HOVIMA Suites Costa Adeje — Hotel in Adeje

I understand the mixed reviews, I will try and explain why. Hotel very clean, rooms very clean. The hotel has several levels of room standard. There is the modernised rooms. These have all the facilities. But are €17 per night more expensive than the non refurbished rooms. The non refurbished rooms are light and airy , the majority have a balcony, but not always a view. These rooms do have flaws. So you may have no kettle, you may have cracked tiles and sealant all around the bathroom. You may have a shower that dribbles etc. However, these rooms are significantly cheaper and perfectly serviceable for a budget get away. Then there is the basement....these rooms have no windows from what I've been told and are most likely where the people who stay on a Groupon or Woucher would end up .....so really just a place to sleep and dress.

The staff are excellent, they do all have some other basic languages including English, but are appreciative if you meet them half way with your attempts at Spanish. They also appreciate good manners, even a morning greeting is well received.

I didn't travel with children, but those I spoke too thought the children had been well entertained. The hotel noticeboard shows a 100% price reduction for children under 6 , then a sliding scale of great discounts ( Feb 2019). The adults have activities in the evening like bingo and stage shows. Just on a local variety basis. The bar outside was the all inclusive one, with soft drinks and coffee on free vend all day and night including at the pool. The evening drinks were local liquors, wines , sangria etc. They seemed to go down ok, but there was usually a line at the bar to get them.( Till 11pm I think)

There is 2 non heated pools with sun loungers and umbrellas. These are accessable from 10 till 6 , though a few are towelled early by sun worshipers .We still always managed to get one without doing this ( Feb). I suspect it gets more competitive into the season.

There is a food servery at the cold pools. One hard working lady constantly takes orders for cheese burgers, fries, toasties and chicken nuggets all day. There is sometimes fresh fruit salad available too. Place your order with her and she will.shout when it's ready . Expect to wait in line.

The pools are vacated by 6 as no lifeguard. Behind reception is a warm water pool....much to our relief.

Wheelchair access. The entrance has steep ramps..So someone pushing a chair user, would be needed. There is a lift ( small) to each floor, tables at dinner can be reserved for this need too. The bar and nightlife is accessable. I haven't seen an accessible toilet except in the 0 floor by the dining area ( using a lift).

The food....hmmm....contentious..... So, it is a very busy dining hall with an overflow. I can only go by my personal experience. Quality of the food....it is varied on a daily basis but repeats weekly. The quality for me was somewhere between a cheap all you can eat Chinese buffet and a dinner hall. Breakfast, for us was the best meal of the day with traditional British breakfast, continental breakfast with meats and cheeses and pastries being available and also fresh fruit , cereal , dried fruit etc. Coffee, juice and wine are self service.

Lunch, is the burgers etc by the pool. Dinner had choices. A theme for the day like Italian. So pizza or pasta, plentiful salad and local feta cheese. Then a British kind of sausage and chips option.

There was always ice-cream, deserts that were edible but not wonderful and plentiful fresh local bread.

However, we like others had issues with it. They do not run a table sitting system. So often it was overrun with people, there wasn't enough food available and it wasn't warm enough, or it had been waiting, overcooked.

In addition, because of those issues, the blue rinse mafia who were staying for extended periods became quite rude and vicious in their attempts to get what they wanted first, and would often take all of...

Aesthetics really aren’t everything….

We spent 9 nights half board at the labranda Costa Adeje suites from 12/06/22 - 21/06/22.

Check in:

On check in to the hotel we were told we needed to pay for our room. I explained to the lady checking us in that I had already paid direct to hotel ages ago. Confused, she called on the reception manager for help, who explained ‘ we only put a hold on your credit card however we do not take payment’ confused, I checked my credit card statement however in the stress of the above could not find the payment. The reception manager then passed the receptionist the card machine to take our payment - which I paid (paying the hotel a second time)

My fiancé then managed to the find the payment on our statement, detailing we paid in November 2021 and was then informed by Ronan ( the reception manager) ‘ you should know if you paid’. No apology for the fact, they had made a mistake, the reception manager had lied to me and that i had been double charged and stressed out by the incompetence - simply informed it was my fault for not checking. Very unprofessional and simply unacceptable. (In future please allocate payment to an invoice - it’s standard practice)

We spoke to Carolina to complain about the service. However felt the seriousness was minimised.

Rooms: We stayed in the adults only area. The rooms are lovely and clean. Very modern. However facing the road can be quite noisy and the beds are two single beds pushed together. Which is strange (or a luxury) if you live together.

We had items taken out of our room which were on the bathroom side - not stolen, just carelessness taking out towels by housekeeping which caused more stress. We asked reception to find the items twice however as expected they were most unhelpful and the items were never found.

