Els Pins Resort & Spa - Emar Hotels

We stayed at this hotel with a group of friends, most of which booked directly via the hotel website vs us who booked via TUI. We noticed a difference in treatment and services just because of this. 1. We had to pay a 250€ deposit which wasn't outlined in our booking. This is a big chunk of money to unexpectedly cash out on and seems quite high for a deposit. They won't let you just give your card details as an alternative. 2. Our friends received complimentary drinks on arrival, you will not if you book via TUI. 3. If you book via the hotel you get a free first visit to the spa, but not via TUI and this wasn't communicated to us. When we tried to enter, the spa staff were extremely rude and shoved us out of the door. They didn't even offer the chance to pay even though we happily would have! They just told us to go and use the showers elsewhere. Pool bar service is also very slow & AC in room was problematic for all of us staying at the hotel. If you're going to stay here, book via the hotel website directly for a better experience.

On the plus side, it’s a nice, modern hotel in a good location. Some of the staff are helpful and friendly. The spa was great too. But there were so many negatives, it was not worth the money or the 4 stars. One of the issues was room cleaning. We left early each morning, put the ‘clean my room’ sign on only to return between 3 and 4pm to find the rooms still not cleaned and towels not replaced. It was disruptive because this was when we wanted to shower and get ready for the evening. On the first day our 4 rooms still had not been cleaned by 4.30pm. I spoke to front desk and when they were dismissive, I emailed management. As a concession, the next day they cleaned our rooms before 2pm but the rest of our stay two of our rooms were not cleaned on 2 of the days because it was so late we needed to shower etc. In their email response they said rooms would be cleaned between 2pm and 4pm but this was not the case. This also meant toilet paper and towels were not replaced. Annoyingly when we’re were leaving this morning, they were chomping at the bit to get in and clean our rooms for the next guests On the subject of toilet rolls, on the day we arrived, we decided to have lunch in the hotel. Three of four toilets were out of toilet paper and there were no hand towels. It looked like the area had not been checked/cleaned for some time. We paid extra for sea views - which were lovely - but the downside was a couple of the rooms were directly over the dining terrace and there was noisy chair scraping, leaf blowers and setting up from around 7am. Although the rooms are bright and modern, the bathrooms are not great. They are just in the room, surrounded by frosted glass. My shower head was not working the entire time, so I had to use the hand held shower and, possibly because of this, the shower repeatedly leaked into the room and flooded the toilet on the other side of the partition. When we booked I specifically requested two of our rooms have twin beds (which are advertised on their website). On checking in, all four rooms were doubles. We requested they separate them and they said they’d do it immediately but it took a couple of hours. When they did so, the beds could only be a few centimeters apart because of the headboard. We were surprised that such a modern hotel didn’t have usb ports for phone charging. Also, for a 4-star we were surprised at the lack of small things you expect in your room nowadays such as face cloths, tissues and q tips. Also, although not the hotel’s fault, we were surprised how difficult it was to get a taxi or uber from the hotel on Friday or Saturday night. One night we waited for over an hour (and even went to a taxi rank 5 minutes away) but nothing showed up. The hotel did try to book taxis but even they couldn’t get anything so we ended up canceling our reservations in San Antonio. We discovered it was better to get a water taxi a few minutes’ walk from hotel (not well advertised by hotel).