Gran Melia de Mar - Adults Only

Loved the location, the view, the pool, the restaurants, the service, the modern room amenities.

We had a questionable experience at check-in: We were immediately invited to update our room (without having even seen it) at an additional cost of 100 Euros/day. The upgrade included a higher floor, access to a suite for snacks and drinks, a day bed by the pool, and access to the spa. We asked to see it, and it was nice (although the design of the patio blocked a magnificent view of the coastline). Then we asked to see the room we were supposed to get, and it was the worst room in the hotel: on the bottom floor, a blocked ocean view, and the patio overlooked the parking lot. We could help but feel that it was a bait and switch situation. We asked for another room, and they begrudgingly found a twin room instead of the king we requested. Only after we considered leaving and moving to another hotel did they find a perfectly fine room, just like the one we requested (magically!). While we felt we were being duped, that feeling went away after a couple of hours of enjoying the beauty and service of the resort.

Friendly and very helpful staff. Nothing seemed too much trouble.

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My wife and I together with another couple just spent eight nights at this hotel. It is one of these properties which is frustratingly close to being a really great hotel but sadly misses the mark in a few areas. The property itself is a mixture of dated and modern. The hotel is well appointed as one should expect for a ‘Leading Hotel of the World’. The hotel offers a discounted breakfast package to guests staying several days. This offers great value as the breakfast buffet is very extensive. There is nothing nicer in good weather than breakfast, lunch or dinner on the terrace. We ate lunch and dinner in the Arrels Restaurant which was pleasant. The hotel is well positioned outside Palma with easy access by bus, taxi or car. We enjoyed our stay and will return.

Our room had an usual layout to enable the large double bed to face out towards the sea. Try as one may to arrange one’s bedside table or other parts of one’s room as one preferred by setting out an alarm clock, a torch, a personal radio or other personal effects, the turn down service irritatingly re-sets the room to their mandated layout and one’s alarm clock, torch and personal radio are all pushed to one side on the bedside table to make way instead for a bright red Clarins brochure giving details of Spa treatments and the TV control unit. Can someone explain to me why hotels re-organise clients personal effects especially for clients staying for several nights? Can’t they just accept that clients might find using the TV control unit less useful than a torch or an alarm clock in the dark during the night. One of the most irritating things at the Grand Melia de Mar in Illetas was their permitting and encouraging smoking outside on balconies. I say encouraging, because every balcony was equipped with an ash tray and Melia branded matches! If you are not a smoker, you are likely to be inhaling the fumes from neighbouring balconies when stepping outside, which is most unpleasant. The same was the case outside on the terrace whilst enjoying breakfast - where the person at the next table was puffing toxic fumes over neighbouring guests! As we now know that smoking causes cancer, the Melia Group should urgently re-consider this policy. The bathrooms are well equipped with double, yes double showers (?!) and ours also had an extremely deep bath tub and a plug which didn’t seal. So every bath required multiple re-fills and even when asked to repair this, it remained deficient. There were also twin wash basins. Again can someone explain why a bathroom with two showers, two wash basins and a bath comes with a single bar of soap and only one bath mat? Even though each morning we requested a second bath mat, the turndown service would unhelpfully remove one!