Checkin Concordia Playa

The location is excellent, and the price is low. If you only need a base and a bed, it might be worth trying, but anyone after luxury won't find it at these prices. It may have been a four-star hotel when it was built, but it needs to lose at least one star now. It's a cheap, cheerful, crumbling place popular with the Pensionistas. The hotel has seen better days, though it's generally comfortable. Our adequate room was a little extra for a 'superior room' (see photos), shabby in places, and serviced daily. The restaurant has a good selection, but feels like a noisy, chaotic canteen, fortunately with excellent staff looking after it. The reception area, bar, and entertainment room were clean and tidy. Hotel drinks were reasonably priced.

The meals themselves were good, but getting a drink with dinner wasn't really possible. Wine was only offered with all-inclusive and couldn't be bought by the glass, while a waiter told me to get tea at the bar one floor up after the meal. So, in practice, dinner came with water only. At breakfast the coffee from the “machines” seemed instant rather than freshly brewed. The location is very good, near the sea, two convenience stores (Dino Express), the casino, and the promenade with souvenir stalls. Our room may also have had a pleasant sea view. The maintenance and comfort fell short. The rooms need a full renovation: grout between the tiles was heavily soiled, almost black in places, and the bathroom corners and parts of the room weren't clean enough. Paint was damaged, with dirt marks and peeling areas. There was a lasting bad smell from the sink and shower drains, and a similar odor from the balcony drain. Housekeeping used a strong, sweet air freshener, but it didn't fix it. It smelled like stagnant dirty water, a bit like an old washing machine that hadn't been cleaned. Blocking the drains and airing out the room helped temporarily. When someone next door used the shower or toilet, loud pipe noises came through our room, including sounds like water flowing back through the sink line. It may point to poor drain or pipe installation. The air conditioning was practically non-functional.

We've stayed at this hotel before, but won't be back. The food quality has fallen badly. The main issue was what happened on our floor: a couple were fighting from 2:30 am in room 917. We called reception, and they said they knew what was going on. At 4:30 my husband finally went to tell the man to leave. That's when he saw the woman had been badly beaten, with blood all over her T-shirt and her face badly swollen. The hotel failed that woman and all the guests who lost sleep. They said they had called the police, but clearly not in time. We live on the island, and it doesn't take two hours for the police to arrive. At checkout, nobody apologized. They only said they'd handled the situation. Very, very poorly.

The view was the best part of our stay. We paid £512 each, including flights from London, for eight nights, which was a bargain. The hotel is very well located. During our visit, though, the island had its first winter in a decade and it rained nearly the whole time, so we ended up spending more time inside. This was our second year in a row here, but I don't think we'll make it a third. It's an affordable hotel for a week, and the room was okay, though badly in need of modernisation. The power sockets were nowhere useful. Even with the padded wall, the room was noisy, and we could hear cleaners banging doors as they got closer to our room. The food was grim. Over eight nights we could only stomach breakfast twice. There was no fish on offer, yet somehow everything smelled of fish. The coffee was diabolical and the juice was incredibly watered down. The Spanish guests all seemed to be having a nice time, but they were from a particular age group. If you're under 55, I don't think there's enough to keep you entertained when the weather is bad.