Barceló Punta Umbría Beach Resort

Myself and my partner have just returned home from our 6 night all-inclusive stay at this hotel. We arrived to a bad start - the receptionist didn’t speak much English and couldn’t answer many of our initial questions. The first room we were given we had to request to be moved due to stains on bedding, bad smells from bathroom area and pictures on the wall literally hanging down/falling apart. Luckily the room we was moved into was much better/cleaner. The air-con worked fine and the room was cleaned on a daily basis with fresh towels, bedding changed etc and the overall size of the room fairly decent for a couple. Unfortunately though we had a really poor view of literally nothing to the front of the hotel other than a big tall lit up Burger King sign and a couple of souvenir shops.

Food/Drink - Firstly we could not fault the breakfast this was the best meal of the day without a doubt - loads of options including cereals, fruit, toast, “fry up” cooked options, sweet pastries, donuts, biscuits and more! Lots of hot and cold drink options from the many machines as well. Faultless! However lunch/dinner options were very repetitive with not a lot of “main meal” options to choose from, leading to us having the same things to eat most lunch and evenings. Dessert options were really quite bizarre also and the majority of them not overly nice. It’s fair to say we got bored of pizza and ice cream quickly! Meal times for dinner are rather late aswell with the earliest sitting at 8pm followed by 9pm. Snack wise throughout the day not much to choose from other than plain crisps and nuts from the main bar plus stale single sandwiches…sigh, but drinks wise options of hot/cold drinks available all day so we made the most of that at least.

Staff - Very surprised at the lack of English spoken at this hotel, quite shocked actually. Some of the receptionists and bar staff simply would not talk English to us and the few that did appeared to speak very little of it, this we couldn’t believe. We also found some (not all) staff quite abrupt and got the impression they didn’t really enjoy their job. For example when we checked out all we got was a “okay” from the receptionist - he didn’t even ask if our stay was all okay, didn’t thank us for staying or even wish us a safe journey home or anything like that! Again, I assume this was either down to his lack of English or just pure rudeness - or both! Either way the lack of English language spoken at this hotel was honestly quite shocking.

Evenings - Regardlesss of being end of season time there was no entertainment whatsoever other than bingo pretty much every single night which wasn’t until around 10.30pm and again predominantly for the Spanish, we felt very outnumbered by this and really didnt feel included or welcomed into this at all, another English couple we met at the hotel felt exactly the same. This was one of the most disappointing things. When we questioned a receptionist about evening entertainment she just pointed and said “music” to a speaker playing outside and a few flashing lights - that’s definitely not what I call entertainment…

Location wise this is very very very remote with literally nothing going on around it at all. We couldn’t find any half decent bars, pubs or restaurants nearby and there isn’t much in the town part of Punta Umbría either, primarily souvenir shops and little else. We felt very much in the middle of nowhere in all honesty. Luckily one day we went off to Holea shopping centre at Huelva and that was really good with plenty of familiar shops, recommend that!

On a more positive note; this is a very clean, tidy and well maintained hotel given the size of it, we often saw staff cleaning, tidying etc both inside of hotel - bar/restaurant areas and outside of hotel including pool area etc.

Overall we still enjoyed our holiday relaxing in/around the lovely pool area most days but due to the lack of English and the very remote location with nothing else going on we would not return here again and would not recommend it to our friends/family.

Really Barcelo gets 3 for value for money. This should be a great location, however my first impression on arrival is, I'm a Sausage being processed by the machine. It's all great. But had i bought it all individually, food, room, drink... it would have been better... without the butchers welcome on the first day or the excessively long walk to the room from reception.

This is my second time visiting this resort with my family. The last time was about two years ago and, just like then, we came on an all-inclusive basis. However, halfway through this stay, it honestly feels like I came to a completely different place.

On our first visit, we were assigned to the “Brujula” restaurant, which had a great variety and quality of food (we managed to go there once this time and it was still as good as before). But now we’ve been placed at “Cormoranes”, which is not even close to our room, unlike “Brujula”, and I have to say: if you don’t like tuna and cold salads, 95% of the menu is basically gone for you. The variety is poor, and it’s hard to understand how this selection can be considered “premium”. There isn’t even cured ham, only plain ham and cheese. In the afternoon, no cereals are available either, so unless you enjoy plain sour yogurt, there’s not much to choose from.

At the pool, there haven’t been enough chairs for everyone in 3 out of 4 days, and twice I had to carry a stray chair myself from the other side of the pool. If you have small children who need a nap, be ready to call reception and ask for housekeeping, because chances are they won’t come in the morning.

All of these things might be acceptable in a regular 3- or 4-star hotel, but when you pay for an all-inclusive resort, you expect a different level of service and attention. I’m still here and honestly just looking forward to leaving. We’ll probably not return.

Overall not a bad experience. The resort is well organized, the food wasn't bad and the pools and kids entertainment are nice as well. Regardless, i can't give more than 3 stars simply because of how rude the bartenders are. Always serving you as if you're bothering them. You cannot ask anything outside a gin tonic, beer and any other drink that is already premade in their cointainers (be advised, extremely sweet all of them). If you ask for a proper drink to be made on the spot they will deny to do it. One of them even trew her hands in the air, walked away and called her supervisor, just so he could tell us, like we were kids, they won't do it (the drink was on the menu). We were never obnoxious, drunk or unpolite - this behavior was accross multiple bars, and over 10-15 people in a week's time. In this specific situation we resorted to ask the ingredients to be served seperatly and made the mojito right in front of them, that's how ridiculous it was. I understand you might not be allowed to serve items outside the menu, or everybody would simply rush and ask for the craziest cocktails, but still, just have some deciency to have a sign or be polite explainning it. People are paying an all inclusive stay, the minimum you can do is a couple of drinks. To be very clear, this was specific to the bartenders and servers at the bar. All the other personal was extremely nice.

Overall not a bad experience. The resort is well organized, the food wasn't bad and the pools and kids entertainment are nice as well. Regardless, i can't give more than 3 stars simply because of how rude the bartenders are. Always serving you as if you're bothering them. You cannot ask anything outside a gin tonic, beer and any other drink that is already premade in their cointainers (be advised, extremely sweet all of them). If you ask for a proper drink to be made on the spot they will deny to do it. One of them even trew her hands in the air, walked away and called her supervisor, just so he could tell us, like we were kids, they won't do it (the drink was on the menu). We were never obnoxious, drunk or unpolite - this behavior was accross multiple service points, and over 10-15 people in a week's time. In this specific situation we resorted to ask the ingredients to be served seperatly and made the mojito right in front of them, that's how ridiculous it was.
I understand you might not be allowed to serve items outside the menu, or everybody would simply rush and ask for the craziest cocktails, but still, just have some deciency to have a sign or be polite explainning it. People are paying an all inclusive stay, the minimum you can do is a couple of drinks. To be very clear, this was specific to the bartenders and servers at the bar. All the other personal was extremely nice.