Barcelo Benidorm Beach - Adults Recommended

We decided to book a last minute trip here as a special little treat to celebrate 23 years of living in Spain! We have been to Benidorm many times and have seen this hotel turn from a abandoned burnt out building to what it is today so we were intrigued to try it out. When making the booking I put a note on saying it was a special occasion and to our surprise on arrival we were upgraded to a sea view room, with a bottle of cava and special chocolates + a voucher for a free cocktail each. Check in was very professional and friendly and our room was available earlier than expected so very happy. Room had everything you could possibly need and was clean, the beds were very comfortable and with 3 pillows, dressing gowns and slippers were also provided! Roof top pool and bar area was very nice with fabulous views but tables did not seem to have been cleaned for a number of hours and there were food remnants around the underneath of the tables attracting ants so this kind of spoiled the luxury look of the general area. The lifts were fast and very easy to get if you wanted to go down to reception but a complete and utter nightmare if you wanted to go up to the rooftop bar and pool area from your room as there is only a possibility to press a button to call a lift but you cannot select if you want to go up or down so lots of lifts stop that are going down and then you either have to go down 6 floors in order to come back up 8 floors in order to reach your final destination very frustrating - this could be easily solved with a simple modification by the lift contractors to install a Up or Down button on each floor so that the lift only stops at your floor if it is going in the correct direction for me a very simple fix that would save a lot of customer dissatisfaction as lots of people were moaning about it! We stayed on bed and breakfast so can't comment about the evening meal so here goes our honest opinion on breakfast the egg section where they make fresh fried eggs, omelette, pancakes etc was very good, hot buffet English breakfast area not so good everything was Luke warm and pretty tasteless - coffee was awful - fruit juice was lovely - selection of cakes, yoghurt, fruit etc was also good... In summary: With some improvements it could be excellent, specifically the cleanliness of the rooftop bar and pool area, the lift situation and the hot buffet English breakfast / coffee definitely needs improving Would I stay again? Probably out of season when the prices are lower as the staff and our room were lovely but would probably go room only and eat out for all meals....

Good 4 star hotel

water pool was not clean, very dirty. the rest of the hotel was good

We requested parking in advance and were told it would be allocated on arrival but we couldn’t get our car within 500m of the hotel due to location on the beachfront so goodness knows where the parking is! No bottled water in the room. No working AC in the room. Tried everything but not working. Set it to 19° before going out, go back to hotel very late and it was still 26° in the room. Too late to call out maintenance. Disappointing as could’ve been a lovely stay but ruined by 3 easily solvable issues.