Santa Monica Suites

My experience at this hotel was so bad I not only wouldn't go back there, I've taken Gran Canaria off my list permanently too. I deliberately upgraded to this hotel on my second visit to GC because I wasn't able to complete the bike routes I'd planned on my first training trip due to weather. I wish I'd stayed somewhere else. My trip was ruined by selected staff confronting me publicly and ungraciously. Once was the restaurant manager who asked me to change out of my linen, knee-length shorts at dinner and to put on trousers (of which I only had the pair I'd travelled in), however 2 nights later, with 8 men dining in shorts he confronted none of them. This selective rule applying, followed by a loud receptionist, 8 days into my 12-day cycling stay tell me 'you will not take your bike to your room. You will put your bike in the bike shed provided. It is policy'. There's no way a bike of any value could be safe in the the not-fit -for-purpose bike shed - tourist bikes perhaps, but not one of any significant racing calibre. I'd check the hotel policy before hand, booked a ground floor room with a patio so I could clean my bike before storing it - training/racing is what I do. I'm hugely respectful of the places I stay and so this confrontation took me by surprise, and was so aggressive and sustained (she wouldn't listen to my reasoning) that I spent the night trying to book a flight home, or find another hotel. I've stayed in more than 200 hotels around the world and never, ever been spoken to in this manner or with that particular request. This was followed the next day by the General Manager of the hotel, along with the hotel's owner (who had the grace to look a little sheepish) confronting me as I came out of the lift with the same aggression, phrasing and instruction as the receptionist the day before. This unfriendliness, unwelcoming spirit from the top down is no way to treat guests (and I use that word lightly in this context). Regarding the room - it was clean (and remained that way even with my two-wheeled luggage/bike). Re the food - I was very sick (24 hours of super-dodgy tummy) after eating the chicken on barbecue night - I fed this back with the response of 'no one else has been ill'. I mean ... In short ... if you have the opportunity to stay somewhere else, anywhere else at all - that'd be my recommendation!

The hotel would deserve five points if it were not for a peculiar feature. Its location is fantastic, just behind the Maspalomas dunes, with direct access to them and the beach beyond. The rooms on the top (5th) floor afford stunning views of the dunes and the sea in the distance. The swimming pool area is also very nice and breakfast plentiful and of good quality. The peculiar feature is that they do not have double rooms. The suites have two beds which, for some reason which I did not manage to understand, cannot be arranged as a double bed. And being the beds on wheels, you always risk falling in between them. This is the first time in my 45 years of adulthood that I encountered such an issue and, as the hotel is mostly for couples, I found it bizarre.