Els Pins Resort & Spa - Emar Hotels

This is the third time we have stayed here and it never disappoints. Clean, quiet, beautiful gardens, excellent service and food in the best location on the San Antonio Bay area set in it's own extensive grounds and we have stayed in a few over the last 56 years !

This is a lovely modern hotel, in a quiet area but has its flaws as well as plus points in our opinion. The flaws Firstly unless you read reviews prior to arrival Tui do not mention when booking that a€250 damages deposit is paid on arrival and held until housekeeping assess your room after you've actually checked out and returned home . VERY EXCESSIVE Fee...which means you have to hope they find nothing as you're not going to be able to defend the decision if need to. We were aware check out time was 11am so as we were arriving from a 6am departing UK flight and with somone who had special needs, we emailed the hotel after booking and the day prior to arrival to ask if there would be a chance of early checkin. Given that guests must checkout of their room at 11am which again isnt advertised, we were hoping for an earlier than 2pm room entry. Not on your life.... Checked in 11.15am still waiting 1.45pm . No consideration to the emails regarding our sons needs. Up since 2am that morning. Saw him getting stressed etc waiting in reception. Can't see why they couldn't have done this as we were only ones waiting for a room. Very disappointed. We asked twice how long, to be met with stern "not yet" by the male receptionist. On checking in, no information from female receptionist no info on hotels amenities, the area, nothing, just times for breakfast. Did get offered a glass of fizz though. Lovely room allocated overlooking pool 2nd floor but extremely basic . Nothing in there to break lol!! Toilet cubicle tiny so anyone on the large side would have issues getting in, sitting down and getting out although door opens both ways. Shower wet room floor very slippy too. Nowhere to dress in private as cant take clothes in there they'd get wet. Very little hanging space for clothes. Cleaning very poor. Never cleaned balcony once. Glass balcony full of finger prints and never swept floors. Bedding was crumpled even when made and pillows terrible. Flat. Worst ever. Looked like beds hadn't been made on arrival. Sofa bed absolutely awful. Like sleeping on bag of iron poles. Shocking when you pay full price. Should have a proper bed and remove this when 3 adults in a room. We had an early flight home so checked out 7am. Breakfast not til 8am so asked night before for packed picnic. For a 4 star hotel this was absolutely disgusting. 3x ... Two triangle ham n cheese sandwiches on dry white curled up bread, no butter. 1Apple. 3 plain Marie biscuits. Coco yoghurt n bottle of water. Gave majority of it all back. Considering the lovely breakfast we had each morning so much choice, this was 2star standard at best. The Good Great that breakfast on til 11am. Main pool was superb with great DJ on Tues Wed Thur. Lovely area for sunbathing always plenty of beds although majoroty uncomfortable and cheap metal style. Bar very reasonably priced for all drinks. Average age group 25-30 years very few children but there is a children’s pool. Beach pool u

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).

Great holiday at Els Pins! Really nice hotel, in a nice position overlooking the sea. We had a side sea view (room 242) which was virtually a full sea view (although it was above a bottle bank/staff entrance so could be a little noisy at busy times, but wasn’t much of a problem). There’s not much negative I can say about the hotel. We were just B&B and breakfast was good, tho could’ve been a little hotter some days! The reception staff were extremely pleasant and helpful. Rooms cleaned daily. Only thing we found odd was on returning to our room after a full day out, the air con had been left on full blast with every single light left turned on - surely not very sustainable and/or environmentally economical? The beds were comfy, however the pillows were really lumpy and uncomfortable. Also, the balcony chairs were very hard plastic and not comfy to sit on for long. Sun beds were plentiful, however we did notice people were reserving them in the morning then going off for half the day, which I find very rude and ignorant as it’s preventing other people from using them! San Antonio Bay is nice and we would definitely return to this hotel.