Not too bad

Our first trip to North Tenerife, and we chose this hotel due to its great reviews and 5 star rating. The welcome was lovely and the hotel certainly impressed from the start. We booked an ocean view "Ambassador" room which had its own wing of the hotel. The room itself was very large and the bathroom/dressing room too. I'm going to add my negative comments amongst the positive ones, so you can make up your own mind. The shower trays are made of plastic and feel very strange when you stand on them, almost like being on a balance board (not great). Otherwise everything worked well and I can't stress enough how clean the hotel was kept, both in the rooms and all the public areas, around the pools and gardens too. Speaking of the gardens they are beautiful and lovely to stroll around, day or night. The staff were all really friendly, and we'd like to give a special mention to Abraham, the Pool Attendant, who was extremely helpful and friendly. I would say the service was OK - on occasions we had to wait a long time to be served, for both drinks and dinner in one of the restaurants (not all of them being open I might add). When we looked on the hotel website under Room Description, it noted several benefits of booking the Ambassador Room, and yet when we checked with Reception they told us you only get these benefits if you book direct with the hotel rather than a travel company (British Airways in our case) which was rather surprising. We were initially told we would not get our water bottles replaced once the initial ones had gone (they were in the room when we arrived) but oddly they were replaced on most days by the cleaning staff. The surrounding area outside the hotel grounds is not very interesting, and one really has to go into Puerto de la Cruz to find interest and plenty of bars and restaurants. The walk is downhill all the way and takes half an hour - we always got a cab going back to the hotel as it was very hot and not the weather for uphill walking! The spa was really good (we both had a treatment) and the spa pools lovely (one being heated). The main pool wasn't heated and was very chilly! Also, there is a lack of sunbeds and space to put them, hence a few times both pools were full and we had to wait for beds to become available, which was a pain. I think they could do with more staff at the hotel, especially in the bars & restaurants, although breakfast was always well-staffed and there was a fairly good choice. Another negative is that they don't seem to cater for special diets (e.g. Gluten Free and or Dairy-Free). There was not alternative to ordinary milk, and when we asked a member of staff about Oak Milk, they had no idea what we were referring to! Overall we really liked this hotel and would return but perhaps for just a week rather than 10 days next time. One more thing, the room we were given was above the hut where staff appear to check in and out, sometimes from 6 o'clock in the morning. They would often stand around chatting and it woke us up a good few mornings, so much so that we had to keep our doors closed, which was a shame as it would have been lovely to leave them open.