Puerto de Santiago, Tamaimo Tropical

The layout of the apartment complex was rather confusing. The recepption desk gave us a map with the apartment numbers on but it was difficult to navigate. We found our apartment by asking other guests where it was. The room was small but adequate with twin beds, a kitchen area and the bathroom was well equipped and included a hair dryer. It was scrupulously clean. Cleaning was carried out every day and the apartment was spotless. We investigated the buffet on our first night but as it was very close to their closing time the food choice was sparse and not very hot but we were assured by other diners that it had been very good earlier in the evening. Although we did not cook during the week the equipment was there if needed although we had to ask for a kettle as we couldn't get the cooker rings to work.

Generally the Tamaimo Tropical Aparthotel was good value for money and the staff were helpful with any questions we had.

Just returned after a week there. All inclusive. And for the money me and my partner spent it was worth every penny. The food was not the Ritz standard but it was nice. Pools nice and clean. Our room was cleaned everyday. Our shower did stop working one day, told recpetion and within 10 minutes there was a guy fixing it which I thought was really impressive as you wouldnt even get that in this country. ALL members of staff, especially the waiters and bar men where extreemly friendly and helpful. Everyong expects everything when they all pay a small amount, but for the money this was a fab holiday and i advise it to anyone wanting a cheap get away.

im going there tomorrow. i will keep you all posted when i come back. hope i dont live to regret it. mind you sun what more do we want , its got to be better than getting soaked every day . lets hopeit turns out fine . {nana and grandad aged 54 with 2 grandkids aged 5 and 4}

We have just returned after spending a week all inclusive at this hotel, staff were unfriendly,to the point of rude at times, towels were only changed after asking at reception (3 times in one day!)our room wasnt that clean when we arrived and wasnt cleaned the entire week we were there,nor were the beds changed.The food was ...ok.although we struggled to find a clean plate or cup at each meal time. It was impossible to get a sunbed unless you planned on sunbathing at around 6pm.We witnessed guests putting towels on sunbeds one morning at 4.30am!! by 8.30am ALL the sunbeds had towels on them.We bought a couple of airbeds and struggled to find anywhere to lay down!!! The staff woke us every morning 7.30 ish generally, shouting, banging doors etc. In my opinion, if the staff had been friendly I think we probably could have overlooked everything else.

Some facts from 10 days stay here.

You had to search through the piles of dinner plates for a clean one. I would estimate 50 percent looked dirty and another 20-30 percent you could feel the leftover food on the plates that looked clean.

Of the 3 self service drinks machines (pepsi 7up etc), the 2 tea/coffee and juice machines, 1 was not working every day creating jams to get drinks.

The hotel doesnt have even half the glasses it needs, most people got served drinks in small plastic cups most of the time. They had a small amount of glasses which they largely tried to keep for the customers buying drinks. I manged to get a hotel glass halfway through the holiday so I kept it.

The place is a long way from clean all over. Me and my girlfriend argued over cleanliness while we were here. I wouldnt go as far as to call it dirty but our room was not cleaned once properly during 10 days. We had a cornflake behind our door and a tea bag stain in front of the sink on day one. on day 10 these were still there. Our beds were made like 1 or 2 of the days we stayed. Towel and toilet roll replacement was very unreliable resulting in many visits to reception.

The pool ares were cleaned once a day in the morning. After that cups dont get collected (the plastic disposable things everyone trails behind them) the fag ends stay on the floor until the next morning. The overflowing bins are ignored. People actually piled their cups and rubbish under the overflowing bins because 20 ft to the next bin was too far to walk. People were abusing the the poolside area while we were there and the hotel didnt have the staff/inclination/cash to pay for staff to keep the place looking half respectable all day long. The tables that are scattered sparsely through the resort are nearly always dirty because no one cleaned up after themselves and more importantly the hotel didnt have staff doing so.

The reception staff apart from the guy we met on our first night (1 hour delay on flight transfer took 2x as long as we were told) were the nicest most polite and professional staff in the place. The bar staff were mostly rude and seemed to resent me and my girlfriend wanting drinks. The first night we arrived we were hungry and didnt know the full details of the hotel. We tried to ask a barman about food. He didnt speak very good english (which I dont necessarily expect a foreign person to speak) but his attitude seemed to be one of "i dont care" huffinf and puffing shrugging etc. Funny how the next few days his english seemed to improve. Later we went to the "disco bar" where the single member of bar staff was trying to clean up ready for closure before drinks service had finished. I approached the bar and the staff member banged the bin down he was manouvreing and served me a drink without smiling. We did speak to one very nice barman called Jorge who was always very cheery despite sometimes being run off his feet.

Despite the appaling abuse of the poolside area and the single daily cleaning we only saw 2 cockroaches in our whole time there at the poolside on our first night. which wasnt bad but some of the people we spoke to while we were there described smelly rooms dirty rooms and some cockroaches.

The rooms are all 2 single beds pushed together as a double as far as I could make out.

The hotel have a rule about not saving sunbeds with towels. However by 10am every day half of the sunbeds were occupied and the other half had towels on them.

