This review is based on a 14 night stay with Eurocamp and is split into three parts for ease of reading. It is also set in the context of the accommodation alone costing £3400 (Flights were an extra £1100, car hire £400) for 14 nights. We have stayed with Eurocamp around 15 times before over the years as kids, as adults and now as parents so we have quite a bit of experience to reference.
Eurocamp:
The unit we stayed in was an Avant 2 Bed + deck with Aircon and it’s really quite small, with only a small general living area. Unhelpfully Eurocamp stick a huge table in there which ensures it’s a struggle to get to the padded bench seating. I didn’t see any of us using these seats because of the location and cumbersome size of the table. It’s simply too big.
Upon arrival there was no toilet paper, not even a single roll, even though we had purchased the welcome pack. This is far from handy when you've been travelling for half the day. The beds were provided with only a single wafer thin pillow (the rep will provide more if required though) but they are THE most uncomfortable pillows I’ve ever used. My wife and kids said the same. Cheapest of the cheap quality. However, despite the cost for just the unit we still had to pay for linen etc. I mean, why would it be included at that price?! I must be mad.
The biggest disappointment with the accommodation however was the “air-conditioning” which is THE big selling point before you book. What they handily forget to tell you is that the unit itself is very basic and only feeds air into the main living area and does not duct air into the bedrooms meaning, of course, the bedrooms get very hot during the day so you have to sleep with your bedroom doors wide open in the vain hope some cold air finds it’s way in there, which it eventually will, but it’ll be about 5am in the morning before the temp gets to something comfortable (aircon unit set to max). Leaving your bedroom door open is far from acceptable on a number of levels, especially if you’re sharing with friends and as I understand it this poor setup is repeated in all the other “lodges” Eurocamp hire out.
The double bed though is a good size, much bigger than in standard Eurocamp vans, and very firm, and which we liked.
There are no cushions provided for the outside (under canopy) loungers, chairs or seats that come with the cabin, so you're left sitting on hard plastic surfaces, again hardly the luxury environment the cost and brochure suggests. This is supposed to be a step up from basic Eurocamp caravanning, but it simply isn’t.
Another frustration is the sites insistence that you cannot have any bins within or outside your unit, something which they fail to tell you before you arrive. So you’re then faced with the option of either keeping a bin bag outside the unit (which we did, as there’s no space for one within the unit) or buying a peddle bin from a local supermarket, but which you’ll need a car to get to. There are communal bins at the end of every camp road so, in effect, the site expects you to walk to them every time you want to put something in the bin, no matter how small. Not very handy.
Tap water is also far from OK, at least taste wise. It's way too salty to consider drinking (or even making tea with) and which also make you question its cleanliness. Our guess was that it was desalinised water. (Makes you realise how lucky we are in the UK that our water is so good). We had to resort to only drinking bottled water.
The kitchen was also the most poorly kitted out unit we’ve ever hired (even going right back to the old Eurocamp caravans). There was very little in the way of cooking utensils (despite this being self-catering) and even the pans didn’t come with lids so cooking proved interesting, to say the least. We asked the reps for pans with lids, or even any lids, even non-fitting ones, but they said they couldn’t help us as all. Far from ideal. I guess we shouldn’t have expected pans with lids when we’re paying £3400. Our kettle also wouldn’t stop boiling when it reached boiling point, continuing to boil ans spill water out until you clicked it off. They replace this as they “had loads of them in the store”. Makes you wonder why.
The Eurocamp Reps also had very little knowledge of anything local (car hire, local attractions etc). And none of them (apart from the nice bloke from Manchester) seemed to have much in the way of any verve or drive. Canvas Holidays seem to have it right, they employ retired people, the type who actually care about their roles and responsibilities towards paying guests. And also have the right work ethic. We over heard them talking few times and we were very impressed with their knowledge and what was they had to say.
Playa Montroig Campsite
The site is nothing short of enormous. By far the biggest we’ve ever encountered. If you’re unlucky enough to be sited at the far end of the site be aware that it’s around ¾ of a mile walk to the beach, and just slightly less to the shop and main evenings entertainment, bars, restaurant and the quite excellent bakery.
There is main trainline running through the centre of the site (go figure) but it’s not as intrusive as you’d think, unless your pitch is next to it I guess. The line effectively splits the site in half. The location of the fixed units (Eurocamp, Canvas lodges etc) is at the top half of the site and is so far from the beach it just seems plain wrong when the tourers (who no doubt pay way less to stay there) get pride of place on the lower side of the site where it’s literally meters to the beach and the main facilities. For me it feels like they have it the wrong way around as the tourers should be where the units are and vice versa. Very frustrating.
