Maspalomas Princess — Hotel in San Bartolomé de Tirajana

This was our 2nd visit to Maspalomas & Tabaiba Princess. 1st visit we stayed in Tabaiba, this time we were in Maspalomas. ||You can download the Princess app before your trip to look over all the facilities and then use it over the trip. Helps with opening/closing times, themed nights for food and entertainment, and the animation schedule for adults and kids.||Rooms are great and spacy, bathrooms all functional, they are doing a lot of refurbing outside of the peak seasons, but this time we were in a non refurbed room, no issues at all, just as comfy. Safe and mini fridge in the room, great air conditioning, make sure you close your balcony door properly to keep it working :)||You cannot drink the tap water in Gran Canaria, so we normally buy some big bottles of water to pop into the mini fridge, however, each bar area has a new Agua tap, with lovely cold water, we refilled our bottles hourly. Tabaiba has a bar that is open near their reception all day - but not alcohol all day, hot drinks and soft drinks, whereas currently the Maspalomas side does not open their bar until the evening. ||Dining in the main Food Hall, you have a lot of choice of foods, all the allergens are listed above with symbols, the only place it is a little confusing, is the desserts area. There are loads of desserts displayed but only 1 sign that shows all allergens, which I don't think is true that every dessert as them all. My Suggestion and plea to the hotel would be to make the individual signs for the desserts, honestly, it was mostly for my husband who was Dairy Free, he could not eat any of the desserts without knowing what was in them, whereas for me being Gluten Free and Coeliac I had options.||There is a dedicated space for Allergen foods at the back of the centre section, just after the salad and cheese bars. There is a toaster and microwave and if you ask the chefs in that area they will provide GF bread/rolls on request. For any Dairy free people the Margerine in the normal bread section is all good for you. If you need to ask anyone we used:|Esto tiene leche (Does this have milk)|Esto tiene mantequilla (does this have butter) |Esto tiene Trigo (does this have wheat) |Esto tiene gluten? (does this have gluten)||Please bare in mind, not everyone who works at the hotel will be fluent in English, however, if you give your patience, you give a smile, and try not to speak too fast (or add unnecessary words like I do) honestly the team will do anything to help where they can, even if that was taking me to another staff member. Anytime I asked a question I was provided with an answer.||The Gym, was something that we used everyday, its not something everyone uses. T find the gym, you can walk through the adult area in Tabaiba, when you reach the spa beds on the right, look left and go up 1 set of stairs, then go down and through the door, turn left and you are there. Also my the pool bar there is a green space where all yoga, Pilates, and salsa sessions happen, bring your towel and grab a spot in the shade. The range of equipment in the gym is great, it really helps to have actual resistance machines and weights along with cardio machines. Also there is only Spa music on in the Gym, so I would bring headphones. My Feedback/ suggestion to the hotel management, can you please service/review a few of the handles of the resistance machines, where the rubber has come off and its now bare metal, can be quite uncomfortable to use. But secondly, Air Conditioning please, for any workout it can get quite unbearable in there, especially in the spin classes, Shout out to Sandra, great member of the animation team, who has great taste in music, who does Spin, Pilates, Yoga, Stretching, Aqua Dance, Aqua Gym, and everything else. Great presence, great classes.||This hotel is huge, you will get you steps up just by walking around the pool. There is a massive pool in the middle which is actually broken into smaller pools, some shallow, some deeper and then there is another adult only pool on the Tabaiba side.|There are plenty of sun beds around the entire area, there is no reserving sunbeds at 4am thank goodness! However, if you want a bed in the adult only area, there are 2 entrances either side, the area opens at 10am so you will need to start or get in the queue just before. Its quite fun, to see people running to a bed, but the hotel is quite good at adding more beds where they can if there are more adults in that area. So check it everyday. It also has the Balinese beds at the side of the pool which you can book at the pool bar at 10am costing 25 euros for the day, very comfy. The Pool is salt water, deepish, we are 5"8 and can touch the floor all the way to the deep end.||The Spa, having a spa on site is a proper treat, they don't just do massages, but they have a great list to choose from and its incredibly reasonable. The staff there are so wonderful and will do anything they can to help you. The Spa is located on Tabaiba side near the gym, if you walk from reception and turn left, walk straight you will see rooms and a sign at the end of the corridor saying Spa Princess.||The staff who sort out all our rooms are just fantastic, you have a do not disturb sign so you don't have to get your room serviced everyday, plus they have a laundry service, which is very helpful.||Evening entertainment on both sides of the hotel, which I think covers pretty much all people and genres, if not you have a balcony in your room, and a TV. Quizzes, musical performances and mini disco for kids all on the Maspalomas side, really fun to take part. Tabaiba side as themed evenings so look out for those on all the interactive screens,||All in all, we had a great trip, 1st visit was 12 days, this time we did 11, paid for the late checkout which kept us our room until 5pm and our bus came to get us at 5:15pm. there is a machine to weigh your cases at reception, this costs 1 euro every time you weigh a case, so save your change for the end...

We had an amazing time at Maspalomas Princess. We went for two weeks with our one and half year old daughter. We and she loved every bit of it !

We got a room right at the side of the kid's pool, which was super convenient of course so we didn't have to cross the hotel to get to the pool with our kid.

