Radisson Blu Resort & Spa — Hotel in Mogán

This was our 4th visit to this hotel, and I should have stuck with my comment two years ago that we would not return because of the awful breakfast service. However, we all make mistakes...||||We were checked in by Nela, a very friendly and efficient young lady, and we were given the room we requested, a pool access room in the Quiet Zone. The rooms here are all junior suites, spacious and comfortable, with facilities like tea and coffee making, free safe, mini fridge, good aircon, etc. There's a large terrace, with table and chairs, and luxury private sunbeds. ||||There are two main pools - the family/activity pool and the quiet zone pool, so it's worth considering which you would prefer and making a request in advance. The sunbeds around the pools are nothing like as comfortable as those on your terrace - some of them are clearly quite old, with metal bars protruding through the sagging fabric, and you have to careful how you sit down on them.||||There's an excellent 24-hour gym, with a wide range of apparatus, all of which seemed to be in good working order. We didn't use the spa, so I can't comment on this.||||The location of the hotel is good, about 15 minutes' walk from the seafront, and close to a good supermarket and shopping centre with bars and restaurants. It's also handy for the Friday morning Market. ||||The entertainment is the usual 'big hotel' stuff, with acrobats, magic, dancing, and tribute acts. I wasn't impressed by karaoke and music quizzes being classed as entertainment, but it takes all sorts. Most of the time we were out in the evenings, so we missed most of it. ||||And so to the breakfast service...||||There are more than 400 rooms in this hotel, so around 1,000 guests looking for breakfast during a four hour window, most of them at the sort of peak time many of us like to have breakfast on holiday. This is where the planning (if there ever was any) has clearly gone wrong. ||||The day usually starts when you arrive at the restaurant to find a queue to check in and give your room number. This queue can last from a few seconds (one morning) to 10 minutes (at least two mornings), or anything in between. When you reach the head of this queue and give your room number, you are then directed to join another queue, depending on whether have requested a table 'inside or outside'. Eventually, after spending up to 20 minutes of this particular day of your holiday queueing, you are shown to a table, sometimes one that has been laid and unoccupied for some time. ||||Sitting down at your table means you now qualify for the Game of the Day. GotD1 almost every morning is 'hunt the teaspoon'. This is a particularly difficult game as there appears to be a massive shortage of teaspoons at the Radisson, and requires some deviousness to succeed. What you really need to do is to locate the waiter who part-times as a conjuror, as the cry for 'teaspoons' immediately prompts him to put his hands in the pocket of his apron and produce two teaspoons, as if by magic.||||The second GotD is 'hunt the glass' and was necessary on about three mornings of our stay. If you ever thought that in a five star hotel, you had a reasonable expectation of drinking your morning fruit juice from a glass, think again. In this hotel, you'll often be grateful for a cardboard cup. Five star? ||||The final GotD I identified was only played once, but it was worth witnessing just for its drama. At breakfast in the Radisson you get used to searching for a plate station that actually has some plates, but usually you can locate one, even if it's a big plate when you wanted a small one, or vice versa. One dramatic morning, all the plate stations were empty, and guests looking for plates were milling about waiting, blocking the whole buffet for those few guests who had actually managed to acquire a plate, or were probably using the plate from their previous course. Suddenly a door opened, and a trolley laden with plates of different sizes was wheeled into the buffet. The mob descended on the trolley, pushed by a now terrified-looking young member of staff, and stripped the trolley of the plates. I don't know if the young member of staff ever turned up for work again, but I wouldn't have blamed her if she had exited hysterically, never to return. ||||Do the management of this hotel really not know how to resolve this chaos? Every minute that a guest has to wait for something is a minute longer that they're occupying a table that another guest can't use. We normally reckon to spend about 30-40 minutes at breakfast. At the Radisson it was taking us 40-50 minutes, often after queuing to check in for a table for up to 20 minutes. Every minute that a guest spends looking for a teaspoon, a glass or a plate is a minute longer that they're occupying their table, and a minute longer that another guest has to queue for that table. The breakfast service here needs a good dose of efficient management to bring it even close to a five star standard.||||Would we return to this hotel? Not after this experience. We should have learnt from...

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay and the hotel is great. I hope my comments help you make a choice because there's a few things to consider. We went 9th-19th September. This is by far the busiest hotel I have ever stayed in, this is not a criticism at all, just shows how popular it is. There's a constant buzz of people everywhere - but it is not loud and we still found the atmosphere and poolside very relaxing. We don't have kids but even as an outsider, we could tell it's very family friendly. Being child-free shouldn't put you off though, it's caters very well for most. I'd say if you want seclusion or you don't want to be around kids at all, this is not the place for you and perhaps look for something adults only. Also, if you want to be partying all night in an 18-30's type vibe, also not for you. Despite the busy atmosphere of people and kids activities, most people are sat peacefully, with a glass of sangria relaxing!

The staff are great! Lots of languages spoken, we mainly heard German, English and Spanish. I tried with my terrible Spanish though and they do appreciate you having a go! Everyone was very knowledgeable and helpful. On the last day, I think because it seemed quieter, we got offered drinks poolside and table service - which was ace! I wish we'd had this service all the time.

