Gran Melia Palacio de Isora

The hotel in general is very nice with great rooms and pools etc. facilities are well kept and the rooms are really good and very spacious. However there’s a few issues which brought the experience down.

Food is average, verging on bad. Buffet has very strange options and doesn’t change much through the week. Restaurants for dinner are pretty bad and we didn’t bother with the ones that you have to pay extra for.

Bit annoying that a lot of the hotel features are charged as extras, when you’ve already forked out a few thousand pounds for the week you expect to be able to try everything the hotel has to offer. Charging extra to go to a certain restaurant is very bad in my opinion.

Drinks service throughout the hotel wasn’t great, hard to get a drink by the pool without having to walk to the bar yourself and even then staff serve the drinks in whatever cup they can find to hand, I had a beer in a wine glass, a paper cup, a 250ml plastic cup etc. all charged at the same price bizarrely. Drinks with dinner were never once offered, had to flag a very busy waiter down every time.

Have stayed in other 5 stars in the same price bracket and this hotel just doesn’t match its competitors unfortunately.

I rarely leave reviews, but I feel I have a duty to warn other travellers, particularly families with young children.

From the moment we walked in, the room smelt of damp, rot and black mould.

The mould odour was so strong it was impossible to ignore, and every time the air conditioning switched on it simply circulated the smell around the room. The room was visibly in a state of disrepair, with black mould throughout (see photos), leaking showers and sinks, broken tiles and plugs, rotten cabinetry, stained old furniture, smelling linen and a toilet that still had faeces in and on it when we arrived.

These are not minor housekeeping issues - they are fundamental failures in hygiene and maintenance.

The rooms (Family Red level) would struggle to meet even the most basic accommodation standards.

We immediately raised our concerns with management, only to be offered two alternative rooms that suffered from exactly the same damp and similar maintenance issues of stained furniture and petulant mould smell. We had the room deep cleaned twice however this was clearly not an isolated room issue but a wider problem affecting that block of the hotel.

What made the experience even more disappointing was discovering that this issue appears to be well known. During our stay, more than eight people, including 6 hotel staff that have worked here for over 10 years and others familiar with the property from working here previously at the Ritz front desk, told me this had been an ongoing problem for years and was linked to the air conditioning system. Guests are continuing to be placed in rooms despite the issue remaining unresolved.

The only room we were shown that was free from the mould smell was in a different block and had clearly been refurbished recently with modern furnishings came with an additional charge of over £1,200. We were effectively being asked to pay a substantial premium simply to receive a room that met the basic standard we had already paid for.

By this point we had already spent four nights in these conditions. During our stay, our 15-month-old daughter began wheezing at night while sleeping in the room, which concerned us so much we contacted our GP. Following that conversation, we felt we had no option but to pay more than £500 extra simply to move our family into a room that was safe.

Note, the invoice we paid says ‘upselling’ on it which is clearly what the hotel staffs KPI’s are or this upselling is linked to their bonuses and targets for the year. Honestly despicable and makes me so angry to put their targets above the safety of a baby.

No family should have to choose between remaining in a room they are not safe in or paying hundreds of pounds extra to escape it.

The way this situation was handled was every bit as disappointing as the condition of the room itself. Rather than taking ownership of the problem, the focus was solely on charging guests to upgrade away from it.

I travel extensively and stay in luxury hotels regularly with my work and family. I do not make a habit of writing negative reviews, but I could not leave without warning others.

If you are considering staying here, especially with children, I strongly urge you to look elsewhere. The photographs speak for themselves.

Note: I am still at the hotel, for my birthday they have offered a free dinner. Shockingly enough, I don’t want to eat here with the hygiene standards.

It’s been such a shame and completely ruined holiday that i paid over £7.5k + for my whole family.

I urge you to reconsider your plans and to stay at the Ritz Abama instead if you are travelling to Tenerife. I myself will now never recommend the Meliá brand globally to my clients and certainly never insure them due to their deep rooted issues within the organisation.

We recently returned from a lovely week at the hotel. We were 5 adults and 3 children aged 8, 3 and 2 and we contacted the hotel prior to arriving to request 3 rooms next to one another. Although they said they could not guarantee (guess a standard response to cover themselves during busy periods) they said they would do their best and did indeed put us next to each other. We downloaded the Melia app and were asked to check in on that prior to arrival so they had all our details in advance which made check in hassle free and quick!

We had asked for 2 cots for 2 rooms but they weren’t there on arrival but the hotel did resolve as soon as we raised the issue. In fact our 3 year old preferred to sleep on the chaise longue that was at the bottom of the bed! We thought the rooms were pretty spacious as was the bathroom with 2 sinks, large bath and separate shower and toilet. We did find after showering though that the water would leak out into the bathroom so had to put towels down but apart from that no complaints! Plenty of toiletries supplied if you didn’t bring your own.

There is a fair bit of walking though between rooms, restaurants and pools as the hotel is spread out over different levels with a lot of steps if you can’t find where the lifts are (we must have done 10k steps daily walking between rooms, restaurants and pools!). The reception is on Level 3 where the kids’ pirate and splash pools are located, the restaurants, buffet (Pangea), entertainment and family pool are on Level 2 and the huge saltwater infinity pool and lunchtime restaurants (Agave, Oasis), ice-cream kiosk, spa and gym on Level 1 where there is also a walkway out to the promenade to walk along the coast to the local town, Alcala. We didn’t mind the walking though as the hotel gardens are just so beautiful with many different types of palm trees and cacti amongst manicured lawns.

We ate the majority of the time in the Pangea buffet restaurant for breakfast and dinner, only because it was such an ordeal to book the restaurants for the 3 rooms together. We could book each room individually but that meant we couldn’t sit together and although the Help Desk in Reception managed to book us together it was always for 8pm when we had specifically requested 7pm because of the toddlers. In the end we went straight to the restaurant itself to book for 7pm and managed to at least get to try the Nami Asian which was good. The Pangea buffet restaurant itself was great for breakfast with a lot of choice and we found the dinner theme nights (Spanish, Italian, American, Indian, etc.) gave enough variety and suited us with the children as we could eat from 6.30pm. For lunch we enjoyed Oasis for tapas but the kids loved the Mexican Agave with their quesadillas and chips! And the leche merengada dessert was heaven!

As for the pools – so many! The toddlers liked the pirate and splash pools but we spent all our time at the huge saltwater infinity pool because we found it less crowded (the family pool was just too busy for us) and the shallow parts were great for all the kids. It was just fab! Despite ALL the sun loungers having a label attached saying “no reserva” we found going down after breakfast with our towels that most were reserved with towels which was a bit annoying. But we found a nice little pool alcove by the Agave restaurant where we were lucky most days and close to the family pool bar for drinks, the loos and lunch! Our only gripe was with the sun loungers being on grass, there were tiny midges at certain times that would nip your legs (what I’d call no-see-ums!) so we stayed chilling in the pool most of the time.

I can’t comment on the evening entertainment as we has to get the toddlers to bed but they enjoyed the kids entertainment from 7.30pm – 8.00pm.

Overall a thoroughly relaxing holiday break at a lovely hotel with beautiful gardens and friendly staff. We read the reviews before we went and were in some trepidation with negative comments but were so pleased to discover for ourselves what a great place to stay and will return!