Hotel Plaza Santa Ponça — Hotel in Calvià

Good things first: very close to the beach, many restaurants and shops nearby. The hotel offers free beach towels (this shouldn’t be something I have to mention here, but there’s nothing else positive).

Now to the bad stuff: (1) Dirty rooms & poor cleaning: The pictures were all taken directly after checking into the room (it should’ve been intensely cleaned. Spoiler: it wasn’t). Whether it’s a red smudge on the pillow case (shouldn’t that be changed at least after every guest?!), dusty surfaces (only the large ones like a table were cleaned), fingerprints on mirrors, a smudgy bathroom door or brown spots next to the toilet - it’s not what I‘d expect from a 4* hotel. Check out the pictures they speak for themselves. Ah, and before I forget: the shower drain didn’t really work so you had to pause your shower if you didn’t want to flood the bathroom.

(2) Noisy „deluxe“ room: don’t book the so called „deluxe“ room. It’s right next to the stair case and you can hear the lobby music in your bed, hear each word of every conversation on the hallway and the light from the hallway is visible in the room from under the door as there is a close to 1cm gap. Additionally the room doesn’t have a hallway so the door is directly next to the bed and opens toward the bed (btw there’s also no „do not disturb“ sign). Of course we wanted to switch rooms: see (3) to find out how that went.

(3) Unfriendly receptionists: First of all, not all of them are bad at their job. One of the three was very friendly and helped us to change rooms. She‘s the reason why this is a 2-star review and not a 1-star review. So after checking in and realising how noisy our room was, we went to the reception and asked the guy whether we could switch rooms. His answer was: „Really? We never had a complaint for that room, all our guests want to upgrade to that room. I don’t understand why you want to change rooms. And we don’t have other rooms available. Maybe ask again tomorrow.“ Very customer focused - not. The next morning we asked the friendly receptionist and she was understanding and said that on this day it wouldn’t be possible but she’d try to move things around so we can switch rooms the next day. Luckily we could, that didn’t make the new room any cleaner than the old one but at least less noisy. Of course the experience of the third receptionist should not fall short (it’s not that bad, but didn’t help our experience): since we travel with light luggage and the hotel offered beach towels we didn’t bring any. So we were using 4 towels for 2 people at the beach. 2 to lie on and 2 to dry after swimming in the sea. After 5 days with the same towels we wanted to switch them. When handing over four towels and asking for four new ones, the receptionist said: „Four? Okay“ her tone and eyes said „what do you want? That’s not a legitimate ask“. She handed us the towels but couldn’t resist saying „see you in two days“. Again the tone was saying something else: „don’t you dare coming back earlier to get new towels“. Again so service oriented.

(4) Bad breakfast: Of course there are different expectations of good breakfast from different counties or cultures. Since Santa Ponça has a lot of British tourists we were expecting English breakfast (which is not my favourite but it can be really good!). In this hotel: it isn’t! The scrambled eggs were watery, the baked beans had more sauce than beans and the cheese and sauces all were cut in different thickness. Also the atmosphere wasn’t...

