Catalonia Del Mar

Just got back from a 5 night stay with my boyfriend and saw so many mixed reviews of this place before coming so was unsure of what to expect but here’s what i found: Positives:

1. The hotel is in a lovely seafront location and conveniently located for restaurants, bars and shops nearby.
2. The staff at reception were friendly and helpful and even arranged a room change when we arrived as we got given a ground floor room that was quite noisy and they upgraded us for free and even let us view the rooms before we chose a room on the 4th floor. We had a pool view room.
3. The pool area was always kept clean and tidy, and always enough sunbeds for everyone.
4. The food - saw mixed reviews on the food but i enjoyed the food every night. Always something different as well as chips and pizza always available, a large variety too. Desserts included ice cream (every night) and different cakes every night, as well as always a chocolate fountain, profiteroles, fruit etc. Breakfast was the same every morning but still a large variety of foods. Pastries, fruit, yogurts, toast, cereal, pancakes and nutella and cooked options such as full english foods (proper english sausages too). Food was always warm and regularly replenished too. I would definitely say the food was at a 4* standard for a half board hotel. Food at the pool bar was also nice but only ate there one day and had a burger and chips and a toastie and chips and was lovely.

Some negatives:

1. The rooms weren’t very soundproof. Although this didn’t bother us too much, you can hear others from the bathroom vent, sneezing, coughing etc from others next door and rooms above when showering etc. In the mornings we could also hear the cleaners in the corridor however it wasn’t too early (about 8:30-9am) and we never had trouble falling asleep due to noise.
2. Occasionally we saw some small ants on the bathroom floor too, which obviously isn’t the best but it was only 2 or 3 times during our stay.
3. The lift is very small and shakey. I was scared to use it often so alternatively I had to walk up 4 flights of stairs.
4. Some reviews are correct in stating that some of decoration could do with a lick of paint in some areas. However, I feel like many of the reviews are being so picky and reaching for negativity of this hotel as on a whole we enjoyed our stay here and wouldn’t let some areas of the hotel needing some paintwork affect our stay or review.

Overall we enjoyed our stay here. Our room was cleaned everyday and given fresh towels too. It’s in a good location for exploring Cala Bona and Cala Millor and we had a very pleasant stay.

We stayed at Catalonia del Mar at the end of June and into July. Unfortunately, we didn't have a good stay. The first night we got there, we went out to have a look around and decided to have a few drinks at Bar Jemica just behind the hotel. When we got back to the hotel the lifts weren't working, so we had to go up the stairs to the fourth floor. This was difficult as I suffer from COPD. We opened our door and the room was so hot. The air conditioning was off. Then we realised there was no power at all. No lights, no plugs worked, fridge was off etc. So we had to walk back downstairs to tell the reception, as there are no phones in the room. They were walking around doing things, while we were waiting downstairs. I realised they were just trying to get the lifts working, I told them again that our room had no power, they then turned of all the power to the hotel and said this "reboot" should have worked. We decided to go back up the stairs to see if this worked, as it was now nearly 3am! It hadn't. We weren't going to walk downstairs yet again, so we just went to bed, unable to use anything. It was a very uncomfortable night with neither of us having any sleep at all. We still had no power when we got out of bed in the morning. The rest of the week went from bad to worse. I won't go into all of the detail but to keep it short, we had a further 3 power cuts. All of them in the evening. Because of this, we couldn't charge our phones overnight.and we had no air conditioning for the whole week. (It started working the last day we were there). We were so hot that we asked for a fan to be put in our room, which the staff did for us. This made the early evening a bit more comfortable but when we came home after going out for the evening, there was no power, so the fan didn't work anyway. We let the staff know every day, when we had no power. They kept saying it was the electricity company and they couldn’t do anything about it. We spoke to other guests some had power cuts and others didn't. The lifts broke down every day, lots of guests were unhappy about it. On our last evening we didn't even have any water. I was in the shower and the water just stopped halfway through. No water at all. As you can imagine, I wasn't happy at all. Our whole holiday was ruined by this. We only have one holiday a year and it was a total disaster. We hadn't got any sleep at all that week, we were looking forward to going home. We did keep the staff informed of the situation throughout the week. To be fair to them, they did listen to our concerns but it seemed to be out of their hands, nothing was sorted. We asked to speak to the manageress in the end and told her we wanted a full refund, which they gave to us. They couldn't have charged us for a room that we couldn't use properly. They didn't offer any sort of compensation, though, considering they ruined our holiday. Cala Bona on the other hand, was a lovely place. The hotel is right in the marina, so the location was great, this is why we picked it. I wrote to the Catalonia hotels over 2 weeks ago and received no reply. I chased them up and they said they have sent my letter to Catalonia Del Mar and they would reply as soon as possible. That was 9 days ago now and still no response. I wouldn't recommend this hotel.

This hotel delivers if you want a relaxing week, with sun, sea views, a lovely pool, fresh, healthy food on tap and peace and quiet each day. I saw the negative reviews. I need not have worried. It’s more basic than I’m used to, but clean, comfortable beds, good shower, no issue with finding a bed by the pool and lovely, friendly, helpful staff. You can have cocktails down by the marina and a lovely walk in the evening. I used the gym, took a swim in the sea, just a short walk from the hotel. For the price, it’s really good value for money. If you’ve booked and read the negative reviews, don’t worry at all, you’ll have a lovely break.