charging premium prices and presenting itself as 5-star, this is really not acceptable.
The breakfast omelette station was another small but frustrating example. Every morning we politely asked for a plain omelette that wasn’t well done because our toddler won’t eat it when overcooked. We’d tell the lady when it was ready and ask for it to be taken off the pan, yet she’d still leave it cooking for another 10–20 seconds, resulting in an overcooked omelette. It’s a small thing, but when the same simple request is made every day and still isn’t followed, it becomes frustrating.
The entertainment was mixed. Some of the shows were quite boring, although our toddler loved the kids’ disco. The concerts, however, were very good.
So, would we stay again?
The hotel has the potential to be fantastic. The facilities are there. The pools, aqua park, restaurants, bars and entertainment areas are all very good. But facilities alone don’t make a 5-star hotel.
We paid a premium price expecting a premium experience, and unfortunately the service didn’t match. The lack of staff has a knock-on effect everywhere — slow drinks, uncleared tables, forgotten orders, frustrated guests and staff who simply don’t have the capacity to provide the level of service expected.
Add the cleanliness issues and the sun-lounger situation, and the overall experience falls well short of what we’d expect from a 5-star property.
In short: 5-star facilities, but unfortunately 3-star service.
Hopefully the hotel management takes the staffing and cleanliness issues seriously, because with the right level of staffing and attention to detail, this could genuinely be an excellent hotel."
