Presidente

Currently here staying in room 120. I emailed before hand requesting a street view room and was given a room on the side of the hotel. The balcony area gets no sun at any time of the day. We put out towels over it to try dry them quicker. And received a note under the door during the night!!!!!. Pool area - our first couple of days the security guy was taken peoples towels away if haven't been back within 40minutes. Which it states on the door this will happen. Hasn't happened again since friday towels left for hours. Today 3 beds right at front of pool nobody has been back for 6 hours and nothing has been done. People are struggling to get beds because of this. The system needs sorted. Food - i can not believe how much the food has went down hill at this hotel. Every day is a struggle to get a meal. 1 night only managing to get a plate of chips. A lot of people are saying the same thing. It is poor when guests would rather go eat at burger king or kfc. Lunchtime alot of tables are cornered off. Today even more were cornered off making it difficult to find a table. Food also cold. I paid extra compared to other hotels to stay here as it is my mums favourite hotel in benidorm and unfortunately it hasn't been worth it. We have both said we will not return.

We visit Benidorm regularly and have always wanted to stay here because we love the Philippines 10. Overall, it is a nice hotel with some real positives, but unfortunately there were several issues that would make us think twice about staying again.

👍 Pros

The pool area is lovely — clean, modern and well maintained. We particularly liked the fact that there was no smoking or loud music around the pool, which made it a much more relaxing place to spend the day. Lots of free cabanas which is a nice touch. Reserved sunbeds for disabled rooms. The pool staff were helpful and professional.

The drink prices in both the bar and restaurant are very reasonable.

Philippines 10 is a great evening venue. The acts were excellent, and the venue felt clean, safe and well managed. This was definitely one of the highlights of the hotel.

👎 Cons

Unfortunately, our room was quite small and the standard of cleaning wasn’t great. When we arrived there was dust on the bedside table and hairs on the towels. During our stay, a dirty coffee cup was left for two days, and a mirror wasn’t cleaned after we had accidentally sprayed sun lotion on it — it remained like that for the rest of our stay. The floor was never cleaned. We did also have an issue with giant silverfish crawling out of the bidet (see photos).

We were particularly surprised by the €20 charge per week for use of the room safe. We have travelled extensively and we have never previously had to pay to use a safe. We found this charge quite shocking, especially for a 4 star hotel.

We were also disappointed to discover that tea and coffee in the room are only provided for the first day, and that replenishments have to be paid for afterwards. Again, this is something we haven’t encountered in other hotels we’ve stayed in over the years and felt unnecessarily mean. No water in room on arrival either.

The lift system is also frustrating. At busy times, you can be waiting for a very long time for a lift, which became quite irritating during our stay. We felt sorry for older guests who couldn’t seem to work out how to use them and would just stand inside going nowhere 😔

We were also disappointed by the hotel’s approach to environmental sustainability. Compared with other hotels we have stayed in across Europe, this was particularly poor. Towels were changed daily even when we had hung them up and clearly weren’t ready to be changed. Hand soap that still had plenty of use left was thrown away, meaning we had to open a new one, and single-use plastic cups were used around the pool. We didn’t see any signage encouraging guests to make sustainable choices. For us, this was a significant disappointment and something the hotel could improve quite easily. Especially when Benidorm as a city is doing such excellent work to lead the way with green tourism.

The lack of vegetarian options at dinner was another major issue. There was no option to have a proper hot vegetarian meal, which meant we ate out on four evenings and consequently spent considerably more than planned. The maitre de Dani spotted me walking away from the buffet with an empty plate one evening and asked if everything was ok. He was very kind and helpful, but sadly I still struggled. Imagine finding out the hard way that the bean casserole contained sausage 😭😭

A simple solution would be to clearly and accurately label food. Allergen information was shown using symbols, but there was very little explanation of what the dishes actually contained and no v for vegetarian - for example, simply saying “pizza of the day” or “spring rolls”. It would have been much more helpful to specify something like “meat pizza” or “vegetable spring rolls”.

The location was also a downside for us. The area immediately around the hotel was very rowdy and dirty, with groups of men regularly standing on the corner directly outside the entrance selling “Charlie”. There is also a brothel behind the hotel, which is directly overlooked by some of the street-facing rooms. This made the immediate surroundings feel much less pleasant than other parts of Benidorm.

Whilst most staff were friendly, the reception staff - particularly one woman - were miserable and borderline rude.

Overall

It’s a shame because there is a lot to like about this hotel. The pool, reasonable drink prices, and especially Philippines 10 are all genuine positives.

However, having stayed in several hotels in Benidorm, we have experienced much better overall standards and would choose Voramar or Barcelo Beach next time.