Beautiful resort but not 5 star at all lots wrong with it
Beautiful resort with 4 lovely pools, nice restaurants and scenery, if only the staff and guests were as nice. On arrival check in took over an hour, we were encouraged to purchase premium stay with no set price, we said no luckily as without even realising we already had use of all premium facilities with our tui booking just not a premium room, then encouraged to go for a timeshare breakfast meeting the next morning, we didnt go but they were very pushy trying to get us to attend, telling us it wasn't for timeshare but it clearly was and this was confirmed by guests that did attend, they want you to invest 30k in the new hotel they are building onsite. Lots of Spanish speaking guests that were very rude and 80% of the staff were rude and unhelpful, when we occasionally got a nice and smiling staff member we felt like it needed celebrating as it was that rare. I speak fluent Spanish so it's not because of a language barrier either. I got shouted at by another guest for "stealing" his table at breakfast because I didn't know making a cross with the cutlery meant the table was taken, there was no other indication the table was taken, he shouted at me in spanish and tried to intimidate me and the waiters and waitresses were more worried that he was ok and had everything he needed offering to get him a coffee, they didn't even ask me if I was ok. The buffet was constantly running out of plates and cutlery with everyone pushing past and bashing into you. Getting served for a drink in the buffet and in the bars was so hard we ended up asking 3 times until eventually get served or going without. Spoons for some reason were a rare sight in the buffet you had to ask for one you didnt automatically get one with the other cutlery. Plenty of sun loungers but maybe not enough parasols, that's just personal preference i guess but it did seem people were fighting for the shade a lot of the time. If you're not premium it can be quite confusing what you can and can't use as there are bars, part of the beach and a pool that is for premium guests only which a few people that weren't premium ended up at and were told they shouldn't use, but it wasn't overly clear just a little sign and also the area didn't look any different or upgraded infact the premium pool was the smallest and loudest and no better than the main pools. There's so many different coloured wrist bands which made it even more confusing, we saw gold, silver, red, blue, yellow and green ones. A lady got attacked outside the hotel, 2 men on mopeds stole her bag and broke her leg running over it while riding off. Another lady caught a male member of staff in her room taking photos of her passport and bank cards that were originally in the room safe. A man got his watch stolen off his wrist when he went to a little shopping centre down the road. English guests definitely get treated less favourably in general there, just for being english even though we are being polite. Overall if the resort was somewhere else in the world with nicer people in it it would be 10 times better. We enjoyed our stay because a holiday is what you make of it and we were just looking to relax but I won't be going back or recommending to anyone. We didnt feel safe going out of the hotel so we didnt do any excursions like we normally would and they were extortionate prices anyway. Through out the resort you are constantly pestered by sellers trying to sell you trips and pestered on the beach trying to sell you all sorts like clothes, sunglasses, cigars, photos with a parrot among other things. 3 times throughout our stay the room keys/cards stopped working and we had to get them changed. There was a fire in a room on the same block as ours which completely destroyed the room due to a faulty plug or hairdryer, no fire alarms went off so we only found out about this by coincidence seeing a post and photos on facebook, left me quite concerned as the lights on the fire alarm in our room didnt start flashing until our last day there and the fire happened on day 3 of our stay, in the same block. Bit of a shambles really, we won't be returning or recommending to anyone.
June 28, 2025
Unprompted review