I can't believe others rated this hotel so highly. The hotel was registered as second in the list of hotels in Cala Ratjada, with some fantastic reviews, so we had no hesitation in making our booking. It's dificult to comprehend how inaccurate many of these reviews were. You should firstly understand that the resort and hotel is almost entirely German (guests and businesses). We quickly found out that most of the holiday makers in the resort (but not this hotel), were on the German equivalent of an 18-30 holiday. There were large blocks of flats in the centre of town with gangs of German gentlemen hanging over their balconies, shouting at passers-by, beer in hand. Every morning, we had literally hundreds of gangs of men passing the hotel with cool boxes full of beer and getto blasters blaring out. Some were dressed in fancy dress, which made us wonder whether it was an event for this partiuclar week (which could account for some of the other reviews). The same happended in the opposite direction at tea time as they came back from the beach - although they were very drunk and we saw a few fights and blokes walking with trowsers pulled down. Tasteful. The beach itself would have been nice had it not been for the huge gangs of drunk German blokes, competing with each other's music system. This was very irritating because the sea was clear and calm and the sand was nice.
The hotel is a very average 2-3 star. The hotel reception was nothing special but the staff were reasonably helpful. That said, there was nobody to be seen when we pulled up to help with our luggage and we had to take our suitcases to our room ourselves after check-in. The room was small and we had a decent view of the sea which was nice. We stayed half board and the food was incredibly poor quality. Most of the food was cold - apart from the ice cream which was sloppy. We really struggled to find any meats that weren't chewy. There was very little fish option. You typically expect prawns, salmon etc. in a four star hotel but not here. Waitresses hardly ever removed plates so you had to either do this yourself or keep asking them. The dishes were left picked through and you had to keep asking the staff to bring new food. If you left it late to eat, you would have to sort through the remains of what was left. You had to pay extra for decent orange juice at breakfast (please don't attempt the watered down juice they served for 'free'). We had to pay extra for a steak at night, which we found very odd when we thought we had paid for our evening meal in the price of the hotel. The dining room was too hot with no atmosphere and while there was the option to sit outside, this was where all the smokers were sat so we could never take that option. Because the food was so bad, we chose to eat out a couple of times to try to find some decent quality food.
During the day, we tried the pool area once. It was mostly under shade during the day due to the trees and the orientation of the building. The bit of sun was taken by the groups of German guests. The sun beds were dirty and very few staff around to keep the area clean or to order drinks/stacks when you sat around the pool. Evening entertainment was non-existent, although there was German football on a big screen on two nights! There were hardly any other children for our little boy to play with and the few that were there were German of course. We made the most of our holiday by travelling to other places nearby in our hire car. We had booked to stay for a week but after five days, for the first time ever, we called it a day and decided to check out. Thankfully the reception staff were very helpful in booking us a room at a Riu Bonanza Play hotel in Palma. Unfortunately they didn't see fit to ask us why we'd decided to check out and made no offer to refund the last two days' payment. The difference in quality, service, atmosphere and food at the Riu was unbelievable and we were so pleased we moved hotel.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
