Shell Beach Hotel & Spa — Hotel in Maghreb

The Good , The Bad and The Ugly ||A mixed review . Please read for some good advice ||We booked a cheap all inclusive deal in June by the way .||The Good -||The location is perfect , a short walk from the beach ||The staff are all friendly and smiley ||The decor is amazing and it looks like a palace from reception ||The pool is clean and the waterfall is a nice touch ||When we came in June , the hotel was almost empty and we felt special ( especially as English tourists - most of the guests were French or Arabic .)||We paid for all inclusive - The food is good with a wide choice but if you come expecting English food like cereal and full English you will be disappointed ||The range of drinks is limited but obviously plentiful . Rum , whisky , gin, beer and wine plus soft drinks and water. Anything else you need to pay for .||The rooms are ok . The air conditioning and shower are antiquated but they work. ||||The Bad - ||Shower and bath are provided but don't think of having a bath as they have taken the plugs and unscrewed the tap changing device that swaps between shower and bath ( we found a way round it though 😊)||You need to be aware that the bread rolls are touched by many hands . We did a little observation during our breakfasts and saw that most Arabic guests , adults and children alike , picked up bread rolls from the basket , examined them critically and then put them back in the basket . So each bread roll is handled by several guests before it is taken . Needless to say we didn't have any bread rolls !||The WiFi is frustratingly bad . Difficult to connect and only available in certain places . At one end of the restaurant it works . At the other end it doesn't . On the bed in your room it doesn't work but if you stand next to the front door it does . Sometimes it works and then drops out randomly.||Don't be tempted to use your roaming service by the way . £6 per MB ( yep , not GB ) . The cheaper option is to buy a local SIM card .||Room cleaning also varies . Sometimes they will do a good job and sometimes they will come in when you have put a do not disturb sign on the door , take your towels and forget to give you new ones ( as I found out emerging dripping from the shower one day ) . On one occasion they came in and cleaned the whole room when we had put the do not disturb sign on the door . Luckily we were not having an afternoon nap at the time .||||The Ugly -||MOST IMPORTANT - The room we were given overlooked the pool and patio area . Although it looked nice when we arrived it also exposed us to the horrors of the resident DJ .||||Although there were only a few people in the hotel at the time , most of them older people ( like us ) or young families with children , the pool DJ insisted on playing very loud thumping afro dance music at random times through the day . At 3 in the afternoon for instance , with only a few people in the pool area and little children splashing away , we were subjected to ridiculously loud frankly hideous music by a DJ with all the technical skills of a ten year old , who seemed to have no idea of how to line up songs or to stop the tracks from jumping and cutting out . This was usually accompanied by the " animations" team jumping around by the pool . After one day of this we left the comfortable poolside as soon as the music started blaring . The attitude seems to be "you can't possibly be having fun unless the music is really loud"|| If the job of a DJ is to "read the room" he is clearly illiterate.||I could possibly understand if the hotel was heaving with twenty something party goers but it wasn't . It was just badly misjudged and inappropriate . All we wanted was a quiet poolside experience as I suspect did most of the people there .||BUT the worst was yet to come . From 8 pm to 11.30 pm the same music was blaring out poolside straight into our room. Even with the sliding balcony doors closed it was intolerably loud . This with only about 6 people and a cat as the audience. ||If you are over 50 as we are , if you value a good night's sleep as well do, if you have young children , if you have a taste in music that doesn't include loud thumping bass lines , our advice would be ||WHEN YOU CHECK IN ASK WHICH SIDE OF THE HOTEL YOUR ROOM WILL BE AND ENSURE YOU ARE ON THE QUIETER SIDE NEAR THE STREET.||After 3 sleepless nights we requested a room transfer and that made a big difference . I know that management read these reviews and I would suggest that they are more proactive in recognising the potential needs of their guests before they have to complain. ||I would also suggest that the animation team need to adopt the same approach in their choice and timing of music .||Further afield ||"Beware Greeks bearing gifts". If you venture out of the confines of the hotel you will inevitably be approached by cheery individuals who will try all manner of tricks to get you to buy things from them or have your photo taken with parrots , chameleons or camels . While we thought their sales skills impressive we soon learned it's ok to just say no 😊||Make sure you have Dinar available for anything you want to buy outside the hotel including excursions. My advice would be to get it at the airport when you arrive as the ATMs in town are dodgy .||If you booked the hotel because of it's proximity to the beach you should know that the water is not clear like Greece ( it's near the port) and is full of jellyfish - you can see their blue bodies on the sandy beach. Small areas are roped off for swimmers but we didn't see many people submerging their heads in the water .|| If you walk further up the beach as we did looking for clearer waters you are likely to be approached by security staff telling you politely but firmly that you are outside your allocated zone .||I realise this has been a long read but I hope it will be useful to those planning a stay here . At the end of the day the old motto " you get what you pay for " does apply , but to advertise this hotel as 4 star is rather misleading . 3 star at best but if the management put a little more thought into their customer service approach it could be...

