Royal Hideaway Sancti Petri By Barceló

“A few niggles ....”

We stayed here for 11 nights 8-19 September, in a standard room. We chose this hotel having popped in for lunch on a previous visit to the area one year prior. We had high hopes for our stay and whilst some were met, others were dashed. Firstly, the room was lovely, Room 430 overlooking the gard… more

We stayed here for 11 nights 8-19 September, in a standard room. We chose this hotel having popped in for lunch on a previous visit to the area one year prior. We had high hopes for our stay and whilst some were met, others were dashed. Firstly, the room was lovely, Room 430 overlooking the garden area. These rooms are much larger than many other rooms we have stayed in and the bathrooms are huge ! However, there was quite a bit of mould in the shower cubicle, which is a no-no for me. We very much appreciated the evening turn-down/room facility service whereby you could ask for clean towels, water, toiletries etc. and your curtains were drawn, bed prepared and a general tidy up was undertaken. A nice touch. We were also given cakes on arrival, a gift of a pillow mist spray & car air freshener and one day when we returned to our room from our day out, we were surprised by a knock at the door with 2 freshly prepared smoothies :) The food selection was where the hotel fell short of its' 5-star rating for us. Breakfast was chaotic, we often waited ages for coffee to be bought to the table and the queues for the toaster and freshly cooked eggs were sometimes very long. On a couple of occasions I asked for a banana but was told that they were for the smoothies only, even though I saw some young children with them. The evening food service was themed each night. We didn't eat in the buffet every day, we tried both of the other restaurants - Lumiere and Atunante, both were excellent. However, we were told when we checked-in that if we made our reservations at the Reception Desk for these restaurants then a 20 euro deduction per person would be applied to our bill but this didn't happen. We questioned this both times but conveniently the waiter/waitresses couldn't understand us ! English is not widely spoken in this area of Spain, something to bear in mind if your Spanish is isn't great. The dinner service was initially 8-11pm but changed in our second week to 7.30-10.30pm. The beach is beautiful but it is a mission to get down there and back up again. You either have 100 steps to negotiate or a steep slope, there is no other way to access the beach from this hotel. We were very disappointed at the lack of bars that were open. The piano bar next to the buffet restaurant was closed, as was the bar on the Reception level. Your only option for a pre/post dinner drink was the Sunset bar in the far corner of the hotel grounds. From speaking to some other guests it would seem that these bars closed at the end of August when occupancy declined due to kids going back to school. With the exception of a singer in the Sunset bar on our last evening we had not seen any entertainment in the hotel. There is an Irish bar 'Dublin Bay' which has a small bowling alley, televisions showing football and snooker tables but this doesn't open until 8pm. We went in there a few times and each time there was only a handful of people in there so literally no atmosphere. The grounds are beautiful and so well kept. There are lots of pools, one is adults only and there is also a children's pool with a slide. It seems as though the Kids' club only operates during high season as we didn't see any activity in or around the Barcy Club area, albeit there were very few children in the hotel anyway. One thing that surprised us was that the pools didn't open until 11am. Each pool was closed off by glass balustrades and the gates remained locked until 11am. You could collect towels free of charge and change them at Reception or the Children's pool as many times as you like, which was a nice touch. In summary, this is a lovely hotel but probably not 5 star as the mainstream food lets it down.

less

“Our stay”

Decent over all - great place, but room service was lacking. Buffet pretty good. Rooms very good in general.