A nice hotel in a fairly mediocre area.

The reception staff and front of house staff are excellent at this hotel and simply cannot do enough to help you. The hotel is clean and the rooms are pleasant. The standard rooms are fairly small but the suites are definitely worth the extra money as you get much more space. The outside areas are beautifully tended to and the gardens are lovely. The spa staff are extremely efficient too. I would have enjoyed the outdoor pools at the spa had they been heated a little more. They were too cold to be spend any length of time in them - I'm sure during the summer months they are lovely. What let this hotel down for us was the food. Most reviews on here seem to rave about the breakfast but I felt it was quantity over quality in many areas. The egg station system does not work at all and you can be standing there for an eternity waiting for a simple poached or fried egg! The items available on the cooked breakfast section are placed in the most awkward containers and I saw several accidents with the heavy glass lids, that if lifted, have no real place to put down to safely to take the food that you would like. Some of the elderly folk were really struggling and there's no excuse really, when the hotel could easily purchase more suitable equipment, with lids that are attached and easy to just lift up and down. The pastries were a bit hit and miss...on some mornings they tasted very fresh and delicious and on other mornings they seemed chewy and like they were at least a day old. We had several very disappointing trips to the La Palmera Real restaurant - it is a very lovely place to sit as it is outside and in beautiful gardens but the service was not good and often we would be sat waiting for a considerable amount of time until the staff even came over to ask what we wanted to drink. The food was also very disappointing, with over cooked calamari and very poor Cesar Salad, which was mainly huge chunks of lettuce and both times it was ordered there were ingredients missing! On one busy Sunday when the hotel was full, they simply did not have enough staff on and it was chaos! But I have to say, on the quiet days it was disappointing that the male waiters would rather stand at the bar chatting than serve their customers. The experience we had with the food at breakfast and lunch put us off eating in the hotel restaurants in the evening, so I am unable to comment on them. The staff in the hotel bar were extremely attentive and polite, although I have never been given a mojito made with lemon before! There was a slightly older waiter who made beautiful cocktails but I think the younger staff were perhaps still learning. I would like to mention an outstanding waiter - Pedro Alvarez, it was a shame that during our time at the hotel it was his last night as he was an exceptional member of staff and very much missed the following evening. On the whole this is a very pleasant and calm hotel and the majority of the staff made our stay enjoyable.