AR Galetamar

The sea views are stunning and the balcony a nice bonus. Pleasant staff. Excellent food in the restaurant - I would highly recommend half board. I suspect it gets extremely noisy in peak season but when quieter it's pleasant.

We have just spent 7 nights there as a replacement for the Thomas Cook holiday initially booked. The hotel is well located for the coast and promenade. The closest beach is only a few minutes walk but is rather seaweed covered. The beaches a little further along the promenade are bigger and better and there are plenty of restaurants and bars for snacks. The hotel reception is quite smart and the staff helpful. It was a pleasant surprise after reading some of the reviews. We were 'upgraded' to an apartment type room on the south side which was nice as it had good views and a large terrace. This is a 3* package holiday hotel and would probably not stand '4 in a bed' type detailed inspection but the rooms were clean and comfortable and perfectly adequate. The maid service cleaned and made the beds every day and even tidied up our mess in the bathroom. The main improvement would be provision of a kettle and cups to make our own coffee as there is nowhere to get this out of the breakfast and bar opening times. The AC is not powerful but was adequate overnight for our stay. Our room (Room 406) also had a problem with the door. They tried different key cards but this did not improve it and the maid service also said they had problems with it. We developed method of putting in the card, pushing the handle and barging the door which seemed to work. The food was not exotic but was adequate and plentiful with choice although the veg's tended to be overcooked for our taste. We went half board but changed the evening meal to a packed lunch one day to suit our excursion. Despite our requesting too late they managed to provide it for us. Note that you get quite a large carrier bag of food per person as a packed lunch. The pools are not massive but seemed clean and adequate although the hotel did not seem very full while we were there. There were enough loungers although they were a little hard and uncomfortable with no cushions. There is a short cut rear exit/entrance from the pool are to the promenade and beach. Calpe is quieter and nicer than bigger places like Benidorm. The bus into town is only E1.50 for as far as you want to go and there is the 'old town' area to explore. Overall a pleasant holiday stay. However, if you go with Tui do not expect to see anything of them or hear anything from a rep. All their event cards posted (not many at this time) are not in English. You only have their app on the phone as contact to the UK which thankfully we did not need! As a group of 4 we were given a taxi transfer from the airport. The return transfer was an odd mess with one taxi turning up to take 2 people, then while trying to sort it (without any Tui help) a second one turned up for the other 2!