Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Club by Diamond Resorts
Santa Barbara Rip Off Club – No Thanks and Never Again!!
We went to this Hotel for our last night in Tenerife due to its proximity to the airport and due to its good rating here on TripAdvisor. It was the biggest mistake we made during our holiday and here is why:
We trusted the average good rating here and on another website where we booked it without actually looking at all of the details, one room for roughly 200 for one night. We booked a studio apartment with kitchen, balcony and a kingsize bed.
– We got was a small, uninviting room with white tiles in the whole apartment.
The small room had a tiny balcony (can’t even really call it a balcony), of which half of the space was taken by the outside part of the AC (not just ours, but from different rooms). The warm air from that AC engine blew directly into our room when opening the balcony door.
– The bed was a small Murphy bed – no, I am not kidding – with size of 148 cm x 192 cm. Apart from the fact that this is nowhere even near a kingsize, it had a shaky construction and a worn mattress so that as soon as one person moved on this bed the whole bed moved. Sleeping with 2 persons in that bed is simply not possible, we probably slept less than 2 hours during the whole night.
– There was no door to the shower. Only after we complained they sent somebody to install the door (which took away 15 minutes of waiting and another 20 minutes of the guy putting the door into place). Bathroom generally was not very clean, with mold in the shower.
– As some other reviewers mentioned, there is a foul smell around the hotel (due to a sewage?). Essentially, it smells like somebody just took a big dump right next around the corner. Unfortunately for us, this was especially bad around our part of the hotel and our room was not spared of the foul smell. Opening the door or the window only made it worse.
– Service in the hotel: We tried to get another room or a refund at least for the lie of the kingsize bed. The receptionist actually laughed at us and said there are no other beds than this type in the whole hotel. Despite multiple complaints about the bed, they claimed that no-one who would be able to make such a refund was around this day or the next morning. Even during the check-in, the receptionists were rather unfriendly and did not mentioned important things such as check-out time or breakfast possibilities and only focused on 100 Euro that you have to deposit for your room.
– And now comes another “highlight” of this hotel: Essentially, nothing here comes for free. Free Wifi in 2017? Wrong, its 6 Euro per day. A free pool towel? No, it’s 1 Euro. Use of the hotel gym? 12 Euro per day. Safe in the room? 2 Euro per day.
The only thing you can do here without paying extra is going into the pool or the nearby sea. And essentially that is what most people do (except the English tourists that visit the nearby Irish pub and come home drunk and loud in the middle of the night).
For everyone even considering going into Santa barbara golf & ocean club by diamond resorts : DO NOT GO!!! There are multiple better ways to spend your money than in this rip-off club. Be warned.