We were persuaded to buy a three night preview holiday at this resort at the Ideal Home Exhibition this year for £279 plus the cost of flights etc. We decided to book to be away for our second wedding anniversary and were really looking forward to five star beach resort luxury, as promised.

During telphone booking it was suggested that, as there was just the two of us, we might prefer B&B accommodation at the resort hotel " just across the road with its own fantastic facilities as well", which we accepted.

When we arrived the hotel was a Crowne Plaza right next to a dual carriageway on a sort of industrial estate. Nowhere near any beach. It was half closed and the facilities were three star, at best. The gym was unsafe. It was Sunday. We had no contact from Marriott other than a note in our room reminding us of our obligation to attend the presentation on Tuesday morning.

On Monday we followed a map and found the resort about 15 mins walk away. We showed our paperwork, but were turned away at the entrance by the security guard who said we needed a pass after the presentation on Tuesday.

To cut a long story short, on Tuesday we were shown around the five star beach resort and eventually spent three hours in the afternoon of our wedding anniversary, like refugees with a plastic bag of our hotel towel etc. The whole experience was DREADFUL and a total waste of our time and money. We feel conned into taking the time out to experience nothing short of the worst four days' holiday ever.

What have the 5* Marriott management team said in response to our carefully worded complaint on our return? I hear you ask!

Do they care that we took holiday time from work and a business, paid for flights, airport parking and other incidentals associated with being away from home to spend four awful days and three nights in a sort of business hotel beside a motorway and suffered the embarrassment of being turned away from the resort we had paid to visit? No they do not!

It is six weeks since we returned and no one at Marriott has taken our complaint seriously. We were tricked into paying to stay on a beach resort, but did not receive what we paid for. I think that our £279 should be refunded at the very least.

Fantastic resort, that caters for all eventualities. Staff are upmost helpful and cannot do enough to help. The rooms are spacious, with huge beds in both rooms with a fully equipped kitchen, dining room and utility room. The rooms have everything you need so helps your baggage allowance. Huge bath and a double shower in the master bed and shower and bath in the guest room plenty of room for 6. Housekeeping keep the room as clean as the first day you arrive. Gym has loads of equipment running machines cross trainers, bikes plus weights, sauna, steam room and several pools indoor and out. All public areas well maintained and the gardens are stunning to walk round. A new childrens area has been built with shufle board, and crazy golf the children loved it. The restaurant is overpriced for the food on offer. They do a fantastic Flamenco night again expensive but worth it. The hotel is sittuated along a mile of restaurants that offer every type of food.. Really can not praise this site enough!

We are staying in a two bedroom seaview apartment and I could not ask for anything more. There is a wonderful 24 hour gym, pools, jacuzzi, saunas ect. I would however advise to rent a car and if you look online it cost us only about 60 euros for the WEEK. So, dont take a taxi or the bus as the car is just much cheaper and better. The reception gave us a welcome package, and really I could not ask for more ( except a bit of sunshine ) !

We booked 5 nights at this vacation club in early October and were expecting a nice Marriot style single room accomodation. When we arrived we were astounded to be shown to a room that was the smaller bedroom of a 3 bed apartment. Room was clean but very very small, we did not have enough storage space in the room and had to use the balcony to store our things. Room was on the ground floor with no privacy whatsoever so we had to leave curtains drawn throughout our stay. Basically this room should not be marketed as a 4 star room under the Marriot brand, since this smaller bedroom (part of a larger apartment separated into rooms for rental) offered for rental is inconsistent with the apartment offerings in the rest of the resort and the Marriot brand. This tiny room was priced at €135 per night (excluding breakfast; including breakfast it was over €150) which was absurdly expensive for the room offering and for what is available on Costa del Sol (please refer our separate posting for our stay the prior week at Hotel Guadalmina, where we had much nicer accomodation, larger room with seaviews and at distinctly better prices). We are sorry to say that the room was the worst part of our stay.

Breakfast was quite nice, good choice but the coffee on offer was just instant coffee, so quite disappointing.

Resort facilities were quite nice, gardens were well maintained, pools were nice. Restaurant food offering was quite basic (pizza/ pasta/ burgers) but there are a lot of good restaurants nearby. We tried a lebanese restaurant by the highway which was very nice and quite popular.

On our first morning we were made to listen to a 4 h time share presentation, a sales pitch for us to buy a one week timeshare in an apartment in this resort. The apartments in this resort are nice, however separating a 3 bed apartment into a 2 bed apartment and a separate room, for separately renting out a 2 bed apartment and a single room is quite a peculiar model adopted by Marriot.

Overall would return to Costa del Sol but certainly not at the Marriot.