Residencia Universitaria Alfil

I particularly liked the relaxed feel and the food, and the gym was a nice extra. The hotel was clean and kept in good shape, with a convenient base for getting around Málaga.

We arrived at 2:30 in the night after booking this “hotel” with two friends, and the man at the front desk didn’t speak English. It took a lot of effort to figure out why the price they quoted was higher than the one on Booking and why they said our reservation wasn’t valid. We were exhausted, so we paid then and there instead of dealing with it further. Later, it turned out the front desk person had lied to us. And nowhere had it said that the bathroom would be shared with guests from other rooms.

The free Wi-Fi was excellent, about 300mps. The rest of this place is very spare: small air-conditioned rooms come in pairs around a shared bathroom and a lounge/TV room with a fridge. It feels more like basic student housing without the students, on the newly developing western side of Malaga. My balcony looked onto a huge construction site, so crane watchers would be happy. It’s clean, bare and almost monastic, and not child friendly. Breakfast costs 6 euro at the basic canteen. It’ll do, with coffee, bread and a topping like jam, ham or meat paste, plus fruit, juice and pastries, but the food and presentation feel very institutional. The city centre is about 5k away, so you’ll need a bus or the metro, whose stop is a short walk south. There aren’t many shops or other facilities close by. Shops and cafes are about a 1k walk south in the next residential area.

The rooms could use some improvement, but the service was great.