Hotel Esplai

5 readers found this review helpful

hi, my husband & I (early 60's) spent a very enjoyable 4 nights in the hotel esplai. the food was good,rooms and common areas clean, and staff pleasant. We knew there was no entertaninment in the evenings, so when the bar closed at 11.30 we nipped accross to the white horse, and spent a pleasant hour there. We recommend this hotel for a short break, but think families would get bored for a fortnights holiday. People who moan about this hotel (the food and stuff) need to dig deep and pay for 5 star luxury, because be honest, whoever stays in this hotel has paid peanuts so should know what to expect. We would certainly return for a cheap break and recommend it for this.Also to keep your room on until 18.00hrs on your day of departure is the cheapest we have paid in all the other hotels we have stayed in in spain

1 reader found this review helpful

we booked this holiday after reading reports made by other guests to this hotel with mainly poor reports on the standard of food thinking it cannnot be that bad . IT WAS WORSE THAN BAD THE FOOD WAS UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMTION.
After reporting to the head waiter uncooked chicken legs I was told sorry my plate was taken away and nothing more was said , I reported to the hotel reception and again told sorry, no food was removed from the stands and food was still made available to the next hungry person .
All meat that was available was off cuts you would feed your dog . one woman asked what is this only to be told its pork a "pigs cheek" yuck!!!!
After a few nights we found out we could go into another hotel from other guests (BON REPOS )100 yrds up the road and use our all inc band to obtain food and drink. the food wasnt the best at this hotel ,however it was a 50% improvement.
All the staff are grumpy at the esplai and will do nothing to make your stay better, a family of 4 arrived at 11;30 and asked for some water for her 7 month old baby girls bottle she was told sorry we close @ 11;30 we have to lock all self service drinks machines off this leaves you without a drink until 08;30 the next day "go to a shop and buy some water" .
Could go on forever about this hotel as its the worse i have stopped at .
It wasnt just the food that was poor the size of the poolside is poor for the size of the hotel, you are pushed out of the poolside @17;45 and its closed down forceing you to sit in a red hot room with no air whatsoever, no entertainment, ect
poolside snacks are poor constantly running out of food on a daily basis.
please please take note of whats reprted and dont make the mistake we made.
paul & michelle south yorkshire.

this hotel was advertised as a family hotel. wrong better way to describe this place is 18-30. german teenagers caused kaos morning noon and night so forget relaxing or sleeping.we felt pushed out by them. luckly the beach was lovely though and there were lots of places in the town. the rooms are far too small for family. as for the food it was disgusting and cold and made a few people sick, entertainment what entertainment! we all had to go to the sister hotel which we werent aware of for the first three days as the employees hadnt bothered to tell you. the staff clearly need to have some kind of training in people skills they are all ignorant. the pool area is far too small for the size of the hotel to get a louger you had to be down there by 8.30am. on the upside the hotel was kept clean and tidy,and we met some very nice people who were also on holiday. i will not return there nor do i advise anyone else to go.

Hotel rubbish
staff rubbish
food rubbish
room's rubbish
but if you like pork you will love it because thats all you get to eat.
if you like the company of germans you will love it.
it's is like an 18-30 holiday but german style.
we booked a family room and got a box with 4 beds in it.
if your looking for a good holiday listen to me and dont go to this hotel.

We booked this hotel in feb 09 without seeing any reviews, a couple of weeks before we went, we read the reviews, and, were a bit dubious to say the least.
However when we arrived it was very clean the hotel staff were great and very friendly. There were many whinging Brits I'm sad to say, moaning about the food and anyone that didn't fit into their 'critique'. The food was fine yes it was continental, hmm maybe because we were on mainland continent and there were many other countries represented there.
There was a lack of entertainment but that was fine, if you wanted it you could go to one of the sister hotels or around the town.
The main people queueing up early for sunbeds were the Brits, however there is a sign that if you place your towels on the sunbed and haven't used them in the hour, then anyone could remove the towels takee them to reception and claim the sunbed.
There were German, French, Serbian, Polish, Dutch,Italian and many other nationalities at the Hotel and yes occasionally they were noisy, but heh it's their holiday too!!! They were not aggresive or nasty in anyway, so were no threat.
It is a 3 star hotel no more, no less, you get what you pay for.

Upon arrival to many steps, we checked in and were told we were over the road!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this was not an alloaction ona rrival either so I was not amused with receptionist. I was with my 3 year old daughter and 2 suitcases, no-one offered to help me walk 10 mins to the other hotel BON REPOS which is the worst Hotel I have ever been to in my life!!!!!!!!but that is another story!! The Espali, childrens pool was greasy on teh bottom and no bogger than my bath, my daughter slipped underneath and was very upset. The main pool was too small for the hotel and there was no room to walk around it. It was full of drunk german kids everywhere and was total caos, the food was horrible and there was not water or soft drinks available with the meal and only other option was beer! Walls for rooms were paper thin and I was up till 6 in the morning listening to kids. EVERYONE I SPOKE TO WHO WERE VERY FEW ENGLISH ALSO HATED THE PLACE AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE TO GO HERE EVER.