Simply a Terrible excuse for a hotel, from first getting to the location impolite security guards decide to search all bags and suitcases in the middles of the streeet , when confronted they said it's orders and its the law and it's simply not . There is no law that allows a security guard to search in your suitcases when entering a hotel. After the illegal search we were told that hotel parking lot is full so we took the car and parked on the curbe... After checking in and complaining to the manager , we found alrdy a group of people complaining and threatening to cancel their stay after being searched like criminals on the main road ..., the manager reacted with an uneducated answer saying that he has the right to search peoples belongings in the street and invade their privacy. We found out later that the hotel has two names the one we booked and was tunisia lodge hotel and spa on the reservation and when you check reviews you do not see the real name of the hotel and the bad reviews . The real name of the hotel is shell beach hotel and spa and it has hundreds of bad reviews of rude staff disgusting food and dirty room no working ac and no fridge even water is hot and you have the right for 2 small bottels a day .Just a clear message to you manager this is shady buisness when you change the name to avoid your bad rep. The swimming pool was filthy and smelled bad with mod on the corners. This is one of the worst experiences I have had in a hotel to say this hotel is 4 stars is a scam I would not rate it even at 1 .It's more like hotel of hell or your worst nightmare . Dinner and launch were horrible we could not find anything to eat everything was the lowest quality they could find we ended up eating salads that tasted like dirt, and the meat was sus not sure what meat it was but it wasn't chicken or beef or even turkey.all night the hotel was infested with mosquitos could not even sleep got bit hundreds of times. The bed was like a broken trashy apartement bed if you lay on it for a whileYou get back pain .the last day launch was a disaster we did not find anything to eat everything was disgusting raw rice and chicken boiled in it's skin the only thing that was edible was pasta and it run out the moment we entered as hordes of people decided to take all of it . So to recap we didn't eat anything for 48 h and before checking out one lady was using the water dispenser and it exploded with electricity like a scene from a Hollywood movie lucky she wasn't burned and moved a way but that scared most people away from the horrible restaurant service that was provided. the funniest part was reading the reviews on google maps were it's obvious they are bots no one would spend a week here and rate...

I would strongly advise to never step foot in this hotel.||We booked all inclusive - upon arrival at 14:15 we asked where we could get food as we were hungry, to be advised there is no food until 18:30. All inclusive here is full-board everywhere else. We went to put our bags into the room and that’s where I found hairs all over the bedding, in drawers, the bath, faeces marks round the toilet, the bath was slimy, dirt down doors. ||Anyway, dinner came around and there was barely any choice, possible 5 dishes, all cold. The food here was disgusting. And this was just ongoing throughout the holiday until Tunisians were staying. Then they got a lot of choice of food and could help themselves yet any English here were rationed, the chefs put little amount of food on our plates. ||We were here for a week and 4 nights of it we went out for food which is NOT what you expect from an all inclusive.||The management were absolutely vile to us, told us it’s our fault that the holiday isn’t what we expected. ||The hotel staff (men) are extremely creepy towards females, and the man from the spar is the worst. ||On 2 separate occasions they had evening entertainment on, apparently you had to buy tickets but we weren’t offered to buy tickets so the English people staying were the only ones not included In the entertainment and they sectioned it off so we couldn’t see.||This whole hotel is a joke, dirty and run down.||The only reason the hotel was any good is due to the other English guests staying and Walid the bar man and Billy from entertainment. They are massive assets to this hotel but are looked down upon from management.||Any other ethnicity seemed to be treated wonderful so if you’re English, be prepared for the racism!||Conclusion - Avoid...