There did seem to be a weekend invasion of spanish during both the weekends we were there. They seemed even worse when it came to making a mess and saving the sunbeds.

The lift that we needed to use to get to our room was broken 5 out of the 5 days we were there (3 seperate spells).

Despite the fact that 70 percent of the dinner plates were dirty the waiters and waitresses did polish the cutlery. Something pizza hut seem unable to do.

There was afternoon tea/coffe and cakes/buscuits advertised but it didnt happen once.

The disco bar was supposed to close at 12.30 but closed at 12.00 every night.

Advertised was "professional entertainers" deliberately misleading I think, twice both on seperate weekends did the hotel have external entertainers. They employed 2 "rep type" entertainers in addition, who seemed to work very hard all day and night but there entertainment was mostly expensive bingo and karaoke.

All holiday we were trying to make the best of our holiday and work around the various problems/dislikes/limitations. Generally the staff attitude was poor with reception being a notable difference to the general trend. However hardly anything we said to reception or asked was communicated ineffectively to the other staff evern when it would have saved the hotel money to do so. both mondays we were present there seemed to be a staff gathering in the disco bar and an even barer skeleton crew of staff attempted to man all the positions resulting in queues or unavailable snacks/dri

My daughter and I have just returned from a 7 night break. The accommodation was adequate for two bit cramped for 4. ...very clean and staff very friendly. We were able to obtain a sunbed whatever time of day but I would say that alot of towels were put on sunbeds too early and not used until later in the day. Our only complin was the food at lunchtime and the evening meal. It was too much of the same. Too much starchy food and not enough fruit and meat. It got so bad that we ate out for two nights just to have something with a bit of taste and excitement. It is a great resort if you want to spend all day lying on a sunbed as there is not enough to do. At present with the Euro being nearly the same as the pound then it can be very expensive doing the trips. The idea of going fully inclusive is to cut down on cost, but when you can't even get a packet of crisps at the supermarket then I would say there is something definatly wrong with the food. I would advise taking a jar of coffee and a bag of tea bags as you can't always get a cup in the restaurant.

I have read a lot of the reviews left about the Tamaimo Tropical and I think people need to realise that its a 2 star hotel so its not going to be 5 star quality.

I have just come back from a 7 day holiday in January at the Tamaimo Tropical, and enjoyed every minute there. There was always something good to eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner, not to mention the snacks between these.

Even with one of the 4 pools out of action for repair, there was more than enough space in the pool and the surrounfing area (obviously they were geting this work done during the winter months before the busy summer period).

Lots of comments left on here mention the hotel needs tidying up, and I can confirm from my visit last week they have got decorators in and have workmen tidy up the whole hotel.

I really enjoyed my stay at the hotel and would recommend it to young couple and families with young children.

The apartments were quite spacious and the resort reasonably clean and attractive looking, but spoilt by the tiny, uncomfortable, creaky beds and the fact all the sun loungers were occupied by towels. When the towel owners eventually decide to turn up the poolside is grossly over-crowded and many of the residents rather unsavoury to say the least. We spent our time at the Vigilia pool nearby where the facilities and class of people were much better. The reception staff at the Tamaimo were OK and the rooms cleaned regularly.

The weather was really good, but I think that the hotel could do with a good clean out and new staff. I wouldn't come back to the hotel due to food. We payed for all inclusive and we had to eat out because we thought the food was that bad. People had to lay on the floor in their towel.

First of all, I would expect a hotel like Tamaimo Tropical to have air-con as standard in every room. That was not the case as we found out when we walked into the sweaty room. Also you have to pay to hire the safe in the room, which cost around 30euro for less than two weeks.

It had a small TV without a remote, and most of the channels were fuzzy. I did fiddle with cable in the wall and the back of the TV but nothing changed. There was a few cockroaches living the the room throughout our stay there, I did manage to kill one toward the end of our stay by slamming the balcony door on it, though (that was probably the highlight of staying there).

The maids did come every day except Sunday as usual, but all they did was make the beds and sometimes change the towels (it felt like they did it when they felt like it), even though we had put them in the bath as it said to do on a notice in the bathroom if you wanted them to be changed. Once they had even taken the wet towels from the bath and just hung them back up in the bathroom...

On a few occasions they would take the towels and not bother to leave any, on some days I waited until in the afternoon and I had to call reception to ask for the towels. They said they would send someone up straight away, that didn't even happen. I had to call again, and when someone did come up with clean towels hours later, they never bothered to bring hand or a floor towel, only 2 large towels.

The breakfast food there was OK but we only went twice for it.

The lunch and evening meals were almost the same. We were all inclusive but rarely ate in the hotel, only twice for lunch and once on an evening. It was buffet style and every single time the plate I picked up had some sort of dirty mark on it as if it hadn't been washed properly.

I would never stay there again even if it was free, the only good point I can think of is that I could tell the drinks there were genuine and not watered down, but I thought the bar service was poor for such a busy hotel. Even on a night there was only 1 member of staff serving, I thought the queues were just ridiculous.