I stayed here for the weekend recently (I was attending a wedding in the area) and found the hotel to be of a decent standard. It was clean and the rooms were spacious. The pool area was nice, and the bar was decent enough. I would have expected better food however, from a four star hotel.
Two things stuck out for me.
Firstly the location; the hotel is situated about 100 yards from a motorway. This pervades everything about your experience. If your sitting at the pool, all you can hear are cars. The air quality everywhere is generally terrible. The town of Cancelada (outside which the hotel is situated) is a new build, from scratch, and so has absolutely no character or indigenous Spanish population...
How the Spanish authorities have been allowed to do this to a beautiful area of their country is lamentable.
Secondly (and slightly less important) is the music in the hotel. Everywhere I went in the building all I could hear was this sound of whales being murdered by panpipes (at least that what I interpreted as). I presume as the hotel has a spa attached to it, this music is supposed to sooth the guest and generally create a mood of relaxation... I have been on this earth for over 4 decades and I have yet to come across anyone, ever, who listens to panpipes voluntarily. Why this hotel feels the need to bombard us with this musak at intolerable levels is a mystery to me. If the intention was to relax me, the opposite occurred.
If this hotel was situated by the sea, or up high in the mountains, it would have got a better review. I just can't see why anyone would want to spend any time at all in this place...
To make things worse... It ain't cheap.
- Selenza Estepona Thalasso Hotel
