Grifid Arabella Hotel - Ultra All inclusive & Aquapark

Veldig trivelige mennesker i resepsjonen. Meget dyktige og hjelpsomme. Fint hotell men syns franske turister dominerte underholdningsprogrammet på kveldene for mye, quiz og show på fransk. Dette trekker mye ned., mye støy. Veldig god mat og servitørene fra Bali og Indonesia var kjempehyggelige og veldig snille.

It was really bad. We visited in August 2022 and there were a lot of people. The only good thing was the position of the hotel and the daily concerts. The hotel needs renovation, the furniture is bad. The main restaurant is too small for the number of clients. We had to wait to get seated at a table with strangers. The dishes were dirty, the food was bad and because of it we got intoxicated and had to leave 3 days earlier. Not to mention that the night when we felt ill and called a doctor, the doctor told us that this is their 5th case of intoxication that night.

This is a very nice hotel that's located a very short walk from the Golden Sands beach. Our room (439) was clean and had a great view of the hotel courtyard and the sea. If you want a great view of the sunrise, the view from this room is a great one. On the balcony, there was an extendable clothes drying rack, so there was no struggle to figure out where to hang our wet swimsuits and towels. Security is also good. The room doors operated on card locks and there was a small safe in our room. The safe was not big enough to put a laptop computer in, but certainly big eough for mobile phones and smaller tablet sized mobile devices. All the staff were friendly and attentive and all areas of the hotel were clean and well organised. The offer of food at all meals was very wide, it really was difficult sometimes to decide what to eat. All food was freshly prepared and presented in a self-serve style. The wellness section of the hotel was also very nice and we got very good back massages there. The hotel has three small swimming pools, two outside and one indoors. As good as this hotel is, there are areas it could improve: The main way to get to the beach is through a gate at the back of the hotel property. There is a large, steep set of stairs to go down from the gate to the road that leads to the beach. If you have mobility issues, you may need to find a different way to the beach. The three swimming pools at the hotel all keep the same operating hours, it would be nice if one of them could open later and stay open later than the others. Noise from activities going on in the hotel courtyard is a big obstacle to sleep if you have a room that faces that way. Every night, there was some organized activity going on until late in the evening. Even closing our room window didn't block the noise. Perhaps the hotel could consider putting sound proof windows on the rooms that face the courtyard.

The only positive thing in the hotel was the staff, who were nice and trying to accommodate us. We were put in a room on the 7th floor, the AC did not work properly, blowing only room temperature and the heat was unbearable at night time. First we were told that there is some broken part, which they are fixing and the problem is for some sections in the hotel and not only for us. Hot water was also not there in the evenings. We stayed most of our vacation in that room waiting for the AC to be fixed, but it never did. Finally we were moved to the first floor where the AC was working better and I finally was able to sleep. But in the morning there was a huge dying cockroach on the floor in front of the bathroom. The food was tasty and we liked it, but the cockroach incident made it repulsive. The beach is ok, but there is no food or drinks there. The swimming pools were crowded and finding sun-beds was not possible. The included Aquapark was available with shuttle bus in two times in the afternoon, but no food was available there and if your kid gets hungry you have nothing and no way to get back to your hotel. The food from the hotel Bolero is not included (only the drinks) and my son was denied food. The animation was only in French initially, later they changed it. There was nothing like comedy shows, which we enjoy in other hotels, mostly music. The drinks were local with brands like Flirt, which is cheap and not good quality. Overall I do not think this is a 4 star hotel with a decent ultra all inclusive program.

Pros: + very tasty food, + nice and helpful staff, + clean and spacious room with plenty of storage space. Good soundproofing and sunproofing. + we arrived as a couple with no kids and fully aware this was a family friendly hotel. Still, there were a lot of fun thing to do like tennis, football, billard + we actually liked the fact that you had to walk some distance to the beach. Thanks to that the hotel feels more homey and like a safe space separated from the kitsch of the promenade Cons: - even the largest pool was on the smaller side, in peek times it was difficult to swim normally. Pool floaties and jumping into the pool are forbidden but only in theory so the not that big pool is filled with floaties and also be prepared to be splashed a lot by jumping kids. - SMOKERS EVERYWHERE the open area was filled with people smoking the absolutely most smelling cheap cigarettes and you couldn't escape the stench. Even worse when you're stuck on a sunbed next to a smoker. - poor AC in the common spaces, there's no difference between eating outside or inside, it's that hot. Hellish heat in the downstairs club, probably why it was always half-empty Overall, we had a good experience (especially the food), I wouldn't come here again but could imagine that people with kids may really like this hotel

I spent an end of summer week (23-29 Sept) here with my husband. The hotel was not full and although it still had plenty of guests you could feel that it was the end of season for them (the hotel was closing down for the season on Oct 2nd). The room was nice with a lovely sea view and the bed very good. On the downside the air conditioning was very noisy and for the whole week we were subject to a faulty toilet cistern that just kept on running continuously (we reported it the first day) but it was never solved. The food wasn't bad but certainly not exceptional and very repetitive. During our week there we experienced the Italian restaurant and the Asia restaurant also but neither service nor food was exceptional. The sun umbrellas were taken down at the beach on our first day despite being part of our package (2 sunbeds and a parasol) - we were told with a shrug of the shoulder "end of season"... The downstairs night bar was open the first couple of nights then closed! The lobby bar ran out of different drinks as the week advanced and on several occasions the coffee cups were unclean with traces of lipstick! However despite all this I would say we had a good week, that is until the moment of check out. We were to check out of our room by 15:00 hrs rather than the standard 11:00 (courtesy of the hotel - definitely a+) and I admit we were 5 mins late leaving the room but definitely no longer than that. In the lobby we locked our cases and processed our check out and then stored our cases in the left luggage until our departure from the hotel at 18:30 At 18:15 we went to collect our cases and in that instant my husband remembered he had left his jacket in the hotel room behind the door, above the case rack. We mentioned this to the receptionist on duty who was pretty unhelpful but after some insistance sent someone to check the room. They came back empty handed and said there was no jacket. The receptionist gave me an email address and told me to write to them. We had no choice but to leave as there was a bus load of people waiting to get to the airport and we were holding them up. As advised I wrote to the hotel and got a very quick reply which basically said there was no jacket and that they had total confidence in their staff/workers and the hotel was not responsible!!! Personally I beg to differ, yes my husband forgot his jacket BUT it was in the room when we left at 15:05 but apparently not at 18:15 (3 hours later) and it certainly did not vanish into thin air. My 2nd email went unanswered and to this day I have heard nothing more. The whole incident has left us with a feeling of great disappointment.