Arcos de Montemar

Amazingly friendly and helpful staff, great breakfast, rooms are basic but great value for money. Nice little pool area. All in all, a superb little hotel and somewhere I will be returning too

¹We stayed here several years ago we enjoyed it so much we came again when visiting Torremolinos. The hotel is up an hill but it was ok for us, we could walk up to Torremolinos one way and Benalmadina the other or down the hill to La Carihuela which is a picturesque little town with loads of bars and restaurants. On arrival you are met with pleasent reception staff, we were quickly sorted and went to our room 101 which is very nice looking onto the pool. The roomsetvice came every day to change towels and empty the bin. The bedding was changed. Everyone talked to you even the handyman. They should play some music around the pool as we were pestered with some Hungarian guy playing his music then a Spanish guy playing his, then some scoucers joined in with theirs, they tended to put their speakers 10m away from themselves to pester others. Also people covering sunbeds and disappearing for hours, when there were only 26 beds it was bad manners. I would highly recommend this hotel.

The staff at the hotel were lovely and helpful. Check in was efficient and we got lots of information about our stay. However... The photos of the hotel's pool are very deceiving. The pool is tiny. It opened at 10am and there was a queue to wait for the pool gate to open. When they got set up at their loungers, they went off to the breakfast room which was across the way. None of the staff stopped them from doing this. It didn't help that the same people were hogging the pool all day, every day and they were noisy. One day we ventured down to the pool late & managed to get sunloungers. When we got into the pool, there were some people singing and just being a general nuisance. A good few times after that we went down during the day to see if they were gone, but they were there from the moment the pool opened, to late in the evening. We only managed to get into the pool once during our entire stay because of them...

We stayed on the 3rd floor and even though the room was big, it appeared dated. The window in the bathroom opened inwards and we were conscious of the fact that it looked out onto apartments beside the hotel. There was no fan in the bathroom - or if there was, it wasn't working. The bathroom got very warm and stuffy after having a shower. When you go into the bathroom in the morning and didn't have the window open, there was a smell of sewage coming up from the toilet. There was limited lighting in the room - no ceiling light, just lighting from two lamps either side of the bed and one near the room door.

It was the noisiest hotel we ever stayed in. Found it hard to sleep with people knocking on doors, rolling suitcases, banging doors and people walking and talking outside the corridor.

The first morning we got breakfast it seemed good. After that, it went downhill rapidly. There were only small cocktail sausages that were dried out, as well as the beans. The rashers were swimming in fat & the scrambled eggs were like rubber. The pastries were mediocre. The only thing it had going for it was the rice pudding with nutmeg.

We booked this hotel late last year and since then, the prices went up, but honestly, we wouldn't have paid any more than we did for the hotel - you would get a really decent hotel for the price they were looking for. Save your money and get a better experience elsewhere.