The hotel is rather huge, but that's a good thing. There are a lot of guests but it doesn't feel super crowdy because of this.

The service was great! All staff were super friendly to us and especially to our daughter. Rooms were clean every day and they respected nap times when our little one needed it in the early afternoon.

The food was amazing too. We expected the same buffet every breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, but it definitely wasn't! Every day, you can expect different meat and fish and side dishes. The live cooking was also great to see and again everyone was very friendly! It was of course a bit crowdy in the restaurant, but that is to be expected. It was smart to go a bit earlier rather than the busiest of times (6.30pm instead of 8.30pm for example).

The pools were very clean and as I said, convenient to reach for us. The kid's pool had multiple slides for young and a bit older children and was great to have some fun at. The other pools were chill for adults and older children too. The bars around the pools were convenient and always stocked with whatever you wanted to drink. Again the staff were great here and happy to help you at all times.

If you want to relax a bit without the kid's noise, then there is an adults only (18+) zone with a pool, a bar and a spa. Great to chill for a bit or if you don't have kids but want to have a relaxed holiday, it's still possible at this hotel without issue.

There are also a few shops and a pharmacy for when you need it, which is great to see of course! We could always get a taxi from the reception if we desired one and there are a few bus stops nearby too.

Walking to the beach is only 20 - 30 mins. There's also a golf club only a 5 mins walk away.

There's not "a lot" to see around the hotel, except for the beach, a promenade with some bars and restaurants and shopping mall + the typical Maspalomas dunes which are very cool to see. You need to take the bus or a taxi to go explore the island, which is definitely worth it if you're into that kind of holiday.

Interesting to note: There is a "standard all-in" and a "premium all-in" formula at this hotel. The "standard all-in" let's you enjoy all the food and drinks in the restaurants and bars throughout the hotel. The "premium all-in" gives you a few perks, like a few more cocktails and liquor that is free instead of extra charge. With premium, you can also ask for bottles of water, instead of just in a cup. There were also pancakes and waffles at a bar every afternoon which were extra charge for standard but included for premium all-in. During breakfast, the fresh orange juice is also extra charge for standard, but included for premium all-in. Just to consider when booking a stay; we did have the premium all-in so we didn't have to think about paying extra for the fresh orange juice in the morning and the pancakes and waffles in the afternoon, which was great for us. If you don't want or need those, and don't drink alcohol, you are perfectly fine with the standard formula.

In short: a great hotel and a great stay for us during the past two weeks. Loved all of it and I would definitely recommend going when you want a relaxed...

Most honest review :). If you don't have time to read it all and you don't know if you should choose this hotel - go for it. I have been to Gran Canaria many times and I always stayed in the center of Playa de Ingles. This time I wanted to go to a bigger hotel with bigger pools so I had to choose something more on Maspalomas side. (hotels' space in Playa De Ingles is more limited) When I was picking this hotel I was afraid of 3 things- number of children, surroundings outside the hotel and is it going to be easy and cheap to travel back and forth between beach and Playa de Ingles. It turned out it all the above were not a problem. I will talk about it later. First of all I have to say that common areas in the hotel - reception, garden, pools are more of a 5-star hotel. Hotel is covered with greenery, big palm trees, flowers. There is soo much of it you don't even see uninteresting surroundings outside of the hotel at all. The main pool is huge. There is shallow descent to the pool and most of the sunbeds are on the sand. You almost get a feeling you are in Thailand. For the first time in Gran Canaria I can say that the pool was heated (before in all the hotels on the island where I stayed water was freezing). Most kids play at the shallow entrance to the pool so If you don't want to be around kids you can just go to the deeper waters. I have say that it was a pity that main pool is devided by small bridges and you cannot swim under them. There is also another pool with slides for kids but I never went there. There is also a good size adult pool. Regular sunbeds are for free but big luxurious sunbeds are additional 18 euros a day. When it comes to sports during the day the offer was amazing. Aqua aerobic, yoga you name it, everything was there, even water bicycles and boules are there. There is also a decent gym with Technogym equipment and if you are creative you can do a full training. The food was good. I believe the hotel specializes in fish and seafood- there were very good. Chicken, beef, veal were also tasty. I think international food is where quality goes to average in the main restaurant - not the best pizza and just bad lasagna. There is always plenty of fruits: watermelon, papaya etc. After 6 days I wanted really to try something different so this is when I used a'la carte restaurants ( there is a chinese and italian restaurant). They were good and had different food than in the main restaurant. (I believe during a week stay you can go there twice for free). Alcohol drinks were ok. Mostly bartender poured alcohol to a glass and you top it up yourself with coctail machine that has for example mojito flavor. The room was a decent size. The room could be more modern but I did choose standard room as it was the only one left. They are very clean and they are cleaned everyday and towels are also changed on a daily basis. Now the thing I really didn't like is that few times a cleaning lady tried to come to my room around 8 am to clean it without even knocking! You should not do it! On the bad side I also have to say that evening shows are just simply boring. Also you get for free only 4mb internet which disconnects often. When it comes to taxis there are very cheap and I never waited for than 2 minutes for the taxi when I ordered it in the reception. Taxi to the beach costs around 4 euros and to Yumbo around 5 euros. Overall it was a...