Barcelo Castillo Royal Level

We stayed in a suite at the Royal Level complex. Fantastic location and facilities.. really can't fault the staff and services.

Our only issue was the room needs a little improvement - it was riddled with bugs which kept coming back, and the aircon was broken/noisy.

We have stayed in Barcelo hotels for many years.....we stayed at the Fuerteventura hotel last year, it was great, this year, sorry, terrible - Read below for the details of a complaint which was registered on the 8th of April 2026

I'm a disappointed to be having to write this review but the challenges we encountered whilst on holiday in April increased significantly and couldn't be accepted or ignored any longer. I wanted to give the hotel the opportunity to restore our faith in Barcelo (we are unique members and spend about 10,000 euros a year with you) and said if the response was not satisfactory and didn't recognise our loyalty and custom I would share it all in detail via Tripadvisor (and other platforms). I have been patiently waiting for a response having been passed from different people at Barcelo and have yet to receive a final response from the hotel or Caroline Deneyer, the employee who was supposed to be dealing with the complaint.

Here's the list and photos for you to review - they depict what we encountered at the Royal Level Hotel/facilities.

Finally - We accept when things go wrong, think very carefully before staying here, we have not had a response from the hotel or their senior complaints team/hotel leadership - Other than that their corporate risk team couldn't investigate any issues without a hospitalisation?? What?

I would seriously consider staying at another hotel brand than Barcelo when visiting Fuerteventura - They dont care about their guests and do NOTHING to remedy issues when they arise.

Dining

We dined at the La Mar Salada as part of the Royal benefits, it was terrible, the rice burnt and my son's steak was served rare (he wanted medium), it was sent back and recooked, but his experience and appetite had gone as it just wasn't edible, it returned looking like it had been smashed by a tenderiser and recooked, same piece of meet, awful.

We booked the Rodizio buffet, wasn't expecting much, but the experience was awful, the starters were stone cold and the meats (except the Turkey) were inedible, we shared our concerns politely with the manager who could see how poor the standard was, he tried to correct the situation, offering us chips (cold) and rice (luke warm), essentially none of the family ate again that night. Terrible.

Room

Made two requests via the Royal Level concierge service, the day after we arrived to share that the hot tub on the patio of our room was dangerous and that it had injured me, nobody from maintenance ever arrived to fix the problem (photo included of my injury and the hot tub) meaning that we couldnt use the tub with our children for the vast majority of the holiday.

TV, also reported at the same time, no TV channels of any description, just radio - no response from maintenance.

The Hotel Services

The Royal Level pool is dangerous, it has a number of tiles missing and injured my child's foot (photo), there are sharp edges and it's going to injure someone else more severely.

Padel courts, closed for days, I accepted the weather had not helped, but there is no urgency to have these repaired, meaning they couldn't be used for the remainder of the holiday. Ridiculous.

Spa - steam room closed and not available at any point, for the whole holiday.

Golf SIM - my children are both members of Golf Clubs with handicaps at a country club in England, it's ridiculous to judge someone on age, rather than ability, my children would compete against any adult who has never played golf before but we we're not allowed to use the SIM, causing much distress and upset, so we went to the SIM bar in the town where the kids were welcomed, with open arms.

The general cleanliness of the hotel is also very poor and not to the standards we expect of Barcelo. The Royal pool area is filthy, cups, empty food carton and towels everywhere. Provide more bins and people will use them.

For context, we stayed in the Barceló Fuerteventura Royal Level (Family) section of the Barceló Fuerteventura Resort, two adults and two teenagers, August 2026. We had the all inclusive option.

