Abora Buenaventura

Unfortunately, our stay at Abora Buenaventura by Lopesan Hotels was quite disappointing, particularly as a family travelling with two young children.

First impressions were actually quite good. The hotel looks lovely and grand from the outside and initially we were pleased with our choice. However, there were a number of issues throughout our stay that really let it down.

One of our first disappointments came at check-in. We had booked half board and asked if we could swap our evening meal for lunch, but were told this wasn’t possible. This made very little sense to us, especially as lunch is presumably the less expensive meal. We really enjoy eating out on holiday and love finding amazing local restaurants in the evenings, and we’ve never had an issue swapping dinner for lunch at other hotels we’ve stayed at over the past few years. It felt unnecessarily inflexible.

We also weren’t keen on the layout of the hotel. The hotel itself is absolutely huge, and our room couldn’t be accessed from the main hotel lobby. It was a good 5–10 minute walk to a completely separate set of lifts on the other side of the complex. With two small children, this became irritating very quickly.

When we finally arrived at our room after a long day travelling, the bed for our daughter hadn’t even been made up. She desperately needed a nap, but there was nowhere for her to sleep. We found a member of housekeeping in the corridor and tried to ask for help, but unfortunately there was a language barrier and she couldn’t understand what we were asking.

The “double bed” was also simply two single beds on wheels pushed together. They constantly moved apart when you rolled over during the night, leaving a large gap down the middle. Aside from being incredibly annoying, this was a genuine concern for us with two small children who could potentially fall or become trapped between the beds.

The pool areas were probably one of our biggest disappointments. Considering just how enormous the hotel is and how many guests it accommodates, the swimming pools are nowhere near big enough. They became extremely busy and there also weren’t nearly enough sunbeds around the pools for the number of guests staying at the hotel.

The layout of the pools is bizarre too. The two main pools are in completely different areas, meaning you have to walk through the hotel to get from one to the other.

One of the pool areas has several smaller, shallower pools built at different elevated levels amongst rocks. While they may look nice, from a parent’s perspective they make supervising young children unnecessarily difficult. Our eldest can swim, but at four years old we obviously still want to be able to see her at all times. Because of the different levels, you really need to be up there with your child constantly rather than being able to supervise properly from the surrounding pool area.

We also found the rules around the pools surprisingly strict for a family hotel. The lifeguards wouldn’t allow children to play with inflatables or play ball games in the pool, and in general we found them very strict about what children were allowed to do. Obviously, we completely understand the need for safety rules around swimming pools, but it felt excessive at times. Children are on holiday and want to splash around, play and have fun, yet the atmosphere around the pools didn’t feel particularly relaxed or child-friendly.

The only proper children’s pool we found was up a ramp away from the main pool area and was absolutely tiny, with one very small slide. It was fine for our one-year-old, but there was nowhere near enough to keep our four-year-old entertained. For a hotel marketed towards families, we expected much better facilities for younger children. I’d say it is probably better suited to toddlers or much older children, as there seems to be a real gap in facilities for children in between those ages.

Finally, we’d specifically requested a quiet room when booking through easyJet Holidays, but our room overlooked a main road and was close to an entertainment strip with crazy golf, pubs, shops and loud music continuing until extremely late at night. It was pretty much the opposite of the quiet location we’d requested and, again, far from ideal when travelling with young children.

Overall, the hotel itself looks impressive and there were aspects that initially gave us a good impression, but unfortunately the practicalities just didn’t work well for us as a family. The inconvenient layout, undersized and overcrowded pool areas, lack of sunbeds, strict pool rules, disappointing children’s facilities, noise, inflexibility around half board and issues with the room all added up.

For a hotel that presents itself as a family-friendly resort, we expected it to be much better thought out for families with young children. Unfortunately, based on our experience, it isn’t somewhere we would choose to return to.

The Room smell was horrendous and the entertainment was shocking, the food is ok but never a 4 star hotel would not book again