The rooms are air conditioned and the air conditioning is quiet too for the most part, unless it hasn't been on and it means you want to dramatically change the temperature. We had two room keys and generally left one in the power so the air con was on whilst we were out and about so we always came back to the room nice and cool. The room was serviced daily. My only critique here is that the consumables weren't consistently replaced, teabags, milks, toiletries. However, bed made, bins emptied, floors mopped, towels changed etc, all very consistent. Beds were by far the most comfy I've ever slept in at a hotel - kudos! Note, ours was two single beds pushed together, rather than a double/king bed. Not a problem at all.

The gym.... I used the gym 6/10 days. Good things are it's generally empty. I'd describe it as small for the size of the hotel but that comment is irrelevant really as the most people in there when I used it was 3, including me. It would perhaps be a waste of space to make it any larger. I only used the cardio machines and it's functional but in need of an update really. The treadmills, no problems but little things like you can see rust forming, one of them the touch screen hardly worked. The exercise bike is so old and rusty you can't adjust the seat. The rowing machine, I couldn't keep my feet in (could have been me though)! There didn't feel much resistance because it was some sort of water thing (hard to explain!). Just generally, it needs an update in my opinion but you'll get by if you want to use it.

Didn't visit the spa, prices are what you'd expect for a hotel which priced us out.

Finally, breakfast. Oh my goodness me, best breakfast buffet ever. It's chaotic, lots of people, trying to get what they need but I was very impressed. We usually ate around 9:00-10:00 ish. All what you'd expect, hot 'English' breakfast, cheese, meats, bread, cereal, pastries, juices, yogurts but there's a few things that went above and beyond for me. Cava is freely available if you fancy a cheeky breakfast mimosa, smoked salmon freely available too. (I find that most places charge extra for salmon and fizz). Tea and coffee brought to the table and hot milk provided as standard. Egg station - so you can get an omelette made with your choice of filling fresh in front of you and fried eggs are done to order. I personally really liked this, I hate picking up a fried egg that looks like it's sad and been under a hot plate for hours. I felt like all these little extras, with the plethora of choice in the first place made it fantastic. There's so much fruit, bread, cheese, meat, the choice...

This is our second visit to the Radisson. We had a wonderful holiday last year and we couldn't wait to return. ||We had a room on the top floor last year around the quiet pool and this year we paid the extra to have a pool access room (this was again round the quiet pool). These rooms are on the ground floor and we liked the fact you could sunbathe on your terrace and go straight into the pool etc.. this worked well for us as a family as we don't like fighting for sunbeds.| |Positives- |Location & Food- Mogan is absolutely beautiful. So many beautiful restaurants. I have Ceoliac and I never had a problem eating out. There were so many options. |Our favourites were - |Pizza restaurant on the square near the band stand (think it's called 75?). |La Fenice- best pizza I had during our stay. |Amazonas- kids love it here. |Gran Shang Hai- brilliant Chinese. ||Food in the hotel- At breakfast I had a fresh omelette everyday and then asked the staff for the gluten free sheet- I just ticked off what I wanted and it was brought to the table. |We also had a lovely lunch at the pool bar one day and they had lots of GF options, aswell as takeaway pizza from the Italian restaurant during the day. ||Mogan really is a stunning place, it's quiet and feels safe. If you're looking for lots of bars etc. This isn't the resort for you. ||Sports facilities- my husband and son love the football courts and table tennis. We used the app to book it everyday and really like this feature. |Our kids enjoyed the rock climbing and Aqua mat and my son enjoyed kids water basket. ||Spa- I did the kids Spa with my daughter one afternoon and this was really lovely. ||Negatives- |As mentioned in other reviews, the hotel is in need of some tlc, compared with last year. |Some investment is needed into some new sunbeds around the main pool and only 1 of the showers was working around the main pool and quiet pool. ||Service is very slow around the main pool bar during the day time and in the evening.. it's table service on an evening but on occasion we had to go to the bar and ask them to send someone over as no one was coming... it really was very slow. ||The main negative (and it pains me to say it) but it was poo gate... during our 11 night stay the main pool was closed twice and the quiet pool a further 2 times. So 4 days in total that we couldn't use the pool... the hot tub was also closed on 1 separate occasion. I have never known this before in any other hotel I have ever stayed in.. it just seemed to be happening far too much for it just to be a coincidence that so many children were pooing in the pool. There was really no communication from the hotel about what was happening, so I think that's why guests were getting frustrated and using the Facebook group to update others..|I felt for the hotel as it's not their fault.. but equally it is their problem and they didn't really seem to be doing anything about it. When we asked what was happening the lady on reception told us it was guests not putting swim nappies on their babies.. but surely if they knew this to be the cause, they could have tried to resolve this. When the poo was discovered in the quiet pool my daughter was swimming underwater and saw it... I mean you can't beat around the bush here.. no one wants to pay to go on holiday to be swimming next to poo... so that situation was disappointing for us.. ||All things considered, we probably won't go back to the Radisson for a 3rd time. This is due to many reasons but on the whole we just want to explore new places and it doesn't have the same pull it had last year to...