some excellent points but ....

I judge a place by value for money and its pretensions.For the former I think it was probably ok but one of the world's leading hotels? I'm out of touch with that end of the market but I don't think so. A nice place that needs to think over its position in the market.Rooms a bit small and cluttered. When we visited the spa mid morning the Sauna and steam room were both lukewarm. I'm missing something. The poolside restaurant was ok but most of the dishes were quite rich not right for the poolside. There was an excellent Spanish restaurant and an Italian too but the Asian was really not right. Generically "Asian" places usually lack your favorite difficult-to-cook dishes. Some of the cooking was really quite crude here.A second rate Thai restaurant in the uk. Its amazing how quickly u eat your favorite dishes in the restaurants u do like. We were soon missing a good buffet. The kids missed the freedom of helping themselves at a buffet. Generally I thought the place much less child friendly than I hoped. Not allowing kids to use the spa seemed a bit mean. Surely 90 mins a day for families would be ok? Otherwise I cannot see this place as a winter resort for families. And no evening entertainment for kids? This was a mean policy and the hotel suffered for it. They needed that boost to start the evening. Instead there was a sprinkle of the very old spending very little and shuffling around to pretty sad music. I knew about these omissions before booking and thought we would be ok because my kids like live music but the scene here was the worst I'd experienced in the Canary hotels. They had The Two Tenors who were good fun on the first night though under appreciated. But then Karaoke singers pretending to play along murdering the same songs every night. We were broken by the night they got a good singer on the same songs. As we were on half board it wasn't possible to eat out and get some better music. Many families do return. I think its the lovely gardens. But this place needs a big rethink at the top. Sad because there were a lot of very good staff doing a very good job. Very thoughtful staff.