Spring Hotel Bitacora

We stayed at Spring Hotel Bitacora in Tenerife travelling with my husband and our two children, aged 14 and 17. Overall, we had an enjoyable stay and I would recommend the hotel, particularly for families with younger children. There were lots of activities and entertainment, and the hotel itself was clean, modern and well maintained. The Hotel & Location The hotel is lovely, very clean and modern looking. It is also quite central, which was really convenient. We regularly walked across the road to pick up drinks and snacks for our room and spent most evenings walking through the town, looking in the shops, stopping for a drink or walking along the beach. There is plenty to do in the surrounding area. We played mini golf one evening and watched the fountain show on another. There are also people selling fake designer bags, glasses etc. along the pavements, as well as people offering hair braiding, so there is plenty going on.

The hotel itself has a small shop, games room and pool table.

Our Room We had interconnecting rooms, which worked really well for our family. One room had a large walk-in style shower and the other had a bath with a shower over it, so it was useful having both options. The rooms were spacious and had decent air conditioning, a hairdryer, safe and fridge. The safe does cost extra to use.

We didn't pay for a pool-view room as we don't tend to sit out on the balcony. Our balcony overlooked another hotel's play park. You could hear children playing during the day, but it was quiet at night. There was quite a lot of graffiti on the back of the play park, which wasn't particularly attractive, but it didn't really affect our stay.

One thing we did notice was that, because this is very much a family hotel, it could be noisy at night. Children were sometimes running through the corridors quite late, and on one night we had children knocking on doors and running away. If you're looking for a quiet, adults-focused hotel, this probably wouldn't be the one for you.

Half Board Plus & Food We stayed on Half Board Plus. Breakfast was a buffet and was absolutely fine, with everything you'd generally expect from a hotel breakfast. Dinner was more disappointing. There was plenty of choice, but we struggled to find things we really liked and, when we did find something we enjoyed, we didn't think the quality was particularly good. We ended up eating from the pasta counter most evenings.

We also ate out for two evenings. There was a Texas-style restaurant around the corner which was nice, and we also went to an Italian restaurant near the fountain in the centre, which was really lovely.

One positive with Half Board Plus is that drinks are included with both breakfast and dinner.

Pools & Sunbeds The hotel has three water slides. The photos make them look quite large, but in reality they are fairly small and are really more suitable for young children through to early teens. The biggest issue for us was the lack of sun loungers for the size of the hotel.

We had read that reserving sunbeds wasn't permitted and that towels could be removed, which we thought was great because it meant there shouldn't be any need to stress about getting up early to reserve a bed.

Unfortunately, this didn't seem to be enforced.

People were queuing early in the morning to put towels on the sunbeds and then disappearing back to bed or going for breakfast. The towels weren't being removed. We did see a member of staff putting slips of paper on some sunbeds stating that the hotel could remove the towels, but the towels were still left there.

It became quite competitive, with people physically pushing to get to the sunbeds they wanted. There simply didn't seem to be enough loungers for the number of guests.

Pool Towels You can use the hotel's pool towels for a €10 deposit per towel. You first go to reception to get a token and then take this to the towel area near the pool to collect your towel. Just be aware that the towel point isn't open all the time, so you'll need to check the opening times.

You can change your towel for a fresh one as many times as you like, and you get your €10 deposit back when you're finished with them.

Wristbands & Hotel Facilities Your wristband acts as your room key, which is really convenient. The adults' wristbands can also be used to order drinks and charge them to your room, as well as to buy lunch at the pool bar and charge that to your room.

Check-in and check-out were straightforward overall. There was initially no record of our booking when we arrived, so reception had to sort this out, but it wasn't a problem and they were able to get everything arranged and gave us interconnecting rooms without any issues.

Entertainment & Families This is definitely a family-focused hotel. There is children's entertainment around the main pool during the day, followed by entertainment indoors in the evening. The evening starts with entertainment aimed at younger children and then moves on to singers and entertainment more suited to adults.

If you've ever been on a Haven holiday, the style of entertainment was quite similar.

There is plenty to keep younger children occupied, which is one of the hotel's biggest strengths.

However, having travelled with teenagers aged 14 and 17, I would say the hotel is much better suited to families with younger children. I wouldn't particularly recommend it for families with mid-to-late teenagers, as there isn't as much aimed at that age group.

Siam Park We visited Siam Park for the day and had a great time, although it was very busy. If you want to make sure you get on all the slides, I'd definitely recommend considering the fast-track pass.

