Blue Sea Costa Jardin Spa

I recently stayed with my family at this hotel for 10 days at the start of the summer season. I can honestly say I’d never book this hotel again.

Arrival day: The day we arrived was complete chaos, we waited in a long queue of people to get checked in after a long day of travelling. Staff didn’t seem to know what they were doing, we were not offered any refreshment which I would have expected from a 4 star hotel. Lots of people had been double booked, some people we spoke to had been sent to a different hotel for a night because they didn’t have a room for them only to be sent back the next day. Others had been given rooms which were dirty and unfinished and were demanding to be moved. It was a complete shambles.

When we got to the desk I could see that the concierge was working off a piece of paper which had room numbers scribbled all over it with repeated crossings out and re-writing and it appeared we had been allocated one room and then moved to another. I did feel sorry for the young lad on the concierge who seemed like he was in training, was apologetic and appeared to be doing most of the work whilst the two older, very grumpy staff members seemed to be busying themselves doing other things, though it was not clear what those things were. They all genuinely didn’t seem to know what they were doing; so I was just happy to eventually be given a room and get our AI bands. We were given no information about the hotel at all and actually had to call concierge back to direct us to our room - I have never experienced this at a hotel before, regardless of the star rating.

Our room: Our room had paint flecks all over the floor which was indicative of the general lack of care over things at this hotel. The tv didn’t work, the phone didn’t work, and we couldn’t operate the safe. We had booked a double family room, we had two twin beds pushed together that moved when you moved about at night, a sofabed and a popup camp bed with a mattress on it - this meant there wasn’t actually much room to move around the room and we were tripping over each other somewhat. The balcony door didn’t close properly either, although this wasn’t a safety issue as we were on the second floor. However, I didn’t feel the balcony was safe for little children as there was a railing with a bottom rung which kids could stand on and potentially climb over. We wouldn’t let our kids onto the balcony without us.

We went back to the concierge to ask for some information about the hotel and about the broken things in our room.

They had no information to give us, they didn’t know about the entertainment programme (I use this term loosely and will explain more below), they didn’t know what time the kids club was (this turned out to be non-existent by the way). They wrote down the times of meals for us on the back of the room card case. This came to be the general response when we asked about anything; much in the style of Manuel, circa Fawlty Towers, “I know nothing”.

They did get a new tv put in our room the same day. However, we were told that none of the safe’s in the hotel worked. I was really not happy with this; this is a basic security feature, especially at a 4 star hotel and I really didn’t feel safe leaving our money, passports and valuables in our room, especially when we discovered that the door to our room didn’t always lock properly when you left it (possibly due to a missing door hinge).

Overall hotel facilities: Whilst we were at the hotel there were various handymen still painting the walls and fixing things everywhere, though they rarely put up signs to say the walls were wet with paint. Some times these handymen even appeared to side-line as lifeguards at the pool! Were they trained to do this? Who knows. There were missing ceiling tiles everywhere with cables exposed and things were generally in a shabby state of disrepair.

The lifts, despite their sign saying they would accommodate 6 people wouldn’t work for more than 3 people inside them. The call buttons on every floor only appeared to work on the “up” button. Honestly, they felt old and rickety and I didn’t feel safe using them.

The water in the pool at the front was green and full of algae, this was later drained and left empty. One morning at the front of the hotel they had a cherry-picker and started working on the frontage. I’m not sure what the problem was or what they did, but shortly thereafter, they put up lots of red and white striped barrier tape, a black curtain and partitioned off half of the hotel entranceway. This was still there when we left. People arriving must have the impression they’ve come to an extremely rundown hotel; that impression is correct.

The general impression I had was that they just weren’t ready to open to guests and needed another few weeks to get things in order. The concierge even said to me they had only just opened and there lots of problems. But really this shouldn’t have been my problem; my holiday should not have been affected by their poor planning and organisation.

The gardens were nice and they had some interesting plants that my children and I enjoyed looking at. The mini golf course was tired and in need of refurbishment.