The layout of the fixed units on site, unlike any other site we’ve been to, gives you zero privacy. They are placed in a street-like face-to-face arrangement meaning you are overlooked both front and rear. Keeping all of your curtains closed all the time rather defeats the object of being on holiday in sunny Spain. Some voiles might have been nice but I know I’m dreaming of such luxury.
The site itself is spotless and very well managed. Plenty of maintenance going on constantly and unobtrusively and there’s plenty of security staff peddling around on bikes ensuring none of the “riff raff” get into the park and that everyone is behaving.
There are a vast array of things to do (many which need paying for) and a few, almost hidden, bars and restaurant that you could miss but are worth searching out.
The pool area is superb. It was clean, very well maintained with good attentive life guards on duty at all times. However, there were no loungers or chairs at all within the pool complex. Your only option being to lie-down on the plastic astro-turf surface (not as bad as it sounds) covering the whole area but which gets brutally (blisteringly) hot in the glaring sun as it’s plastic. There is also no real shading options in the pool area other than the odd tree. These spots are always taken first. However, basic folding chairs can be bought in the camp shop but for the princely sum of £40 each (£5 on ebay), madness. The closest seating and/or shading to the pool is coincidentally at the adjacent bar area that just happens to sell drinks/ice cream etc.
Because the pool complex is so good (and beach so basic with no lounger hire etc) the pool complex gets extremely busy. So much so that at times it feels like London rush-hour on the Tube only in a pool, if that makes sense. It was also filled to the brim with teenagers, almost like there was some type of Euro Teen Camp going on. Of course they (lads and girls) were all trying to out-do each other with kamikaze dive bombing (which wasn’t suppressed by the lifeguards) getting very dangerous at times. I asked my kids (10 & 12) to get out of the pool a number of times over the fortnight because it was either so busy you couldn’t see them or with crazy with kids. It was also so busy in the poolside area you often struggled to find a space to even lay your towels down to lie on.
It’s obvious they now (after a recent site expansion) have too many pitches with not enough size and capacity in facilities to deal with it. My guess is that a few years back it would have been fine but now it’s way too busy, especially the pool area.
The free WiFi, as you’d expect, is a pretty poor. It's a total lucky dip if you'll get on it and if you do it’ll be unlikely you’ll able to view or download something. Your dreaming if you think Netflix is even a remote possibility for the odd quiet night in with a bottle of Sangria. Of course there is a faster "Premium" service but as expected you have to pay more for that because you've not already paid enough to get there and stay there. Mobile phone signal is also ropey at best. I'm on UK Vodafone and it flits between 4G and E (2G) constantly (iPhone 8 and Huawei P20 Pro).
It is also bizarrely not the most friendly site. I’m referring to fellow campers here as all the staff are lovely, kind and very efficient. That's not to say it’s totally unfriendly but just that it's one of those sites where holidayers actively avoid eye contact and don’t want to strike up conversations. It's weird because we've made friends on every one of the many previous Eurocamp trips we've been on (as both kids and adults) but nothing this time, apart from one couple, who we met on their last night and they said exactly the same thing about being snubbed. Literally no one talks to their neighbours in their row. Eight units in our row and we saw no one interact with anyone else, but we did try and engage, but without much success other than a ‘Hi’ then subsequently avoiding eye contact.
My guess is that because it's an expensive site (5 star no less) there are quite a few who feel they’ve done well for themselves and don't really want to socialise with the riff raff as it’s a bit below them. My wife (who's more prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt than I am) thought exactly the same though. There’s just an air of snobbery (from all nationalities tbh) which you don’t get elsewhere, especially on French sites. The fact you almost never see the same face twice owning the vast size of the site won’t have helped though.
I’d suggest that getting hire car sorted before you go is an absolute must because the site is literally in the middle of nowhere. Without one you are locked into the local area and cannot go anywhere easily, apart from on the hourly bus. We booked one just for the second week, which was a mistake, because we were locked to the site and this caused huge frustration and created lots of boredom. A car is 100% essential.
Conclusion
Had the Eurocamp unit cost £1500 to hire for 14 nights we’d have been accepting of all these issues as holidays are always a balance between quality and cost, but as this holiday rental cost more than double that amount our expectations were lifted that much higher. On this basis we were hugely disappointed. The unit wasn’t close to good enough in terms of size, equipment or location, and the site has over-expanded to point of making is way too busy, for us at least.
The cost issue though is the biggest deal for us. And it is even more annoying when we’ve just booked our hols for 2019 which is 16 nights in the USA (San Fran, LA & San Diego), Luxury 4x4 car hire, min. 3/4 Star Half-board hotels, inc flights for £5300 (and that’s within school holiday time) and is just £400 more than this holiday cost. When set against this we feel that we have been nigh-on fleeced by Eurocamp and will not be staying with them ever again. It’s the most over-priced holiday we’ve ever had, bar none.