Positive comments offered for the modernisation of the hotel, it has been renovated to a high standard. The breakfast menu was good, it was buffet style with lots of choice and cooked fresh. With the exception of Vicki, the staff were friendly, welcoming and tried to best resolve any issues. The pool was very relaxing, as were the upper level bathing areas. The drinks from the hotel bar are very reasonably priced. Extremely disappointed in the following areas: the room was small with poor storage. Nowhere to hang dresses as the wardrobe only fitted shirt length items, my dresses were hung from 2 hooks next to the mirror by the their shoulders. When arrived mid afternoon the weather was very hot and muggy so after we unpacked we were looking forward to the pool, but as we went to leave we discovered the door would not lock. It took nearly an age for it to be mended. One would of expected minor things like this to be checked and repaired before guest arrive. The fridge in the room did not work, we would put ice cold drinks in for them to be warm an hour later. The extractor fan in the bathroom did not work and as there was no window in the bathroom, it, and the bedroom was like a sauna during and after showering. Nothing done when these issues were raised. We were booked for half board and the evening meals were very poor. The menu consisted of a choice of 2 starters, 2 main and 2 deserts. For the first 5 days the menu never stipulated what accompanied each choice to the mains i.e. baked potato, chips, vegatables etc. It would stipulate chicken breast or salmon in sauce. When we enquired what was served with the salmon the receptionist come waiter/ress said they didn't know and for the first 5 days we were served chips. A couple of times apple pie was offered and when it arrived there was no cream, or ice cream. I asked if anything was available and was told no because tomorrow was Monday. The hotel has recently started to sub let the main kitchen in the evenings to a place called Harry's Bistro and so the hotel guests had their ingredients for evening shipped in from a 2nd hotel of the same chain, hence the poor offering. Guests of the hotel definitely suffered the consequences of the sub let. It caused issues for the hotel guests wanting to eat outside in the evening as the waiter of Harrys Bistro aggressively told hotel guest the tables were reserved. On one evening 3 of the 4 meal choices were calamari, tuna salad or mussels. Having spoke to the hotel manager to explain the poor choices especially for a 4* she offered us the option to eat meals at the 2nd hotel which has a buffet because "3* have buffet". They did once agreed to go off menu and cooked a delicious piece of salmon, that was the best meal. The menu then started to stipulate what was accompanying the fish or meat. Definitely recommend guests book bed &breakfast. The location of the hotel is ideal for the beach, buses and taxis but if sleeping at the front of the hotel can occasionally make it extremely noisy. There is no courtesy room that can be booked for an hour slots for people with an evening flight home, they charge €60 to keep your room from 11am to 6pm if it's available and if it's not then tough, you can leave your luggage in the secure storage area. The decor alone does not make a hotel 4* and in our opinion this hotel certainly doesn't feel like it...

SOMEONE BROKE INTO OUR ROOM!

We stayed in the Hotel Plaza from the 23rd of July till August 4th. Our first impressions of the place were fair, the location was excellent, the receptionist was lovely and the cleaners cleaned our room daily, our only original fault was that the AC was not for very strong and did not cool down our room during the very hot days.

All was going well until the 30th of July, during the early hours of the morning we were woken up to an intruder in our room, he was closing the balcony door behind him and as you can imagine we were extremely frightened and upset and screaming at the man to leave our room immediately, this man kept using foul language against us and was extremely intoxicated and had gone into our bathroom, we frantically rang reception where the receptionist Vicky quickly came to our room and she was honestly shocked over the entire situation. After 15 mins she was finally able to get the man out from our room and we soon realised he was from another room within the hotel, this man had ENTERED OUR ROOM VIA OUR BALCONY WHICH WAS ON THE 2ND FLOOR. Now as you can imagine this whole situation was very scary and extremely dangerous for every party involved.

At around 11am the manager (EVA) had called us down to speak to us, when we got downstairs the manager did not bring us to a private area but spoke about the situation in the lobby in front of others who were passing by. Whilst speaking to the manager about this she was extremely rude and did not show us any empathy for the ordeal we had been put through, she kept discriminating against us “typical young people”, pointing her finger at my face and would not allow us to speak, I have never spoken to someone so rude and obnoxious in my life , you would think after spending so much money to stay in this hotel she would treat her paying customers with respect and be more sincere to us after everything we had been put through. Not only was she extremely unprofessional she tried joking with us over how corrupt she was, admitting she would lose peoples passports if they caused any wrong doings in her hotel, this caused the rest of our trip to feel uncomfortable, we would frantically leave our room each day and enter our room quickly because we felt so unwelcomed and uncomfortable over a situation WE DID NOT CAUSE. This manager was treating us as if we were children and showed us 0 respect. And when we asked for compensation for that night, she rolled her eyes and kept telling us no , because apparently someone breaking into our room is “Human Error” and because he was sorry we should be entitled to absolutely nothing.

This hotel also does not have any sort of security or CCTV within the hotel, not only are her customers at risk she is also putting her employees at harm, by not having the proper resources. They also allow randomers to roam the hotel corridors and lifts, one night when coming back we were faced with an extremely intoxicated man in the lift covered in his own vomit, this man was not a customer but was able to randomly roam the hotel at 2am as he wished.

I for one will never be staying at this hotel or any of the other chain hotels around the area Jutlandia...