There was a little playground, but most of the equipment was rusted and had seen better days and some of it I felt was probably a bit dangerous too - one of the rocking horses was practically falling apart.

The drinks: At the bar we discovered that in order to take advantage of the All Inclusive drinks, you have to pay a 1 euro deposit per re-usable cup - a blatant money spinner if ever I saw one - how many people forget or don’t have time to get their deposits back I wonder. I was disgusted at this - I actually saw people arrive quite late one night who couldn’t get a drink as they didn’t have a euro and were told they couldn’t use a card either. I gave them a euro - why the rude bar staff couldn’t help them out by giving a drink in a paper cup and being kind to a fellow human being rather than repeatedly tapping their 1E sign at them and shoving it in their face, I don’t know.

The cocktails were disgusting, overly sweet and sickly and tasted nothing like the things they were claiming to be. The sangria was probably the most palatable thing they had; luckily they did have San Miguel on tap so we generally stuck to that. AI started at 10:30 and stopped at 11pm. In my opinion this is too late to start and too early to finish.

The service: Service with a smile was not a term that staff at this hotel seemed to employ. They all seemed very grumpy and sometimes quite rude. Ironic considering the tagline on the AI bands is “hotels that make you smile”.

The young lad training on the concierge was sweet, though as I said, in training, so his knowledge of stuff was limited but he always tried to be helpful. The hotel should give him some better training and get him to teach the others how to be polite and pleasant. A lot of the time they just ignored you whilst they talked to each other and their responses to questions were clipped and surly. I always had the impression that they were just too busy to help you - which surely is their job.

The Food: The food was serviceable. And I’m being generous here. Everything was bland and lacking flavour and the themed nights were a joke. On the Italian night, the only Italian things they had were Spinach lasagne (which was horrible by the way), some buffalo mozzarella and tomato slices cut up and that was about it. They did have pasta, but they always had pasta so I don’t include that. For some reason they also had some very bad sushi - as one of the guests joked with me, it must have been Italian sushi. That was the only time we saw sushi. But that wasn’t a total loss as it was so bad anyway. As an aside the soy was thick and gloopy and not what you would expect at all. The chicken nuggets they served one day were the cheapest nuggets I had ever come across, a case of hunt the chicken, a flavourless cardboard-like consistency. The same could be said of the bolognese sauce - hunt the beef. Breakfast was probably the best meal they served; though the sausages always seemed a bit flavourless and underdone to me. The bread was actually quite nice so I had that at every meal. I did really struggle towards the end though and didn’t eat very much - we went out on our last but one night to get some decent food.

My husband made the point that never had the AI bands felt like they meant so little as the general impression was everything was done as cheaply as possible to maximise profits.

On our last night my husband and children ate something that gave them food poisoning; my 5 year old daughter was violently sick (thankfully before our flight at the airport) and my eldest daughter and husband have also been ill with bad tummies ever since. I was the only one who wasn’t ill - I note I was the only one who didn’t eat much at dinner. On this basis, the hotel could have use a new tagline - “Hotels that make you puke”.

The Pool: The pool was cold, which was ok most days as it was warm, but in the colder months I imagine it would be almost unusable. The hot tub was more of a warm tub really being only slightly warmer than the pool.

The water slide was a nice touch though and my children enjoyed that. I did like that they had a lifeguard/occasional lifeguard-moonlighting-handyman to watch the swimmers which made things feel safer.

However, the pool opened late at 10:30am and they kept the doors locked to the poolside area which could not be accessed any other way. They would open the doors at around 9am, though this seemed to get later each day we were there. One day the lifeguard arrived and he couldn’t get out either and we had to wait for someone else to come and open the doors. This meant a lot of people were hanging around the doors waiting to get out and there was a mad scramble for sunbeds when they opened.

