"It’s fair to say our stay at this hotel didn't start off on the best terms. This was due to the staff member who greeted us to check in. From the offset he was very defensive about the hotel and my wife made a light hearted comment, something along the lines of “how is our room is it nice ?” His reply was “it’s what you booked”
Turns out our room was in what he described as “the trouble corner” of the hotel, at least before the refurb. It was indeed a dungeon of a room on the ground floor and the ceiling in the bathroom leaked constantly throughout our stay. This was reported to the same staff member but again their response was very defensive and seemed to suggest we should expect this sort of thing after a refurb. “This is what happens when you have contractors in your house” ……….yes I’m sure, but I am paying to stay here ? Maybe it’s me being picky ? But I didn’t think so. I’m sure people will understand when I say it wasn’t the leak that really bothered me, it was the attitude to bringing it up, as if it was stupid to have any other expectations. Fundamentally this is a 3 star hotel at best that has been tarted up in order to get the 4 stars on the front wall, nothing more. The rooms do look nice and the place is clean and tidy for the most part. They are still having landscaping work done and I’m sure it will look fab when it’s done. Cleaning left a lot to be desired too, we had a change of bedding once is 6 nights and the bin emptied once I believe, which I don’t think is acceptable. You also cannot hire towels and are advised to just use the terrible brown sand paper in your room. One thing I think they need to contact their contractors about is the bathrooms, not only did the ceiling leak, but nowhere was siliconed at all nor was the extractor fan wired in. This lead to a huge amount of condensation everywhere which over time will rot and you could already see the woodwork bowing out of shape.
What I don’t think some staff members and perhaps the owners understand is that your star rating is more than just a refurb it’s about your attitude and how you treat the guests.
This is not a family hotel, we took our 7 year old daughter who loves the pool and could stay there all day and frequently did. However even though there are a fair few families with kids this is by far not the main client base. It’s basically a Magaluf overspill, I don’t think there was one night that did not involve constant noise/banging/shouting etc. perhaps this was our fault for not investigating this more before booking, it’s certainly not the guests fault, they have come for their type of holiday too and that’s fine, but we would definitely not have come if we had know that beforehand.
All this said there are of course positives to the place. The food was very nice and the dinner hall was clean and pleasant and never too busy. I don’t believe many people took up the option for half board and it showed as it was always practically empty. The pool bar was also very nice, friendly staff and good food which was reasonably priced too. Perhaps the biggest positive was for the staff who look after activities for the kids. They clearly have a very limited budget etc and doesn’t seem high on the hotels priority list, but they make such an effort to make it fun and play games etc they made a nice fuss of my daughter which made her happy to get involved.
Overall our experience was negative, through a mixture of our own naivety and certain staff members defensive 3 star attitude. Yes the rooms do look physically nicer and the food was very nice. But overall it was simply filled with people who are not there for the same type of holiday we were. I’m not early 20s looking to get smashed and come back at 4am. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but I’d rather be at a different hotel without them. My advice to others and to my future self will be spend more money and get what you actually want."
