Iberostar Sabila

My wife and I have recently returned from a lovely 4 night break at the Iberostar Selection Sabila. The hotel overall is excellent and the staff especially did a great job in helping us feel instantly relaxed. Everyone was friendly, welcoming and attentive.

We opted to spend a little more and went for the All-inclusive Prestige package, which we were delighted with, so this review will mainly cover that experience. We couldn’t find that much information on the hotel website about what exactly Prestige offers you so hopefully this will help anyone considering it.

On arrival you are welcomed in with the offer of a complimentary drink and cold flannel. Prestige customers are taken to their own check in desk and once sorted shown to their room and around the facilities available to Prestige.

All Prestige bedrooms are on the top two floors and include a complimentary minibar which is restocked each day. On the 6th floor is the Prestige sun deck and pool. This area has an open bar with beers, wines, cava, spirits and soft drinks as well as snacks such as sandwiches etc. You can just help yourself. The bar is open until 7pm with alcohol normally available from late morning. The sundeck itself is nice enough, but it was a bit busy and the sun loungers a quite closely crammed in. The pool is also a fairly standard pool. Far better in our opinion was the Prestige area downstairs by the main pool. We couldn’t understand why more people didn’t use this as we had no trouble getting a sun lounger at anytime of day there. This area extends around the main pool to above the pool bar. There is also a help yourself open bar station, with a snack station a little further along, and above the bar is a sun deck area with a small infinity pool and premium loungers. This was our favourite spot to spend the day as the views over Playa Fanabe are great and it’s easy access to the main pool which is also lovely.

Food-wise we enjoyed breakfast, lunch and dinner in the main buffet restaurant. The food is excellent, with all manor of options including vegetarian and vegan. The hardest part was choosing what to have. For Prestige customers there is a separate dining area, but the only real difference is that it’s a bit quieter. We did get offered champagne there once, rather than the usual Cava though.

I have only a couple of small issues to raise concerning the main restaurant. Firstly, while the food is a help yourself affair, drinks, including water, are not. So you have to wait for a waiter or waitress to come to your table. You can have pretty much whatever you want but in some cases we were half way through eating our meal before we got a drink. Also, only on one occasion did I manage to get a second glass of wine. It really depended on how busy the restaurant was and how many staff were about. A little disappointing for a five star all-inclusive experience.

The other issue will only affect men. The dress policy for dinner insists that men only wear open toed shoes with long trousers. If you want to wear shorts to dinner you must have closed toe shoes. I discovered this on the first night when I was refused entry to the main restaurant for wearing shorts with a pair of berkinstocks. Unfortunately I travelled light and hadn’t brought anything other than shorts and open toed shoes. So my wife and I were forced to leave the hotel looking for any shoe shop where I could buy a pair of closed toe shoes. Half an hour and 50 Euros later we were able to sit down to dinner. A rather frustrating experience as there were plenty of women in the restaurant wearing shorts with open toed shoes. A bizarre policy that really should be highlighted more in the information before booking.

Overall though we would thoroughly recommend this hotel, especially with the Prestige option, and would like to thank all the staff for such a welcoming and relaxing stay.

Absolutely beautiful hotel. Staff cannot do enough for you. Extremely peaceful but with opportunities of fabulous entertainment too. This is our third visit and we are as pleased as the first.