BlueBay Banus

The location: the basic rooms are next to a busy highway which is very noisy all night long.
Massive sea gulls everywhere; around both swimming pools & they are constantly floating around/taking showers in the pool. (Might have something to do with people leaving food around the pool & no staff taking it away, so it’s basically a buffet for the birds.)
It is allowed to smoke at the breakfast outside seating area, which looked and smelled like an airport smoking lounge. So if you don’t like to suffocate at breakfast, you need to sit indoors & you cannot enjoy the sunshine together with your breakfast.
Coffee machine is an instant powder one..
Coffee and tea in the room is one free pack upon arrival, if you would like to have it replenished it comes at an additional cost, per day.
The swimming pool area is supposed to be covered in real grass; but it’s so run down that there’s mostly just dark sand left, leading to dirty feet and a dirty swimming pool.

Basic and in need of a serious uplift. We couldn’t wait to leave after 4 nights here.

The hotel feels very busy and everyone is on top of you, grass around the big pool is horrible under foot and sun beds are ancient, uncomfortable and hard to find as people reserve them and then disappear. The smaller pool is nicer but has no amenities nearby and has very limited space.

Breakfast is one of the worst I’ve had a hotel, fried eggs either cremated or raw, boiled eggs were black, everything poor quality.

Rooms are basic, aircon does the bare minimum but rooms are somewhat better than the communal areas.

On a positive, the reception staff are nice and friendly. The hotel is also pretty cheap by Marbella standards but there are other hotels at a similar price (or slightly more) that are a lot better.

I have never in my entire life stayed at a worse place, because it cannot be called a hotel. If you know the highway motels in the States, this is one of them, only bigger and hidden behind a (beautiful, i will give them that) garden.
And because there are just so many things wrong with the hotel, here’s the bullet points:

CONS:
- [ ] No soundproofing (highway was just beyond our room) sleep was impossible without ear plugs
- [ ] Old entrance doors with handles that were falling off, literally
- [ ] Old furniture that was again falling off. The doors to the closet could not be closed completely because the buttons (they were buttons) would fall off.
- [ ] It smelled like an old people house
- [ ] No insect screen for the huge balcony doors, everything was going in. My father SLEPT WITH HUNDREDS OF ANTS in his bed three nights in a row after he complained to the hotel staff and they did not do ANYTHING about it.
- [ ] The fan on the ceiling was not working.
- [ ] The mini fridges were barely keeping a bar of chocolate cold
- [ ] TERRIBLE STAFF FOR CLEANING. THEY LEFT THE DOOR TO ONE OF THE ROOMS (we had two on different floors) COMPLETELY OPEN AND WHEN WE CAME BACK WE WERE SHOCKED. WE THOUGHT WE HAD BEEN ROBBED. Hotel staff did not do anything when we told them about this. And quite frankly i am not sure they understood english. Any of them. Which in a 4 star hotel is simply unacceptable. Coming to the hotel and seeing the door to your room opened to the max when you have laptops, jewelry, money, PASSPORTS lying around is the worst possible thing imaginable. Every single person on the cleaning staff should be fired.
- [ ] the maids would ALWAYS turn the electricity off with complete disregard of anything in the mini-fridge.
- [ ] Terrible breakfast with the exception of the pastries. Terrible coffee as well.
- [ ] Terrible staff at breakfast. Nobody helping, nobody smiling, felt like we were all an inconvenience to all of them with the exception of Rosa. She was the ONLY one of the hotel/restaurant/cleaning staff who seemed not to hate her life or everyone around her. I am grateful for Rosa.
- [ ] Staff not speaking OR understanding english.
- [ ] The cleaning staff would be yelling and rolling huge trolleys around at 5 o clock each morning with complete disregard of the people on VACATION sleeping. Mind you, we were on second floor and we woke up each time until 6 o clock and then we could go back to sleep. Again, we complained, nothing happened.
- [ ] When i asked for cleaning, they only made the bed and arranged the bathroom towels, they didn’t vacuum or mop the floors. But this was to be expected after the experience with the ants in the bed.

PROS:
- [ ] Rosa was nice and always had a smile on her face
- [ ] Beautiful garden
- [ ] We were thankfully not robbed

In conclusion: AVOID AT ALL COSTS. This has been the absolute worst experience of my life. This hotel should be shut down or sold to someone who is capable of managing it: hiring competent staff and renovating it to meet the standards of this century.

DO NOT STAY HERE! Hotel room door wouldn’t lock, the fan was about to fall off the ceiling, the bed had dirty marks on and the bathroom had not been cleaned properly. We requested a full refund as we only booked for 1 night and the receptionists laughed at us. Avoid !!