As with most holidays, we were very excited for it to finally arrive. We had been looking forward to our stay at Barceló Fuerteventura Royal Level since booking it in October 2025, which I suppose is why we are as disappointed as we are with the “Royal Level” experience. We have stayed at two different Barceló Royal Level hotels previously. Unfortunately, the Barceló Fuerteventura Royal Level hotel is a sad excuse for “Royal Level” (the Royal Level Adults Only is a completely different story, more on that later). The pool area was never washed/cleaned once during our 7 night stay which is something that is usually done at other Barceló hotels every morning. We did notice that other hotels (Mar and Royal Level Adults Only) were cleaned. Cups and rubbish were not taken away. Yes, there are bins around the pool that people should use to put the reusable cups however, they sadly don’t. So this task should then default to hotel staff because someone who is on holiday doesn’t want to clean up someone else’s mess. That’s not what we’re paying for, especially when we have paid for “Royal Level”. The other Barceló hotels that we’ve stayed at in the past have had the loveliest staff and is a big reason why we choose to stay at Barceló hotels. Unfortunately, most (not all) the bar staff in the Royal Level Family (RLF) were not very friendly. I’m not sure if it was an understaffing issue but there really should be two people attending the RLF pool bar as the one person who was there always seemed overworked. At one point, we considered going to one of the other hotel bars just to get a water because we didn’t want to have to interact with the staff member who was working at the bar at the time. More on the RLF pool bar…if all you want is beer or wine on your holiday then I suppose you would be happy with the RLF pool bar. However, that’s not what I want on my holiday. There was no consistency when it came to drink quality (cocktails). For example, I ordered a strawberry daiquiri and what I received was something so bitter (because there was WAY too much lemon juice in it), I couldn’t even drink it. The piña coladas never tasted the same. All of the other bars in the resort had frozen piña coladas and strawberry daiquiris (which I believe is the only proper way to have both of these beverages). At the RLF pool bar these beverages were not frozen, they were simply mixed using a shaker (that often got stuck which is not ideal for the person working at the bar as it frustrating for them and it causes delays). There is nothing royal about the RLF pool bar, in fact it worn down. There are missing letters on the wall where it is supposed to have the name of the pool bar, the whole thing should be refurbished.

The RLF buffet (El Ancla) was not up to RL standard either. The one time we went for breakfast, we had arrived at 7:30am as that’s the time we reserved via the app. It felt like the restaurant wasn’t yet open as the staff were still setting the tables, the cook had only just put the frozen sausages in the deep fryer (why sausages that aren’t battered are cooked in a deep fryer is another question that I won’t get into). The tables and chairs still had crumbs from the dinner service. Table service was very slow, none of the staff seemed very enthused. At other RL restaurants, your order is taken at the table; however, this did not happen here. Since no one took our order we assumed that we had to go up to the cook and let them know what we wanted. I have since found out (after sending an official complaint to the hotel) that our order should have been taken at the table. We ate at El Ancla once for breakfast and once for dinner, we did not feel it was worth going back and booked into the other buffets and à la carte restaurants instead.

Freshly squeezed orange juice (yum!) is available at all the breakfast buffets except for Mafasca. The Tindaya buffet breakfast has British back bacon. For those staying RL you are able to sit in the “premium” section of Mafasca and Tindaya. For lunch and dinner you need to have a booking for Tindaya, for Mafasca you don’t. We enjoyed the à la carte restaurant options; however, we weren’t able to dine at these until the last few days of our stay (we would have preferred to have mixed up the buffets and the à la carte restaurants throughout the stay). The food menus at Breeze Bar and La Perlita are included with AI RL. However, when we turned up to La Perlita for lunch one day we were told it was only a 20% discount. I had emailed the resort prior to our arrival to check what was and wasn’t included so we weren’t trying to figure it out while we were there, I had been told La Perlita was included. So my family and I went to reception to discuss this and were told that yes, it is included. We went back to La Perlita and the person who had told us it was only a 20% apologized. It was an honest mistake and we didn’t blame them because the wristband system that the resort is currently using is confusing for the staff. Whoever decided that both types of AI wristbands should be two different (and depending on the lighting, slightly similar) shades of green clearly didn’t give it enough thought. However, it was annoying to go to reception to clear it up when we should have just been able to sit down and have our lunch.

After looking around the other hotels within the resort, the only real perk of the RLF hotel is that there are less people staying in the RLF section, but that doesn’t mean the pool doesn’t get busy. The bars seem to be better in all the other hotels. Being able to access the Royal Level Adults Only area really saved this holiday for me. The service there was what I expect from Barceló Royal Level. Great drinks, food and service. I did not try the buffet restaurant, but I did order from the “snack” menu which is way more than just snack food! I would 100% return to the Royal Level Adults Only.

About the area: the beach is great, we were surprised that it was never really that busy. Maybe locals go to other beaches? The water is clear, cooler than expected but still wonderful. There are some rocks around but you can usually see them. 2 beach chairs and an umbrella costs around €10 for a day (we didn’t rent any, but thought it was quite reasonable).

So, if you are looking at staying at Barceló Fuerteventura Resort and will be staying with children…save your money and stay at either Mar or Castillo as you have access to both regardless of which one you stay at. Royal Level is truly not worth it at this Barceló location (unless it’s Adults Only).