The hotel was chosen by chance, it was suggested as one of many by the booking webpage I use, and was chosen because it had a good price related to the 5-star standard it claimed. The booking engine offered no other option tha a standard rate (with breakfast).

The hotelbuilding is rather impressive, in a Gaudi-inspired architecture. It looks great from the outside, as well on the inside, with very creative design details. One could probably walk around in the hotel and gardens for a couple of weeks and discover new exciting building details every day.

As to our stay:
Check in: We got checked in swiftly and efficiently by a friendly lady. But when I asked for a room high up with a seawiev, I was told this was not possible, as I had booked a standard room. I said that this was the only rate available at time of booking, and that I could pay for an upgrade. She answered right offhand that this was not possible as all the "Prestige"-rooms were occupied. Well, maybe she knew this offhand, but this is a fairly big hotel with lot of rooms, and cancellations and no-shows do happen, so a quick check on the booking would have reassured me.

The room: Well, anyway, the standard room was very nice, with two queensize beds and a sofa and comfy chair. Quite spacious and with a terrace outside. Instead of seaview we looked out at a tropical garden. Only problem with this is that cats roam the area, and one was always on the alert that they would not enter the terrace and even the room. It didn't happen, though. One cat tried to enter the terrace, but actually took no for an answer, other passing cats didn't even try to contact us.

The room appeared new, I guess it was quite recently renovated and gave a good impression. Housekeeping and cleaning was immaculate.

The beds were hard and not very comfortable. But for all I know this may be spanish standard?

However, in a 5-star hotel I would expect such things as coffee- and teamaking-facilities in the room, bathrobes/slippers and free WIFI.

We were very close to the pool and a pool bar. The water in the pool was so cold, it was close to useless.

Breakfast: The only meal we took at the hotel was breakfast. It was very good with buffets with wide selection of any kind of breakfast food one could wish for. The only complaint, is that the omelet made to order was so popular, one often would have to wait in a long line to get your omelet.

The staff attending the table was efficient, but appeared stressed. I missed a knife at the table, and when I asked a girl if she could get one for me, she brusquely answered "Buenos Diaz Senor, uno momentito!" in what seemed to me to be an irritated tone. I had no idea if I had gotten through with my request, but apparently I had, she came back a few minutes later with the knife. (No cutlery available for guest to pick up themselves). This actually happened to me twice.

Location: We didn't like it. This hotel is tha last in a long row of rather large resorts, making the distance to where "everything happened" in Meloneras very long, It was a 1,5km walk to Meloneras "center". Below the hotel was a quite nice shopping center, but most of the shops and services was closed and out of business. It appeared more like a ghost-town. Except for on the ground floor, close to the beach, were there were a few quite nice restaurants. But if one wanted some more, one had to go somewhere else, at least the walk to Meloneras.

The beach below, in front of the shopping center was not nice. It had quite nice sand for you to either rent a sunbed, or spread your towel on. But to get down to the water, one had to walk across a wide belt of rocks and stones. And when one got down to the water, one would have to walk another nautical mile to get wet above the knees, it was very shallow. If swimming at the beach is important, chose another hotel!

Check-out: A short wait for a lady to appear from the office. Although she appeared to be attending to me and the settling of the bills, her mind seemed to be somewhere else. When I tried to correct the minibar-charge (in the hotels favour), I had to say "hello" and wait for a reaction, to be sure I had her attention.