One tip we wish we'd known beforehand: bring water shoes! We hadn't realised we'd need them, so we bought some from a shop in town the day before. They were definitely worth buying. You can wear them on the slides and, more importantly, the ground gets incredibly hot when you're walking between the different attractions.

We walked to Siam Park from the hotel, which took around 20–30 minutes. There is also a free bus which runs throughout the day, but it can get busy. We wanted to arrive earlier so we could spend as much time as possible there, so we chose to walk.

Loro Parque We also spent a day at Loro Parque. It's over an hour's coach journey from the hotel, but we thought it was definitely worth doing. We saw the orca show, dolphin show and sea lion show, which were all fantastic. We then spent time walking around the park and seeing the other animals.

We bought a twin ticket for Siam Park and Loro Parque online and then paid the hotel to organise the coach tickets for us to get to Loro Parque.

Overall Overall, we enjoyed our stay at Bitacora Spring Hotel. The hotel itself is clean, modern and well equipped, the location is convenient and there is lots to keep families entertained. For us, the biggest negatives were the quality and choice of the evening food, the lack of sunbeds and the fact that the hotel's no-reserving-sunbeds policy didn't seem to be enforced.

The hotel is also quite noisy at night, which is probably to be expected given how strongly it caters for families with children

Not long been back from 10 nights at the Bitacora.

We had such a lovely stay here.

The hotel was spotless and meticulously cleaned on a daily basis. The bedrooms were spacious, clean and light. We saw no bedbugs at all…

The food was brilliant. Sometimes All inclusive buffets can be a bit hit and miss. This was different. There was a great selection every night and no two nights were the same while we were there. Lots of fresh fish and meat aswell as a great selection of fruit and veg. The grill and pasta station offers food cooked freshly in front of you. The kids food was good aswell. My children can be fussy but found something every night. Breakfast was equally as good. Nice omelettes made fresh to order aswell as fried eggs etc.

The Pool snack bar set up is brilliant. Self serve on screens, it’s like a takeaway you can order all sorts of things and it is very quick. A nice touch in the mornings was ordering the fresh muffins with coffee.

Drinks are good and all cocktails are included in the all inclusive, which isn’t always the case. I see people moaning about the 2 drink limit on here but the staff only really apply that if it is mega busy. I was generally ordering 4-6 drinks at once and never got refused.

In the evening if you are going to the bar, find a seat and the attentive Waiters provide table service. Much better than waiting at the bar. The entertainment was also pretty good. Nothing cringy or tacky but some good singing acts etc.

Staff are brilliant. They don’t seem to stop working. Very friendly and polite. Again contrary to what some other reviewers have said they work really hard. We had two birthdays while there. My daughter on the first day and son on the last. The hotel do a nice little birthday package which was really reasonable in cost and was a nice touch.

Particular shoutouts are to Bryan the waiter- he regularly made me custom drinks and was always happy to see us and Brian from the fun club who was brilliant with my younger son when he wanted to take part in some of the kids club activities.

The pools were great and are a good temperature to cool off in, while not being freezing. The adult section is good to relax in and is policed really well by the lifeguards to keep stray children out!

Now the only slightly disappointing part- the sunbed wars. The same people every day begin to queue at 7 until the gates open at 7.45. It is then a mad dash with old men literally sprinting for beds. It is almost quite comical.

Regrettably however, if you want a decent sunbed you have to take part in the race. So I had to get up at 7.15 everyday to get down and reserve our sun beds. It is a case of you can’t beat them so you have to join them. After about 9am you have no chance. However from about 15.00 everyday day people start to leave and a fair few sunbeds become available.

The biggest annoyance to all this is people would regularly reserve sunbeds in the morning and not turn up until mid afternoon, which in my opinion is an absolute liberty. We at least ate breakfast and went straight out on the days we sat by the pool.

When you have paid big money for a holiday like this you don’t expect to have to have anxiety about getting a seat by the pool. It would be much better if a hotel of this calibre could implement an allocation system. Would definitely solve the main issue they seem to have. Or at least by 10am unoccupied sunbeds should have their towels removed.

The other small negative was the cut off from all inclusive at midday. I have never experienced this in any other hotel. We weren’t being picked up until 15.30 so had three hours drinking tap water and had to buy snacks from the shop. Again when paying a premium for a hotel I absolutely would expect to be able to grab a drink up until I left.

Apart from these things I would definitely recommend and would consider returning in the future.

I would give the hotel 4.5 out of 5 purely because of the sunbed situation and all inclusive cut off. Otherwise would have been 5.

Great entertainment, worked so hard to make sure we had a great time, would recommend to a young family.

Food was great and lots of choice for all ages.