In June 2017, my family and I went off to sunny Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands located off the West Coast of Africa.
These volcanic islands with black sand have variable weather conditions, from blistering heat in the South to heavy rain and wintery showers over the volcanic peaks and Northern areas.
Our trip was to the South West of the island to an area that would make the well off feel at home.
Adeje, pronounced A-DE-CHEE (CH as in School) is a delightfully built up location with lots of top quality hotels and five shining stars.
We opted for an all inclusive resort by the group known as H10 at their Costa Adeje Palace Hotel.
The hotel was spacious, with huge reception area, function rooms and gardens and pools. There was no shortage of comfortable sun loungers and the rooms were well appointed. All the rooms overlooked the gardens and pools from three sides … a sort of U shape design facing the sea.
Our room was located on the right when looking at the hotel from the pool area. There were loads of palm trees, plants and water features to make this area really full of character.
The food selection was actually really good in the main restaurant.
There was loads to choose from and the variety of dishes constantly changed every night. No matter what taste you had, healthy, meat, fish, vegetarian or anything else for that matter they appeared to cater for you.
There were also a couple of speciality restaurants onsite that required a booking in order to use them. But we had no issue choosing times and days of our choice. Being all inclusive we were allowed to use the Tepanyaki and the Italian once each during our stay.
So having said all this I was rather taken aback one evening when the hotel chose to hold a conference dinner and celebrations in the grounds surrounded by sleeping guests with children.
The music was pleasant enough and I suppose whilst louder than you would think reasonable, it was relatively early and so there were no complaints from us.
It was when the dinner finished, the real entertainment began… for the delegates! It was well after midnight, the sound was deafening and impossible to get to sleep so I rang the reception who told me there was no problem!
The thudding, banging and disco went on into the early hours. The reception just infuriated me, saying there was no problem. It would appear that if your room was nearer to the coast than the reception, you suffered more.
The following morning I went to see the customer services to complain. It was the denial that there was an issue at all, that had really aggravated the situation. My main grief was that they had a function room under the hotel where the conference and delegates could have made noise all night. But instead the hotel was selfish, with total disregard for paying guests by allowing a full blown event to take place outside the very rooms that guests sleep in until the early hours.
Eventually we agreed some compensation which was about the only thing that they could offer by way of an apology. It was less than sincere. On more than one occasion they emphasised the needs of the conference … appearing to just disregard the paying tourist.
This was a nice hotel. The food was reasonably good and staff generally helpful and friendly, however it is doubtful that I could go back because of our experience.
When I came to check out and leave I was told that I had to sign a letter for each room (we had three) to promise we would not complain when we got back to the UK. The fear being that I might contact the tour operator and ask for compensation from them too.
I can see their point, they want to be sure that on our return to the UK there is no further complaint made to the tour operator, no further discussion is required and the matter has been laid to rest.
Just a petty that it required a letter signing, agreeing not to complain when we got back to the UK.
I’m no longer complaining … but I doubt I’ll be back!
