Gran Meliá Palacio de Isora

Farid

We stayed here one week in January 2024. The resort is wonderful. It is a very big area on the east coast of Tenerife. Several swimming pools, including heated ones, a beautiful SPA, many restaurants with very good food, it really makes a beautiful holiday. There is one thing that annoyed me quite a lot. We paid for an all inclusive stay for one week. Now, if I book an “all inclusive” stay, I expect it to be so. In reality it is a full board formula with a series of complicated rules and restrictions. You can only eat in certain restaurants, and only certain days of the week, and only order limited dishes on the menu. If you want to order other dishes or eat in other restaurants, you have to pay a supplement. Alcohol is available but only certain types of wine and spirits and again you have to pay a supplement if you want something else. Even water is given in limited quantities which was frankly unacceptable. Only understanding these rules was complicated and led to a series of misunderstandings with hotel staff. It was embarrassing to sit at a restaurant and have to ask what you can order and what not. We were on a holiday and wanted to relax and not think about anything. This is why we paid for an all-inclusive package. We felt we were fooled a bit and that was quite annoying. I would not choose this hotel chain again for this reason. One last issue is that the resort is quite far and isolated. You need to rent a car if you want to move. Consider at least 30 minutes by car to reach the first bigger city.

Kiret Singh

Nice hotel, though we’re never coming back. - It’s impossible to make restaurant bookings here. We paid for an all-inclusive stay, though we ended up having a buffet meal pretty much every night. The bookings we managed to secure were for paid meals. We had to set an alarm everyday for when reservations opened on the app - and they were gone before we could even get into the app. This was a very stressful experience. It’s not like there are any viable options nearby, either. - The hotel grounds don’t work well at all with prams and are generally pretty difficult to access without a whole load of faff. We had a baby with us and this meant carrying her around everywhere for the duration of the stay. As the grounds are so large this meant a lot of walking and having to go to and fro our room all the time. - The absolute shocker, which many on here have touched on, is the fact that you have to pay for water to be sent to your room despite being on an all-inclusive package. I don’t mind this if a decent supply of water is left in the room. However, this is pretty hard to accept when we need the water to make milk for our baby and room service only leave a small bottle everyday with which they expect everyone to make do. Tap water isn’t safe to drink. The only other option would be to make formula milk out in the open in front of all the other guests in the food hall - or to leave every meal with bottles in stow on the way back to the room. Not what I expect to be doing for the price. Look elsewhere.

Tasha Tay

This hotel resembles a beautiful woman with a really bad personality. With its great location this hotel also offers all the facilities one might need, from the gym, basketball court, outdoor gym, ocean, adult pool, infinity pool, skateboarding, jogging footpath, to the beach ball area and sports club, all right by the hotel. Half of the time, we experienced decent service; however, the other half, we had horrible service. There was no consistency in how the service was delivered at all. The hotel itself is stunning and breathtaking. The pools are clean and very inviting. The buffet at Pangea was pretty good most days; however, the way the food is set up resulted in me sustaining some serious burns on my right hand. Having a hot buffet dish that is so close to the extremely hot light and having to lift each heavy lid up and down stacked behind each other is never going to be a good idea and a serious safety hazard. The manager discounted my meal but only after offering an apology and ice. Before he walked away I had to hint to him that I hadn’t touched my meal due to icing my arm, and only then did he reluctantly offer to clear the payment for my meal, which was evidently still a full plate of food untouched due to the injuries I had received from the poor buffet style they have set up. One waiter even told me to please get my own ketchup when she could clearly see that I was icing my hand. The app system is absolutely a joke. You have to book a day or two in advance; however, it was almost impossible to find a slot. I had to set an 8 am alarm just to try to catch a restaurant free for my birthday. When we went to the restaurant that evening, it was very empty, yet the app still said fully booked. It’s as if this hotel is really against making money or something. So many things were questionable about how they avoid money and do themselves such an injustice. If I were a manager at this hotel, I guarantee that I could see many ways to make them much more money than they do now. My room service was wrong twice, and at one point, the lady on the phone answered saying, “Yes, Miss (surname),” as though she was irritated by my calls due to their continued errors of bringing me the wrong food. The room service food itself is very average too. There is hardly anything to do in the evening at this hotel. Most of the time, I was cold because entertainment takes place in the open space outside to the point I always called it an early night and missed their average evening entertainment. They don’t have fire heaters or anything to keep us warm or the options for it, and they have such a poor range of cocktails at hand. On my actual birthday, the hotel didn't even bother to wish me a happy birthday, nor did the restaurant. They don’t pay attention to detail, and that’s this hotel's flaw. They have focused too much on how the hotel looks instead of how the hotel is experienced and focused too much on how the staff look instead of how their service is provided. And for that reason alone, I give this hotel a 3 out of 5 stars. Seems harsh, but visit the hotel, and you will see very quickly why 3 is even too generous.

James Goddard

AVOID! This hotel is branded as a 5* resort but the customer service was what you expect from a budget hotel. We had a fault in our room where the lights would not switch off. We had to sleep with our lights on for 2 nights. We reported the issue after the first night and someone promised it would be fixed. We then found our lights coming on and off at 2am for a second night in a row which resulted in neither my wife or 3 year old getting any sleep. After we reported it a second time they found it was an electrical fault and fixed it. The hotel manager however told us that although it was a technical fault, it wasn’t something they could take responsibility for and refused to offer any compensation. Instead a customer service rep called and offered some free additions to our room if we agreed to book another holiday and come back. We didn’t expect much. We just asked if they could offset one of our meals as compensation but the manager said they can’t do that and we were charged full price with an apology as compensation. You can see I never normally complain or write reviews but having to sleep with your lights on for 2 nights and not getting any compensation is not what you expect from a 5* hotel. There are better options in Tenerife for your holiday. There were a couple of positives to flag though. The pools are nice and the food is good if you can book a table in the Italian, Asian or steak house.

Davide Salvati

Lovely place to stay ! We stayed here for 4 days, most of the staff was friendly except one girl at the reception when we checked in which she hasn’t welcomed us like they usually do with other guests but then after checked in we saw a cute lady coming towards saying ; did they give you complementary water ? Did they mention about Melia circle ? We said no ! So she did. We had some issue in the bedroom with water coming out of the shower so we mentioned it the first night but nothing was done, so we mentioned again the second and the problem was bodged but not sorted we then decide to put a towel under the shower door and forget about it. Breakfast was good, I am very happy with it. We booked breakfast only as we like to explore the local cuisines so I can’t really say anything about breakfast and dinner. We also met Daniel the membership sales man which was very polite and patient to explain us how the circle membership works so we signed up for it. We asked him were could we go for nice meals and he’s been very kind by suggesting us food places around the area and booked a table for us to each one of the place we wanted to go. Overall a great experience we’ll definitely be back again.