I originally checked the hotel reviews here before booking the Bellamar - the reviews weren't entirely wrong - the hotel isn’t full of lads, it’s clean, with a decent pool and close to the dog-end littered beach for convenience. It’s also only a fifteen-minute stroll down to San Antonio’s main square. If you're a family and planning to go to the Bellamar hotel whilst keeping regular sleeping hours, then I'm sure you'll have a nice ‘average’ break. However, if like us you're planning on going to bed after 6am (post-clubbing) then forget it; this hotel's cleaning staff shout up corridors, laugh and bang walls so much you'll be cursing them with a pillow over your head, not to mention wasting the sunshine outside on missed sleep.

I would advise refusing to stay in any rooms ending in a '18'. The reason for this advice is that these rooms are nearest both the lift shaft and the cleaning supplies room on each floor - this means that you get exposed to the noise of everybody staying on the floor and additionally the maids going loudly back and forth each morning. Your bed’s headboard will also back onto the wardrobe of the guests in rooms ending in ‘17’ (due to the hotel's floorplan) which can result in loud knocking on the wall from coat hangers etc. The maids seem to make no effort to take notice of 'do not disturb' signs hung on your door handle and ‘accidentally’ bang the door outside with brooms and trolleys, knocking the walls of the room on either side when cleaning adjacent rooms.

Additionally, the whole hotel has tiled floors; none of the chairs or beds has rubber feet… all around us the maids and guests would drag furniture around like there was no tomorrow which was excruciating. Often it seemed so extreme that we were convinced it was a deliberate ploy to get us up. We confirmed with the guest of room 519 (in a local pub) that his room was also very noisy due to dragged furniture (and he said he was usually deaf in one ear!). Do take earplugs if you want some sleep past 8am. There’s very little noise from outside in the street or on balconies unless you’re staying August 24th for the St Bartholomew’s day firecrackers at 8am. Most balconies seem to have an acceptable view of the sea or the bright lights of San Antonio.

The Bellamar hotel claims on its literature that each room is soundproofed, but I think the only thing they have done to that end is limit the volume on the television remote beyond one third of the way up the screen (sensible). Not so sensible however is the one and only English channel ‘Sky News’ – which seems to have only twenty minutes of new footage per day. German MTV does have the odd English programme like ‘Hogan Knows Best’ but when preparing to go out I would have preferred to watch Rambo 2, Soldier of Fortune and Bay Watch in English rather than Spanish. With so many English guests, four German language channels seems a bit of a strange selection.

In terms of food, we only made breakfast twice, on both occasions the selection and quality was average / acceptable. A lot of tinned food seemed to be used – such as tinned mushrooms and tomatoes. This also seemed to be the case for some cooked vegetables at dinner – the overall selection again being average and desserts lacked chocolate! We always made dinner though and did find the odd delicious freshly cooked dish on occasion. The waiters are a bit desperate to get your plate off you, don’t put your fork down for too long to take a drink or you’ll find yourself wrestling with them to get it back... at least they’re polite though - not overly friendly anywhere in the hotel, no small talk, just enough to get their jobs over with so they can go home.

In the basement of the Bellamar is the 'Wellness Centre' which has a gymnasium, indoor pool, sauna and jacuzzi - however, these are not free to use by guests. On enquiry we were told it would cost us 15 euros for twenty minutes (around £10) - quite expensive when most other 'four star' hotels would include this in the price. When we went down to investigate the whole area was empty.

On a final note do bear in mind that taxis cannot be booked at the Bellamar, you have to hail one on the street corner and ask it to go to your hotel to collect cases. I think this is probably not unique to the Bellamar in Ibiza but did find it odd that they hadn’t got a private deal with somebody local. I had to wait on the main road to San Antonio for a cab to the airport and then chase it up the road to see where it dropped off – a bit stressful if you’re worried about catching a flight back home.