Exe Thalasso & Spa- Adults Only Hotel

Admittedly, we booked this hotel without reading the reviews and took the trip advisor rating for granted. A mistake not to be repeated.

The hotel is approximately 70km from Malaga airport. I would highly recommend that you organise some sort of transfer beforehand as the prices of Uber and local taxis are quite expensive, even for short journeys. The location of the hotel itself is not ideal either as you will require a taxi to get anywhere. The town of Estepona is about a 10 minute drive, Porta Banús is about 15 minutes and Marbella is a little further than that. You will find yourself needing to travel to these places for dinner etc.,. We rented a car, but on occasion, we opted for a taxi/uber so we could both enjoy a drink with our meal. There is an underground car park but it will cost you €15 per night. The other option is to hopefully secure a spot on the limited street parking available directly across from the hotel.

Upon check-in, the lady we met at reception was very friendly and any other person working the reception desk was also quite pleasant and friendly. The hotel itself was clean. Our room was also very clean and housekeeping always did a good job throughout our stay. The bed was spacious and comfortable. The air-conditioner worked very well and the room was nice and cool. However, don’t expect nice views of the sea or anything else really from the balcony.

The pool area is nice and the pool is large enough. If you wish to use the white beds that feature in the pictures, you must pay €30 for the day. You will not be able to get a drink of any sort from the poolside bar until 12 in the afternoon. Cocktails are €12 each. The servers have limited English and not very attentive, particularly if you sit down to have some lunch. You will need to get the menu from the bar yourself and prepare to wait. However, they need more training in relation to serving alcohol to those who are already very intoxicated and posing a danger to themselves and to be more vigilant about serving drinks in glasses when being consumed by the pool. Glasses were smashed by the pool by a group and it took awhile before this was cleaned. However, glass shards remained days later.

The breakfast was reasonable. It had both hot and cold options. However, sometimes the hot options were cold and could have been replenished with fresher options more regularly. There was a nice selection of fruits and juices. The Greek yogurt was nice and there was a range of different toppings to choose from.

I would recommend the spa. It was very relaxing and the amenities were very good. The area is clean and calming. It costs €25 per person for 90 minutes to use the pool, sauna, steam room etc., Treatments are available at an additional cost.

On our second night, the fire alarm went off on four separate occasions between the hours of 1:30am-7:30am. After the first occasion, we rang reception to ask what had happened and we were informed someone had been smoking in their room. No other explanation or apologies were offered on the other occasions.

Overall, there are probably much worse places that you could stay and while we did enjoy the relaxation of the holiday, it is not somewhere that I would return to.

I booked this hotel primarily because it is located at an easy on and off highway location. I booked a large room and when we arrived, I was not disappointed. The bathrooms are a little dated but clean and functional. When I checked in, I was told that I have to pay UPFRONT for the whole 8 nights plus parking even though they had my credit card as a security for the booking. I HAVE NEVER HAD TO PAY UPFRONT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. I wanted to cancel the booking and get the hell out of there but I stupidly booked the room through BOOKINGS.com and as such was stuck. Good lesson for the future. So, I paid and went to our room exhausted. On the first night, after no sleep for almost 24 hours, I had just put my head on the pillow when it sounded like there was a live music show at the foot of the bed. The noise was super loud. It was coming from the pool area just below our balcony. When I called the reception, I was told that they have shows every Friday and I “should have read that on their website”. I was furious at the lack of care of a guest. After a lot of back and forth they said they can move us to another room. We had already unpacked everything and hung up all the clothes and were too exhausted to have to repack. They then said they could move us to another room at the other end of the hotel just to sleep and we could go back to our room the next morning. So, in bathrobes and slippers we made our way to another floor and another room. The following day and all the days thereafter, no one contacted us to apologise and compensate us for what we went through. Shameful. The breakfast buffet is good. The balcony was a good size. The air conditioning very good. And as I said the location was also good. The indoor parking spots are very tight. I certainly will not be staying there again and have looked elsewhere for my next two upcoming trips to the area. NOTE: Usually I take lots of photos but I was so upset during my whole stay that I just could not focus on taking photos other than one in the room and a few on the balcony.