Zel Costa Brava

Currently at the hotel but no one is picking up the phone, haven t met a manager and no one has been responding to my email prior to my arrival so I want to share my experience here. This is not an hotel for families. It takes about 15mn of sportive walk up the hill with a buggy with multiple stairs and a long wait at the funicular to get from your room to the rest of the resort (pool, beach, restaurant). If you have a pram, prepare yourself to carry it a lot as the golf car of the resort is never sent to your room (sorry, it’s busy for the moment - so even when anticipated 15mn before you need to leave, you still end up walking). The room is not cleaned everyday (even tho you chase the reception mid afternoon about it). The hotel is like a low cost airline: you have to pay for loungers (unless you are ok to be 3mn walk from the beach on the upper terrace). There is not even 1/2 of the loungers with umbrellas by the pool to push you to purchase the front line loungers for 100€. The beach has 15-20 loungers at the back but again you’ll have to pay 30€ to use it until 6pm (not great when your baby naps during the hot hours of the day. The indoor pool is also an additional charge of 15€ per person (not for kids) and the car park 25€ per day. Mini golf is 2€ each. Coffee must be pay in card, cannot be added to your room. The restaurant but the beach serves you under cook fish and steak with cold side (everyday since our arrival) and the music is crazy loud from mid afternoon so you cannot even chill mid afternoon there or by the pool, very tacky. They have activities like paddle exploration that are already booked 7 days in advance so too bad if like us, no one respond to you email prior to your stay and you are here only for one week. Nothing is easy and relaxing. Big disappointment especially for a relaunch of a brand that calls itself high end. I don’t recommend.

Beautiful hotel, but would not return. Whilst the hotel itself seemed luxurious, from what I saw(I only entered to reception area), the few members of staff that I encountered were not welcoming at all! Quite rude in fact. My son and I were advised to go the the reception of the hotel(by the staff at the beach bar) as we needed to get a taxi back to the main town, having arrived by boat. On entering the reception area, three members of staff completely ignored us, so I asked the next one for some help. She(in particular) was very abrupt and clearly not happy with my asking her to help us with ordering an uber.. as someone who has visited many hotels across the world, first impressions are the most important ones and due to the one I got from Zel, I would not return. For a five star hotel, the staff need to be five star also.

Beautiful location to stay for a week. Food was delicious. We went with our 6 month old and although there were some things that were not ideal with a baby- there were quite a lot of steps- the hotel staff were very helpful and accommodating. At dinner they even puréed some vegetables and cooked some unsalted chicken for baby. It was lovely to be amongst a forest with wonderful views in every direction for a week.