Benidorm East by Pierre and Vacances

Just finished a 6 night stay, half board, booked as a package holidays. Here are the key things to consider:

FOOD:

1. Drinks are NOT included in the price of meals. Yes you get coffee/water/juice at breakfast, but at dinner we had to pay even for water! I’ve included the prices in photos. Also after we checked out, we got refused our last dinner even thought it was included in the price and we were leaving Benidorm until 9pm as arranged through a package holiday
2. Overall I don’t think the food was bad. It was basic, but I’m not a picky eater and enjoyed the breakfast (smoked salmon, avocado ext)
3. Staff not that friendly

LOCATION:

1. The walk to the beach is 15-20 mins but walk back is uphill so not suitable for all. There is a free shuttle bus every 20 mins until 8:20pm, but with a break in service from 2pm until 5:20pm which is inconvenient.
2. Small supermarket near by- we went there to buy bottled water because it was expensive at the hotel

POOL:

1. Fine but rather small for that amount of people
2. Quite deep: 1.70-2.10M apart from the small kids area
3. Had a lot of leaves floating in it
4. Smells of sewage from the outdoor toilets

HOTEL/ ROOMS

1. 3 small lifts one of which was out of service for our whole stay which ended up in queues for the lifts
2. No air con in the corridors
3. I’ve seen the other bed reviews about cleanliness of rooms but I have to say ours was fine. Nothing special but fine. The bathroom was really outdated and could do with a new toilet seat.
4. Very small fridge in the room: fits 3 1L bottles max.
5. We were woken up at 6am two nights in a row by people coming back from nights out and being very loud on the corridors and on the balconies- staff doesn’t seem to react to this.

ENTERTAINMENT Very limited: bingo twice a week. Evening shows are on twice a week but only last 20-30 mins (magic show and some kind of juggling show). Music by the pool all day.

OVERALL Did we have a bad time? No. It is what you make it. BUT we would not return and definitely not recommend this hotel. There are many little negatives that add up, and the paying extra for water at dinner was a big surprise. If you’re looking for a cheap stay for a few days it’s probably not a complete rule out but just consider the points above.

Stayed here at the very start of July. Hotel is nice but definitely not 4 stars, maybe a 3 at a push. We had breakfast included and it was nice, we tried something different each morning ranging from a full English, to fruit, to pastries. You have absolutely no chance of securing a sun bed if you don’t queue up before 10am when it opens. People leave their towels on the beds ALL DAY and just head to the beach/town so a lot of people had to put their towels on the grass. Hardly any umbrellas, maybe 5 I’d say. It’s ALL in the sun so if you don’t want to burn I’d recommend going to the beach and using their umbrellas. We stayed on the 5th floor. View was nice but you can hear EVERYTHING your neighbours are talking about on their balcony. And we had a group of lads next to us with the other half of their group at the other side of the hotel so there was a lot of shouting all night. It’s up a hill, we walked up it once and once was enough….. walking down is absolutely fine it only takes about 10 minutes to the strip/beach.

The rooms…. Our floor was absolutely filthy we had to put towels down to walk across if we didn’t put our flip flops on. Rooms were only cleaned about twice the 7 days we were there and they cleaned the, around 11/12 ish. There was loads of black hair in our bath tub and the headboards were flaking off. Mood all spread up the side of the walls too. Bonus though, they had English channels on the TV which we had to have on to try cancel the noise of drunk people.

Be warned, you will see a lot of people passed out on the road/path, this was very common in the mornings.

Overall, only good thing maybe is the free shuttle bus they put on for you from 10am to 8:30pm though they do have a break from 2-5pm

Absolutely Disgusting — We Had to Leave

I have never felt compelled to leave a hotel because of the condition of a room, but this was genuinely that bad.

The room was absolutely disgusting and completely unacceptable. It was dirty, unpleasant and nowhere near the standard you would expect from a hotel. We were so horrified by the condition that we had no choice but to leave and check out the very same day.

What made the experience even worse was the attitude of the staff. Despite explaining how unacceptable the room was, we felt that nobody genuinely cared or made any meaningful effort to resolve the situation.

We had paid for a stay and instead ended up leaving the hotel because the room was simply not fit for us to stay in. It completely ruined our plans and was an incredibly disappointing experience.

I would strongly recommend management take a serious look at the cleanliness and standards of the rooms, as well as how complaints are dealt with by staff. We certainly would not return.