Melia Dunas Resort

this hotel is a good place if you plan to booze 24/7, they are generous with alcohol in the cocktails! this hotel is not a place for family with kids who want to have a nice meal, nice time at the pool with your kids.

we had to spend 2 days here due to the virus . hotel not assuperior as tortuga. the food was 2* we all had funny tummys after visiting the indian restaurant. the room was nice with a suite but couldnt get an english chanel or retune it on the tele. so under the circumstances we wasnt aware of what was going on regarding the virus .the hotel is massive but far too big from one end to the other, but the beach is fab with windbreakers cos its always windy here.

We stayed in Melia Dunas during the last week while it was still open before the Coronavirus lockdown. If you're looking for a brief summary and don't like to read long, here I will give it to you (details below). This is based on my experience of staying in similar hotels 3-4 times a year. Summary: it's a good, clean hotel with good facilities, but the food is only mediocre unfortunately. Having said that, drinks in the all-inclusive are pretty good quality, freshly made and are much better than in many similar hotels. In March the island is quite windy, expect to either burn on the sun or be cold in the shade. The pool is quite cold (around 20 C). There were more than enough sunbeds, good wifi both in the room and the other areas. Room: we had a junior suite, which was actually located in the area belonging to the Sol Dunas hotel complex. The two hotels are sharing some facilities, you'll see guests from both hotels with different wristbands. Sol guests have their own buffet, but for the rest it seemed like they can use all the rest of the Dunas facilities. So our room was located in the area of the Sol, which was about 2 minutes walk from the reception/buffet of Dunas. It was actually even nicer to stay in that pool area than having to walk down to Dunas' main pool where there were much more people. The room itself was adequate in size and probably one of the cleanest I have ever seen in the tropics. No bugs either, probably also because the lack of room-service, therefore no food/leftovers in the rooms. We did have some mosquitoes, so I'd advise to bring some anti-mosquito device. Plugs are like in the Northern EU(Belgium, Holland, Germany, etc.). You have a safe in the room, standard size so it's just too small for my 15.6" laptop, but anything smaller should fit. You can define a code up to 8 digits, if you figure out how, because in our room there was no description. Apparently there's a small red button inside near the batteries to erase the previous code and enter yours, with the # in the end. The bathroom door was not closing properly due to some issues with the frame. I also had my fingers caught between the terrace's sliding doors, since you need some force to open them, but there's no safety stop so your hand can get caught between the internal handle and the standing part of the door. The room door opens with an NFC-key, but be careful putting this key next to your phone - mine has scrambled the code on the card and had to walk to reception to get it fixed. We had a nice, big terrace as well. The suite seemed to have an extra seating area of around 5*4 meters and a long (about 8 m) terrace instead of the "standard-looking" 3 meters. One important detail is that warm water inside your room comes from a boiler of about 80 liters - that's your hot water supply. If it runs out, you're out of hot water until it heats up some water again. It's not ideal, but there must be a reason why it's like this. Note that inside Melia Dunas you can get the "standard" Double room, the suite and as a higher level you could go to "The Level", which has it's own (small) pool next to the beach and it's own breakfast area. I'm not sure what other perks it comes. Our room (3014) was looking over Sol's pool area, and in some evenings there was some loud disco music until around midnight, which I didn't like to be honest, but as guests were leaving Sol (due to Covid-19 I guess), this seemed to stop. Eventually this pool also closed a few days before our departure. Improvements for the rooms: -no description how to use the safe -minibar only has water -mosquito repeller (electric) -safety stop for the sliding doors to avoid hand injuries Public areas: pools are big and clean, yet quite cold. It is most likely because of the winds of the season, but don't expect to find a nice and warm pool. The beach-side is ok, you'll have an area where you can actually go in without beach-shoes (about 30 meters wide), but for the rest it seemed like it was a bit rocky. The sea wasn't warmer than the pool either in my perception. If you're looking for a better sandy beach, in the city center in Santa Maria the water is beautiful and it looked perfect for bathing. Around the hotel pools there is a good quantity of good-quality(!!!) sunbeds and umbrellas. I actually liked the quality of the sunbeds a lot, they are better than at some other places. Bars/restaurants: bars are awesome all around the hotel. Staff is quick, no tipping is expected at all. Drinks, coffee is very good in the bars, they actually are at a much higher level than what I'd expect from the level of food. And there we go. Food is OK, but it's really not more than mediocre for me and I'm not a gourmet. Having said that, I could always find something I liked, but don't go there for a culinary experience. First two days we went to the "wrong" buffet where people from Sol Dunas had breakfast and lunch, it's right next to the one for Melia Dunas'. The difference is less in food, more in the seating - while Melia's buffet is more spaced out, Sol's is a bit crowded. There were much more people there too. The food quality is pretty much the same in both buffets for breakfast and lunch. Staff at the pasta counter did not know much English, so it was difficult to explain what I wanted (and I work in English while not being a native speaker). Normally I have no problems at all with being understood though. The pasta they made in the buffet of Sol was not too good either, it was only containing a bit of sauce and not much more despite me asking it with "everything" (ham, onions, etc.). So while I normally eat pasta once a day at such places, I didn't feel like eating this kind of pasta again here. Deserts are actually above the average in my opinion, I must make this point too. In general variety could be larger and the use of meats with less fat/bones would also be helpful, while I understand the higher cost of these. We have tried many of the A'la cart restaurants as well. You can reserve them every day during certain periods, and you can reserve them as much as you like, so it's a big plus that you're not limited to 1 or 2 as at some other places. They seemed to have pay attention to get people in in a good distribution so you never have to sit there for long before you get your food - it's a big plus as well. Italian(Aqua): good pastas and starters. Pizza looks and tastes like a deep-frozen one from Europe. Not bad, but you don't get the feeling of eating a good Italian pizza. Tiramisu is not even close to what it should be. Seafood(Aquarius): good starters and mains. Some food for no seafood-likers too, risotto was good. "Indian"(Sahel): if you know and like Indian food forget it. For us it was a great disappointment. Both chicken and sheep tasted like greasy, low quality meat with everything but indian spices. We didn't even make it to desert, left over the main course. We didn't manage to get a reservation to the grill/steak restaurant Rancho. Wines and beers server are quite good. Inside the restaurants you'll encounter some mosquitoes as well, so bring some repellent. They were all tiny and their bites were tiny too (nevertheless they MIGHT have Zika or dengue, no malaria here). The hotel has a very good representation of TUI (UK, NL, BE, FR) on the spot, and they have a lot of excursions around. Locals don't give you much better prices in my experience(taxi to Salinas/Buracao 50 eur, local guide to Murdeiras/Sharkbay/Salinas/Buracao 50 euros with car+2eur/pers watershoes for sharkbay+5eur/pers fee Salinas+3eur/pers Buracao), so you might as well go with the TUI tours, which have these included in the price... There is a free bus going 3 times(9/10/11,16/17/18) to/from Santa Maria (the town next door), which is very nice. Taxi costs 3 euros during the day for the same trip. Hotel staff in general is very kind, no issues there at all. It all felt very safe around the hotel and also out on the island. I must point out that TUI Netherlands did an awesome job as well getting everyone out of Sal when it came to that due to the virus. I hope someday we can return.