Went during summer with two young children, and really enjoyed it.
Firstly the hotel. The Moorish architecture gives it an interesting and quite impressive appearance. On entering at the front the main reception has a suitably grand feel, living up to the 4 star rating the moment you arrive. The outdoor facilities are great - several nice pools along with a poolside bar where you can also get food - all clean and well presented, and never any real problem getting sun-loungers - certainly no need to be up at dawn.
The area is nice - the beach is lovely (though the sea a bit rough for little ones, and not as warm as you might expect). Not a great deal around the immediate region - the local towns seem quite poor and not especially attractive, but if you don't plan to stray far from the hotel this is not a problem. We hired a car and went as far as Seville, Jerez la Frontera (see the horses if you can) and the sugur cube village trail up in the mountains, but it was a lot of driving and so Costa de la Luz not the most central place for sightseeing. One thing that was great - no sunburnt lager-swilling brits, and not a Sun newspaper or a sign for fish and chips/fried breakfast to be seen anywhere. This is real Spain with none of the tat so prominent on the Costa del Sol and similar haunts.
Service was good throughout - no complaints. The buffet restaurant was excellent - a good choice every night, generally very good food and always a special of some kind on the carvery (including a whole swordfish one night).
Rooms - we were lucky I think to get a two-storey family room in the apartment block, which gave us two bedrooms, loads of space, plus two balconies and a rooftop terrace to call our own. I'm not sure what the other rooms are like - perhaps I would have been disappointed with some of the not-so-well positioned ones though none really seem to have an unpleasant aspect as the non-sea view ones to the front look out over the nature reserve.
I would have to make some negative comments about the apartment block generally however. To be fair, they advertise this part as 3 star so they're not really hiding anything, but as you cross from the main hotel into the apartment block you know you've crossed that line. The corridors are dark and dingy (the lights all seem to be on motion sensors, which is ok, but also on timers so they only work at night. Fine, but many of the corridors have no natural light so during the day are in virtual darkness which adds to the dingy 'poor relation' feel. Fire doors wedged open, either deliberately or through poor maintenance. Some poor maintenance in the rooms - drains smelled in the one bathroom, loose tiles on the stairs, cracks and crevices around the walls through which armies of ants marched and infested everything. On request they sent up a maintenance guy with a sealant gun to stick down the tiles and seal up the ant holes. However this sort of thing gets to me a bit - these are simple things to fix and they shouldn't wait until somebody complains, they should just do it as routine maintenance. However the rooms were modern, nicely furnished and always clean so not somethin I would get too hung up about.
Overall though, if I wanted to go back to this region I would definitely go back to this hotel. The niggles I've listed were not enough to detract from what was a great holiday and the positives of the main hotel complex, it's facilities and the beach far outweigh anything negative I could say.
- Iberostar Hotel Ayamonte
- Isla Canela Park Iberostar
