Occidental Jandia Playa

The hotel is 1 hours drive, from the Airport, (we hired a car and you can park for free on the street), drop off your passengers, then park the car up.

I stayed here in a connecting room, with 2 other members of my family, and with no children. The hotel itself is tiered with reception and the main hotel at the top level and then all the other rooms, are at a lower level, with 9 blocks. Block 9 being at the bottom, where you can exit at the bottom to go towards the beach area. Towards the lower blocks there is are slopes and windy paths, that are fairly steep. If you have mobility issues, then a lower block is not a good option. We stayed in Block 1, due to my brother having mobility issues. The hotel CANNOT guarantee a block near to the restaurant or main pool, but if you explain your situation, they WILL accomodate and help with transport and moving your cases in a buggy.

There is a Spa at the bottom of the hotel, which appeared open, and the pool at the bottom, was not in use for some reason!!

The hotel does appear in places fairly tired, in some areas, but nothing to ruin your holiday.

Anyway onto the rooms The rooms have a ceiling fan and they do have air con in the rooms, our room did not really work with the air con, but we used the ceiling fan, in which some of the switches on the fan, caouldbe in winter mode, and not summer mode, you can see this on the side of the fan itself. There was a shower over a bath, toilet and bidet. All was functional and at the end of the day, you sleep and wash in a room, and dont spend any other time in there. I dont usually watch TV in the room, but they have Channels BBC 1, 2, ITV and 4.

The hotel itself has a few pools, one of them was in the Royal Level part of the hotel and could not comment as we were not in the Royal Level Area.

The main hotel has 2 main pools on different levels. They felt a little warm at times. I think in winter its heated. In the middle of the main pool you can get drinks.

2 levels down from the main pool, is a snack bar that serves, drinks, nachos, pizzas, burgers, frankfurters, chips, salad and cheese slices. There are sandwiches that change daily the fillings.

The main buffet is within the main hotel, on level -1 (2 levels down from reception). This serves Breakfast, lunch and dinner, Breakfast 7:30am to 10am, Lunch 1pm to 3pm and dinner 7pm to 10pm.

The main buffet does vary in variety, but there are the same items there, every day, like pasta, tomato sauce/bolognese, pizzas. Breakfast serves everything you can think of and dream of. At dinner, there is alway a Paella, Vegetable, Seafood, Meat one. There is always chips, and meats can be Pork, chicken, Beef Stew, Meatballs, and one day we had steak, which was lovely. Lots of salad as well, to choose from as well. There is lots of fresh fruit, bread, rolls and cheeses, crackers. Usually plenty for all, and fussy eaters.

Plenty of drinks, soft drinks / wines / Tea / Coffee, etc, etc, what you would expect in an All Inclusive hotel.

The entertainment team are very very good, always keeping us guests busy during the day, every day. A shout out to Patrice, as she was always involving us and keeping us entertained. There is a kids club as well, and can look after the kids at certain times of the day as well.

This is difficult because the staff at this hotel were lovely but unfortunately that’s where the positivity stops. The location of the hotel was misleading on the Tui website, there’s a big main road between the hotel and the beach with no lift access because they were broken and the hotel is on a hillside so a long walk down & then up again. The gardens were well maintained but there are a lot of broken and loose pavers around the whole site. The bedroom was shabby, not properly cleaned, broken light switches that literally fell off the walls, bits of headboard that were loose, wonky wall art that fell off the wall when we tried to straighten it and the bathroom door was slatted wood so offered no privacy! The sheet on my bed was so threadbare it actually ripped. The key cards for the room stopped working and had to be replaced. The wood that was on the balcony was rotten and you definitely couldn’t lean on it! Paintwork was chipped, dirty and in desperate need of repair. In fact the majority of the hotel just looked shabby, grubby and desperately needs renovation. We chose to go all inclusive. The restaurant was a glorified school canteen and at busy times it was a nightmare to find a clean and cleared table. Tables weren’t cleared & reset fast enough and most night we ended up doing this for ourselves because we’d have been waiting indefinitely for staff to do it. More often than not there weren’t enough plates at the self service stations and you had to hunt for them. The food was ok but by the end of our week we were bored with the repetitive nature of it. The coffee machines were frequently broken which was really frustrating and if they were working the queues were a dozen people long for very slow machines. We never saw a Tui rep or even heard from one for the entire week.

We visited this hotel last year and liked it.i did feel this year a few things weren't as good. The food was very average. Poor selection of meat, a lot of pork. Definitely needs a lot of floor tiles fixing very much a trip hazard. Staff at reception were a real mixture some quite rude others very helpful. On booking in we had paid for seaview, technically we could see over block in front. Plus side enjoyed heated pool. Had WiFi in the room in block 5.