Quite frankly this policy of locking the doors to the pool area also seemed like a massive health and safety risk to me - if there was ever a fire around the stairwell this would be extremely dangerous as people would have no means of escape. This policy should be changed urgently. If the hotel wishes guests not to reserve beds, they should remove the towels from beds, or better still allocate beds to rooms. They should not endanger guests safety by locking the doors. The poolside area and pool should also open earlier than 10:30am - this is ridiculously late in the day.

Furthermore, charging a 10 euro deposit per pool towel is an extremely disgusting policy. Again, an obvious money spinner - how many people forget or don’t have time to get their deposit back I wonder. Furthermore, it’s convoluted and awkward to get the towels and your money back. You have to pay at concierge for a card and a receipt which you then have to give to the lifeguard to get the towels. Then you have to take the towels back to the lifeguard before he leaves for the day to get the card back to take to the concierge to get the money back and you need the original receipt too. Also, if you want a fresh towel, you have to pay a further euro at concierge to get a receipt which you need to keep hold of to get that euro back!! This could be poor organisation which is entirely possible given the other issues at this hotel, but I’m inclined to think it’s a bit of a money spinner too.

There were chickens that walked around the pool area and defecated everywhere. Not particularly sanitary. I never saw anyone clean up the poop - actually, that’s a lie, I saw a guest do it one day with a paper napkin.

Entertainment: I literally have no idea what the animation team do most of the day. They come and do some water aerobics for about 20 minutes in the morning, sometimes they came back and played a game or did some bingo for another half hour. Then they were gone. Sometimes you’d see them in the restaurant. And there seemed to be a huge group of about 10 of them too!! Hell of a cushy job.

As for kids club, it was completely non-existent. There seemed to be a doorway at the side of the hotel and a dirty window with children’s curtains that were closed across it which looked like it may have been a kids club once upon time but hadn’t been opened for years and appeared derelict. The only kids they seemed interested in were the teenagers who, let’s face it, pretty much take care of themselves. Furthermore the only activities they came around the pool in the daytime to ask people about were geared towards older children and adults.

The evening entertainment was all a bit lame. It was mostly down to the animation team and their imaginations to provide. And they had very little resources to work with. The Disney night was probably the best thing they did and that was pretty sub-par really. The team obviously had a lot of fun doing it, but think bad, thrown together costumes, faces painted green, poor choreography, a lot of walking around the stage and snarling with extra parts filled out by guests. It was like a children’s pantomime.

The other thing that was ok was the fun night, but that was basically made funny by the guests who were on stage being silly.

The quiz night consisted of asking a question which a guest would then have to run to the stage to answer. I’m sure this seemed like a quirky fun idea at the time, but honestly, apart from little kids, who’s going to run across a room to answer a question? As my husband jokingly said, could they not afford pens and paper?

However, the poor quality of the entertainment can’t all be laid at the animation team’s feet, they were trying to do their best with the total lack of resource given to them by the hotel. Every 4 star hotel I have ever been to hires entertainers to come and perform for their guests. Not this hotel. Again, another example of cheaping out to maximise profits.

Conclusion: This is not a 4 star hotel. I’ve stayed in 4 star hotels many times and they were a million miles better than this. I don’t feel we got anything close to what we paid for. I would not go back. I sought and was awarded compensation for the poor service and the state of disrepair at the hotel which impacted on our enjoyment and food poisoning.

My takeaway: Bluesea. Hotels that make you puke, or grimace

We are just about to leave after a lovely weeks all inclusive. The staff at the hotel are wonderful and so helpful, even helping me organise a cake and balloon for my sons birthday. The pool area is lovely and clean and a good size with a slide for the kids. Numerous kids and adults activities throughout the day. There is a small shop on site for any essentials. The pool bar serves all sorts, including premium spirits at a small additional cost. Theres pool tables and arcade games for the kids if needed. The restaurant food is as to be expected of a 3* hotel. We managed to find something every meal time. The only thing id point out as a slight negative is our room, even though recently painted had some minor areas for improvement. Little bits of cracked tiles, slightly dated etc. It had obviously been recently painted as there was paint on the floor. But overall we have had a wonderful week here.