2 readers found this review helpful

My boyfriend and I have been together for just under a year and we wanted to book a short break away to have some fun. We booked the Esplai hotel in Calella for a 4 day break. We didn't read the reviews before we booked but we are so sorry that we didn't. We arrived at the hotel and went to the reception where we were given our all inclusive wristbands and details of our room etc. We were really excited about being on holiday as we had not been abroad together before. We took our bags to the room which was clean and we had a balcony with a pool view, it looked great!!
We went down to the pool where we got some drinks, we had nowhere to sit but we put it down to the time of day that we arrived. When tea time came, the poolside bar closed and we went into the dinner hall, we couldn't believe what was on offer to eat. It looked disgusting and hardly anything was recognisable as food that we knew. My boyfriend had fish and I had sausages that were very under cooked. I was very disheartened!!

After tea we went and got changed for the night time entertainment, to our surprise, there wasn't any, so we decided to go to the local pubs around Calella. They were great!! My boyfriend vomited after having the fish and I didn't feel too good either.
Breakfast the next day was disgusting, the sausages again where very undercooked, the bacon was full of fat and grease and everything else looked unedible, thank god for the toaster or we wouldn't have had anything.
To get a sun lounger for the day by the pool you had to queue up at the top of the stairs and wait for the cleaners to finish before you could enter the pool area, you've seen nothing like it, everyone ran and pushed eachother out of the way to get a sun lounger and to find a place to put it, the pool area was very small for the amount of people staying at the hotel.
Snacks and drinks were served from 10am which was good although the food wasn't very healthy, it consisted of burgers, hotdogs, toasties and chips. You could get as many drinks as you liked but the choice was limited.
Dinner and tea were very much the same as the day before, disgusting, everything was either pork or fish, even the pork didn't look like pork. There was pasta, rice and vegetables to chose from, there were flies on the rice and all the veg was cold, hard and pickled. I've seen nothing like it before. It certainly wasn't what we expected. There was fresh fruit that we could have so because we didn't have anything to eat we wanted to take some to our room but we were not allowed to take any out of the dining room.
7pm at the hotel Esplai and everything came to a stand still, the pool was closed, the poolside bar closed and the other bar opened, there was no entertainment and they didn't even play music, it was terrible. We enquired about entertainment and we were told that we could use our all inclusive wristband at there sister hotel, Bon Repos, so we went around the corner and went there, when we got there we were told that we couldn't use our wristbands there so we were very upset and disappointed again. We ended up sitting in the bar in the Esplai with nothing to do, considering we were all inclusive, we had hardly any food and the drinks wern't upto much so we felt it was a complete waste of money.
The next day the food was the same as usual and the sun lounger run became a joke, we decided to watch from the balcony which provided us with lots of entertainment. We went for walks in the day and Calella as a place is beautiful, the beach is amazing and there are plenty of shops and bars to choose from. When you go out in Calella for a drink in the pubs, the drinks can be very expensive so be prepared to spend a lot of money even if your booking is all inclusive.
If you are booking to stay in Calella, please DO NOT book this hotel, it was full of germans and they were not very friendly. The staff at the hotel were nice but they didn't really understand what we were saying, they tried to help but we felt like we were fobbed off because they couldn't understand us. We couldn't wait to go home.
Overall, our holiday wasn't what we expected at all, we left feeling that we had wasted our money and we could have went somewhere else for cheaper and got much more from it. So hopefully after reading this review you will take into consideration that there was nothing positive to say about this hotel, be prepared to be disappointed and if your willing to give it a try anyway, don't say you wern't warned because you were.

just returned from esplai after staying there for a week, i dont want to go banging on about how horrible the hotel is or isnt so i have tried to sum it up the best i can
ROOMS AND CLEANLINESS: very very clean hotel cannot fault it for that and the rooms were nice
FOOD: horrid, disgusting, smelly just Yuk basically, i felt like every time i entered the restaurant it was like feeding time at the zoo.
STAFF: on reception were nice, i cannot think of one good thing to say about any of the others they were quite miserable actually.
DRINKS: not too bad i suppose
RELAXATION: flaming no chance, the pool is so small for the size of the hotel, you have to get up early to QUEUE to get a sunbed, and when they open the gates its like a scene from Benny Hill. all women in their bikinis running round to snatch a bed and drag it to where they want it to be. Believe me i was one of them! and if you didnt do it you had no chance of getting round the pool.

I am 15 and i have just come back from spain with my friend who is also 15 and her sister, we had a lovely time. The hotel is clean and the food is good but it could be better. But you can also use the other hotel that is only up the road where they do have entertainment on every night. but it is a good place to stay.

1 reader found this review helpful

Me and my parner booked this holiday last minute, due to expecting our first child. When we arrived to this hotel at 12pm, we was told by reception staff our room wouln't be ready until 2pm, so leave your cases were possiable and come back at 2.00pm. The reception area was full of germans departing it was like a cattle market. We returned at 2.00pm, then went in the restaurant to eat, we tried to order drinks to be told our blue bands wasn't all inclusive, so we had to produce our documents to prove we was. The reception staff then told us they had changed the bands, but not informed the restaurant staff. When we finally got to our room it was very clean, not what was expected. The only issue we had was on the 1st floor the you dint have your own balcony, it was shared. The food in the restaurant was digusting, served cold the same food from lunch was served at dinner, all the meat was fatty, dont go here if you enjoy your food. Pool area was very small for the size of the hotel, full of germans again. Snacks and drinks during a day was good. Guests stayin in the hotel was very loud when returning after a night out, shouting and screaming mainly Germans. NOT a FAMILY holiday would not recommend to anybody!!!