Gloria Palace San Agustín Thalasso & Hotel

Luca Swiderski

Beautiful hotel! Our room is modern, comfortable, and always spotless — housekeeping does an amazing job every day. Breakfast is great, especially the fresh omelettes and eggs made to order. There are plenty of cozy sun loungers by the pool, which we really like — the water is just a little bit cold though. The spa area is lovely and very relaxing, but the pricing is a bit confusing. On the posters it said there is an offer for €17.50 per person instead of €48 for the pool tour including the sauna and steam room, but now it seems the price is €23 instead of €35 just for the pool tour alone? We only found out about the two whirlpools, sauna, and steam room about 10 minutes before we had to leave, so we unfortunately didn’t get to use them. It would be wonderful if one spa visit were included in the room rate during the stay. Parking was super easy — there was always a free spot right in front of the hotel.

Anna Prescott

Summary: the Grand Palace is a lovely family hotel, which we felt was good value for money, but we would not go back, for one main reason - they don’t properly cater for allergies / intolerances. Points to note - The hotel is in a quiet area with no nightclubs etc. But there is a shopping centre in walking distance which includes a small well-stocked supermarket, pharmacies, beach shops and cafes/restaurants. - The hotel clientele are mostly families and older couples. It suited us as a family but I would not pick this hotel for a romantic getaway. - Entertainment is provided every night until 11pm and is loud. After this it’s very quiet at night. - Beach is not super close but is walkable, albeit the walk back is very steep. - The pools are saltwater. Pros - The staff are generally very friendly and helpful. - We arrived after 10pm and obviously missed dinner but they put on a cold simple buffet from 1030pm every night for late arrivals, which was very much welcomed. - The hotel grounds are lovely and very well maintained. The sea view rooms in the main block are also nicely decorated with amazing views. The family rooms in the smaller block are spacious, with two separate bedrooms, although they are more shabby and could do with a refurb. The hotel interior is slightly dated but it has a nice atmosphere and is very clean. - For those with no dietary requirements, the buffet restaurant is very good (we went full board), lots of choice, and variety across the days (HOWEVER, see Cons below). Breakfast is especially good. The restaurant could get quite busy but there was lots of seating and we never struggled to get a table for the 5 of us. As we don’t drink much we definitely saved money by not going all inclusive. - The pools are beautiful, seemed very clean, and the loungers were comfy. - The aircon in the rooms was very good. - New bottles of water were provided in the rooms every day. - We had a couple issues with the in-room safe but once we rang reception, a helpful maintenance guy turned up within a few minutes both times. Cons - For those with dietary requirements, I cannot recommend this hotel. If you have an allergy/ intolerance or are vegetarian/vegan you will struggle. The food is labelled inconsistently, and whilst there is an allergen list outside the entrance, not all the dishes provided are listed on it. There are no labels at all for vegan / vegetarian. There is also cross contamination as people use tongs for more than one dish. One of our party is intolerant to lactose, and whilst the staff do try to be helpful, it is clear they do not have any sort of regularised process for dealing with this. We were told different things by reception, waiters and the chefs - including that special food could be made, which we requested several times but was often met with a baffled response. They really need a dedicated member of staff to deal with allergens. All the desserts had milk or cream in, and aside from fruit, they really struggled with the concept of providing an alternative other than jelly and an extremely strange frozen dessert. With the huge range of food on offer, it seems very odd they can’t provide a few non-dairy options as standard, such as vegan cakes and ice cream. - We liked the pools but they are a bit too small for the size of hotel and I can imagine in peak summer they would be rammed. The lounger areas around the pools are also very busy and a bit cramped. - There is only one lifeguard for both pools and he was often on his phone. - The blue slide in the splash park is dangerous as there is no one supervising when the children go down, so there were constant problems with children not waiting long enough for their turn and then crashing into others. My daughter was badly hit in the head by a young boy who followed right behind her. - There were a lot of people smoking around the grounds and around the pool. - The car park is too small for the size of hotel.

Jessie P

A lot of firsts for us this holiday. Our first time visiting Gran Canaria and our first all inclusive experience. Also our first time holidaying in the October half term. We’ve had the best time staying at Gloria Palace! The pool is wonderful and the facilities are fantastic. All of the staff work tirelessly and keep the entire operation running smoothly. Everywhere is kept spotlessly clean. The hotel is not too far from shops and restaurants. We visited Maspalomas a couple times which is a short taxi ride away (costing approximately €15). Plenty of shops and restaurants. We also visited the Dunes (Dunas) which were pretty spectacular, especially as the sun was setting. Overall this has been a wonderful family holiday and we would most certainly return again.

Emma R

Great hotel with friendly staff, clean areas, always available sunbeds, great gym and good food options for everyone (we had AI). We liked the salt water pool and the music around the pool area! The Thalasso-spa was beautiful! Would definitely recommend a visit! Things that need improvement: - Check-in took 50 min for us. Never ever happened before. They also gave us double bed instead of two single beds even though we put in a request over 9 months ago. The staff seemed really annoyed after this check-in (and we got zero compensation!) - They didn't clean our room on the first day, no new towels or water. We had to complain in the reception and they did a "fast-cleaning" while we sat on the balcony (no compensation!). - Drinks came out of a automatic machine and tasted really concentrated and bad, so we ordered mixers with alcohol separately instead. - Paper cups by the pool were really annoying and don't feel great for the environment. Maybe use hard plastic instead? - Evening entertainment were not great, we enjoyed one night out of five. - Kids show should start earlier, sitting outside for dinner is a no go, unless you wanna eat while listening to loud kids music.. - The serving staff in the restaurant were hard to get attention from. Especially when you need to order drinks to get any. No self-serving. Overall a great hotel with potential to get even better! We would come back!

K D

So positives: Some genuinely helpful staff, including the chef who was trying to help us as vegetarians. Cleaning staff were very good Room was spacious and well proportioned, also clean. Negatives: All inclusive is not actually all inclusive. There's loads of things that are not included. The staff try their best to give as little drink as possible. One member of staff at the bar told me they don't know how to make certain drinks. Why are they working the bar then? They also try their hardest to extract as much fees in extras as possible. They don't provide irons as they want guests to use their ironing service. Syro at reception is very rude in my opinion. You can't use the rooftop bar/pool area as it's an additional extra A fair few drinks are not part of all inclusive A fair few snack items are also not part of all inclusive They have a games room but every single game, you have to pay for as extras. There's a couple of pools but there was no life guard at the kids pool. It's also exceptionally salty (the water) and not enjoyable. They have a fairly large water slide, which nobody mans. The buffet food is basically the exact same stuff just recycled. The juices at breakfast aren't fresh, it's just from concentrate. The plates are not always clean and often found to be dirty. This is definitely not a 4 star. It's an average 3 star. My feedback would be: maybe try to focus on giving your guests as good an experience as possible and maybe try actually listening to the feedback in the reviews. Don't give generic responses to each review. How about actually addressing the points I've raised?