Hotel Playa Blanca

Review date: 25 August 2008 - A HotelStreet visitor from Munich, Germany wrote:-

Review title: "The Most Honest Review!"
Travel date: August 2008
Review of the Playa Blanca hotel and the surrounding area: My best friend and I booked this holiday to Hotel Playa Blanca in Mallorca last minute once I'd finally earnt enough cash to go away and we just returned home yesterday. I read these reviews after first booking the hotel and was somewhat worried! I didn't need to worry. This is a long review, but it's honest and hopefully of use to you if you're genuinely interested in this hotel and the area.

The hotel: The hotel is honestly nowhere near as bad as many of these reviews make out. In fact, it was quite reasonable, especially for a two star hotel. I was happy with it.
The hotel is very clean and has a very spacious hall and surprisingly large, comfortable lobby area with a bar and some music. On Saturday nights there is lovely live Spanish music on the outside terrace and lots of pensioners in the hotel were dancing.

The hotel pool is much nicer than I expected and we spent lots of time in it. It is clean and quite large and was never too busy. There is a separate tiny kiddies' pool and the main big pool has a shallow area gradually getting deeper. There is no 'pool shutting' time either, so you can stay in it as late as you like, if night swimming is your thing! We also had no trouble getting sunbeds by the pool before 10 a.m. and often, we came down at 8:30 a.m. and were some of the first people there.

Our room was a decent size and had two separate beds, a cupboard, a chest of drawers and a nice bathroom (but the shower over the bath was hand-held only). The balcony was quite big with table and chairs, had a nice view of the pool and got sun on it.

The food certainly isn't bad but I suppose it wasn't the most interesting ever. I am actually vegetarian and found the food to be fine. I like buffets. Breakfast consisted of croissants, doughnuts, a selection of cold meats, cheese, bread, cereal, tomatoes and a few other things I have forgotten. Drinks with breakfast are free, but the fruit juice is watered down and quite nasty. They also offer sprite, Fanta or cola, which was much nicer (even if not really a morning drink!) and also various hot drinks.
Dinner consisted of pasta with optional tomato sauce (the same each day), a fish choice, two or three meat choices, various vegetables, chips and a nice large choice of salad things. For desert there was ice cream, watermelon, different cake types or tinned pineapple and peaches. Drinks are not included at dinner which was annoying when we'd paid for half board. We had half board, so we ate breakfast and dinner in the hotel but actually ate lunch at various beach side restaurants on the promenade. Perhaps this is better than all inclusive, if the food is the same at dinner and lunch as in some other hotels I have stayed at in Mallorca. (I don't know what all inclusive is like at this hotel, but at other hotels in Mallorca the food becomes boring and too repetitive at lunch and dinner, so this time we went for half board and it seemed much better as you aren't confined to the hotel all day!).

Most of the staff were friendly and the man on reception even kindly opened up the breakfast hall early purely for me and my friend because we were leaving at 5 a.m.! The maid was also very friendly. The other guests came mostly from England, Germany or Spain. I was surprised at how many English people were there, after these reviews said there were none (maybe this is because it is currently peak/high season?). Some single English mums and their kids even seemed to become friends, which was sweet.

My friend and I both speak English and German fluently, which helped if we needed something, but we did find that we heard English everywhere. I had to ask for something in German two or three times but apart from that English worked fine.

As two young people (20 year olds), my friend and I wanted mainly a decent hotel to sleep in and a really nice beach and shops (neither of us are clubbing types and don't really like the typical 'young people' scene!), but couldn't afford a five star hotel. There were many families staying in this hotel, who seemed to be enjoying themselves and also some pensioners and also young couples. (Not many single young people!)

Negatives: Since I am trying to be as honest as possible in my review, there were a couple of negative points about the hotel, but nothing too bad. Service at the bar is quite slow sometimes and the rails/bars on the balcony may not be suitable for very small children (I heard one lady with a two or three year old complaining about this), but they're not really awful. Drinks have to be bought at dinner. There was also a cut off to the water supply on two days, but it only lasted ten minutes each time. We ran out of toilet roll and since we hadn't been brought any more, we had to ask for some at reception. These things weren't bad. The only really bad thing was that there was no air conditioning in the room, so it got quite hot at night, but not intolerably hot.

At the end of the day, you generally get what you've paid for and no two star hotel is going to resemble a glamorous five star plus hotel. But this hotel is very good and was much nicer than a couple of questionable three star hotels that I've stayed at in various parts of Mallorca. If I was going on holiday with my family, we'd go to a four or five star hotel, but as a student I couldn't afford that and I have to say that I am still pleased with the quality of the hotel for the price I paid.

The surrounding area: The area is the nicest that I've been to in Mallorca. There are two long beaches (one at each end of the promenade). Both are lovely, though one has much finer, softer sand than the other and the sea is clear and is a lovely turquoise colour. The hotel is only one or two minutes walk to the promenade and five minutes walk to a beach (eight minutes to the other beach). There are some water sports (diving, banana boat, paragliding and some weird flying machines you can take out!) and also various day trips/boat trips along the beach front, including a good glass bottom boat trip. The area is less lively than the night-lifey Playa de Palma/El Arenal (which is full of loud, club-loving young people), but there were still things going on here every night. There was a cultural Spanish dance show a couple of nights on the promenade with marching bands and other music. Another night they put up a huge cinema-style screen there and showed films (in Spanish though). There is a 'Mega Garden' at the end of the promenade, with bouncy castles and mini go-karts for young kids and a range of cocktail bars and stands and live music for the adults!

The promenade/beach-front strip is really nice and is lined with restaurants, cafes and little shops selling souvenirs, food (including English chocolate and crisps etc!) and other stuff you may need or want on holiday. There is even a Burger King at the end of it. There was also a small novelties market on certain days. There are artists and musicians and other interesting people along the promenade, which made it special. The music was lovely red Indian style wood music. We listened most nights, sitting on the wall by the beach. My friend bought their CD. I bought two beautiful paintings from an amazing artist who used spray paints and no paintbrushes in his paintings. He did them whilst you watched and I was fascinated! There are people braiding hair or selling things too along the street but they don't pounce on you like they do in other areas of Mallorca! It feels quite safe, unlike El Arenal.

My advice is make sure you buy enough sun cream before you go as it costs twice as much in Sa Coma than it does in Munich. (15 euro per bottle of Nivea in Sa Coma and six euros in Munich!). Also note that it costs 20 euros to use the bedroom safe for one week (you get five euros back at the end of the week) and that there is no air con in the hotel rooms. I opened our balcony door whenever I woke up early.

This area is really lovely and I'd definitely go back. (I'm already saving up!) If I could earn more money, I probably would go to a posher hotel, but to be honest, I would still go back to this hotel if I couldn't afford a more expensive one because I felt I got quite a lot for my money here and was very satisfied with the hotel, the pool and the fact it's near everything.

I am horrified at some of the other reviews on here, which I think are unfair. My friend and I both really enjoyed our stay at the hotel and found the area to be beautiful!