Food: We stayed half board. Food is ok/average and found it best to attend dinner at 6:30 before it gets busy. If you attend any later you may struggle as most of the food is sparse after 7:30pm Breakfast is also ok/average at best. It’s from 7:30-10:30 however if you attend after 9am you won’t find any bacon, fruit etc. it’s bread and pastries and cakes. out of the 9 nights, we ate at the hotel 4 times..choosing to eat out so this didn’t ruin our holiday.

Pool areas: We stayed for 9 nights and did not stay around the pool once. The pool is very busy, people reserved sunbeds by 9am so unless you’re up you can’t get one. There’s 440 rooms in the hotel and if you view the pool pictures… the area is not big enough for the hotel. Instead we went to the beach, buying an umbrella and some towels from the local shops.

Area: Costa Adeje and Fanabe beach is lovely. Lots to do, restaurants, bars. You won’t be bored! This really helped salvage our holiday.

Overall: For us the hotel is a dressed up 3 star hotel. Basic food, poor hospitality and service. If you want a quality hotel don’t stay here. Some staff are great however - there’s a young man who works in the adults restaurant - who works so hard and also some of the dinner staff are really friendly. However the majority make you feel like you should be grateful for somewhere to stay.

Also reviewed this hotel on trip advisor in which - they accused me of being a liar in a public forum

There reply ‘We remember perfectly well the moment when you arrived at the hotel and the situation you are describing. As always in this life there are always two versions that people should know. 90% of the bookings on our website are direct payments at the hotel. When we checked your booking, it did not indicate that you had already paid. We asked you if you had proof of payment and you replied that you had not. After checking all the emails, we found that you had already paid and immediately apologised and refunded the amount’

Completely untrue - we found the payment details not the hotel and received no immediate apology - such a smug little man...

Pros: Vast selection of food at all meal times. Did particularly well at seafood and steaks. I’m not a massive seafood lover but i tried Swordfish, Hake, King Prawns, Salmon and cod cooked deliciously during our stay. Our tastebuds were tingling! Deserts are amazing and includes a chocolate fountain and piles of fresh fruit bursting with flavour. The level of work to deliver this 3x per day must be astounding. Food was better than the few meals we tried in local restaurants. Rooms are stunning and furnished lovely. Cleaning teams keep them immaculate throughout. Brilliant location, quick access to the seafront, shopping malls and local key areas. There’s a parking spot for local hire electric scooters nearby. These are so cheap to use to flit about. It’s a big hotel, there’s lots of space and great open areas to watch live sport events with bars nearby. Everything has just been refurbished to a high standard. Clear zoning of adult only areas and family friendly Evening entertainment is very relaxed and great to listen to various musicians and genres. Always something for someone. The high rooms in the hotel have incredible views over the local area. Front rooms will have sea views but suspect these may be upgrades. Fresh bottled water to the room every day. Quick airport transfer. About 25mins. Poolside pool table. €1 per game. Extras included in the room e.g iron and ironing board, extra pillows, thicker blanket for the beds, tea/coffee machine, mini fridge, soap and body wash in the bathroom. Staff members were incredibly friendly and helpful, in particular Leroy and Alessia made us some fantastic pina colada’s!

Cons: Sun lounger scramble every morning is a shambles. Rules about it everywhere with zero enforcement. Shadowing in pool area over winter months. Due to how tall the complex is. Get about 4 hours of sunshine before beds start being shaded, no sunshine at adults pool after 4:30/5 when it’s still bright sun down at the beach etc Safe not included. €17 hire for the lock mechanism. No bath in the bathroom, wasn’t a deal breaker for us but I know for some travellers a bath is preferred over a shower All inclusive drinks isn’t great. Pint of beer? Nope. It’s little kids paper cups and in the restaurants there’s only access to tiny glasses or wine glasses to pour your own pint. Presumably to cut wastage. We tried all ways to get around this by bringing our Yeti coolers down (hell of a public telling off for that!). In the end we used glasses off the upstairs bar. It’s Amstel beer only and local spirit manufacturers which gave a fuzzy head the next day. We only found out upon arriving at the hotel that there is an All Inc. plus package which gives full access and room upgrades. Wish we knew about this upon booking. All inclusive drink limits in some bars - 4 drinks per person. Yes you read that right! I was astounded. All inclusive not included in the roof top bar. Around €13/£10 a round up there which we thought was expensive. Way better local places to visit instead. The restaurant water machines are terrible. They are ran from a big water bottle and they often airlock. Lots of guests struggled with this and seemed the ‘norm’ to staff. Lots of all inclusive rules. You can do this, you can’t do that. Nothing major just picky stuff we found frustrating. An example, we were heading out for a day trip so wanted to make a sandwich to take with us. Absolute red flag to a bull with the staff. I explained what we were doing and they were not interested. No food to be taken out of the restaurant with zero tolerance on that. Also saw staff stopping someone taking a plate of food up to room for relative that was unwell and couldn’t make it down to the meal Snack options between meals seemed to just be apples, oranges and sometimes sandwiches in the fridge at the bar, in other all inclusive hotels I’ve found there’s been a lot...