| | El Jable, Callao Salvaje, Tenerife, 38678, Spain
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Overall Community Rating: |   5.9 (based on 6 user reviews) |
 Ocean Club: 2nd holiday 3rd coming up by Hilary Rippard |
| Posted 15 January 2008 about a visit in December 2007 | Overall rating: 10.0 |
we had aholiday week before xmas.We also had a holiday at ocean club in 2006.Both holidays were very good, the hotel was being refurbished and getting a good facelift. although there was a lot of work taking place,the noise and mess were kept to minimum.The food was adequate and fair choice,the staff were very friendly and helpful and nothing was to much trouble.There were a number of people complaining about anything and everything they could and railroading guests to complain .My husband and myself had nothing to complain about at all.Our room was spotless and towels changed daily.The pool area was clean and tidy,as we were there the week prior to xmas there was probably about twenty of us.It was beautiful ,so quiet,good place to relax.The entertainment was satisfactory,van and hayley did there utmost to keep people amused, and they work very hard.We will be going back at xmas for the third time for 2 weeks.Iwouldnt hesitate to recommend it.
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 Ocean Club Reservations |
| Ocean Club: No problems!!! by Cher Pearce |
| Posted 30 August 2005 about a visit in June 2005 | Overall rating: 9.0 |
We have just had a really lovely week at the Ocean Club. Food was good staff were polite and helpful , our apartment was clean and was serviced every other day. We had a problem with the plug not fitting our bath and within half an hour the maintainence guy was there with a new one.The pool was clean and the sun loungers were fairly easy to get hold of. The holiday reps were really helpful and friendly. The entertainment bar was a bit bleak with plastic chairs and tables and the entertainment itself was a bit naff. The only real disappointment was that there was no kids club as was advertised on the website. I would definitely go back there again. We all had a lovely week.
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| Ocean Club Reservations |
| Ocean Club: Living Hell by Mark Atkinson 1 |
| Posted 30 August 2005 about a visit in November 2003 | Overall rating: 3.5 |
Absolutely the worst holliday in our life. Dirty and poorly maintained apartments, lack of security, better entertainment at the local punch and judy show.
Hoards of drunken adults and teenagers who ran riot, throwing stones from balconies, urinating onto the ground floor from above, kept awake every night by noise and kids running up and down fire escapes whilst the parents got blind drunk.
Not for any family who want a serious holliday.
Pool not heated, plastic chairs in entertainment lounge, acts were stars in their eyes failures. Only good act was comedy duo called biitter and twisted.
Guests actually left without unpacking and the reps walked out on Christmas Eve because they had had enough. In process of court action.
We flew home 1 week early as did many others.
Best of British to anyone who goes there.
We went for xmas/new year 2003/2004.
finally sorted this mess out by winning £5400 in small claims court, so i say to anyone who faces the same believe in yourself and dont give in, fight to the bitter end, oh and by the way i defended myself saving a further £600 in barristers fees. go on go for it
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| Ocean Club Reservations |
| Ocean Club: Look before you leap...unless you are a backpacker. by Tom Johnson |
| Posted 24 January 2005 about a visit in December 2004 | Overall rating: 6.7 |
It is possible for this hotel to be loved or loathed. Perhaps I can sum this situation up. Before you book this hotel stop and think what sort of person you are, and what sort of hotel you are expecting for your money. If you shop at Debenhams then you would NOT want to go to this hotel. However, if you love Poundland then it MAY be worth considering and you could end up enjoying it. Decide where you would lie in between these 2 extreme examples as an initial guide.
In my opinion the hotel begins to make sense if you can book the accommodation and flight from UK for £300 or less for a weeks all inclusive stay. The pricing is definitely dynamic here for a Jan 2005 stay: 2 adults + 1 child booked 6 months in advance for £1500 total for 2 weeks all inclusive. I paid £600 for 2 adults for 1 week all inclusive. One elderly couple paid £820 for 2 weeks all inclusive. Another couple paid just £458 for 1 weeks all inc through contacts in the travel industry. I heard a self catering last minute booker got upgraded on the coach on the way to the hotel and ended up paying just £150 for 1 weeks all inclusive!
The hotel has some strengths but also serious drawbacks. If you can put up with the drawbacks then you can enjoy the strengths, otherwise you will wish you never came.
Strengths:
The public areas such as reception, swimming pool, dining room and evening entertainment area are quite spacious.
Plenty of good padded sun loungers around the pool. Sunbathing facilities on the roof top (some cracked glass partitions are a cosmetic flaw here). Pool is a fair size and in good condition.
The food is perhaps 3 star in quality and is generally good , although it could do with being a little hotter at times. There is a lone microwave which guests sometimes queue at to warm the food up a little. Overall there is enough variation and quality to keep most UK people happy, and a few additional trays of choice tailored for children. The catering seems to receive the most hotel management attention.
Beer was quite good actually, and plenty of spirits / soft drinks (wine was poor though).
The hotel is situated in a fairly quiet resort compared to the likes of Playa Americas. There is some traffic along the front road, and very little around the other sides of the hotel. This helps if you want a quieter type of holiday from a traffic perspective.
Cheery / happy-go-lucky people atmosphere overall.
Weaknesses:
There are 2 major building sites within a stone’s throw of the hotel. The first with its huge rusty crane and concrete shell of 2 and a half built storeys will ruin the sea view from 1 side of the hotel. The site was thankfully dormant during my stay but could jump into action at any time. I counted myself lucky. The second site, nearer the pool, has some minor work going on during my stay and was relatively unobtrusive but is no where near finished yet.
The hotel is now out of date and in need of modernisation. The lack of investment gives rise to many flaws especially in the accommodation section.
Personally, the room was perhaps the dustiest I have ever encountered in a hotel. The dusty shelves in the wardrobe never got used - my girlfriend and I preferred to keep our clothes in our suitcases. There was a considerable layer of dust on the wooden headboard above the bed. The floor had hairs and dust that tended to acculmulate on your footwear and in the corners against the walls. Dust was piled high underneath the beds. Simply awful and unacceptable no matter what the hotel star rating. There was a layer of significant dust leading up the wooden panelling above the bed lamp shade. The lamp shade itself was stained. There was a squashed bloodied fly to greet us next to the wardrobe mirrors. Perhaps the room had been assigned a bad cleaner that month, who knows, but there’s obviously no management / supervisor quality control going on to catch this out.
The bed covers smelt of sweat, and to a lesser extent the pillows. This is what really turned me off about the room and marred the holiday. Again totally unacceptable for any star rating. Given there is no air conditioning it is not suprising that people can sweat in their rooms especially during the summer. The bed covers should have been washed rather than sprinkled with some chemical freshner as the cleaners seem to do.
The 14” TV runs on a 1 Euro for 60 mins viewing via the side coin slot and has no remote control. The channels vary in volume and that means you have to keep getting up to adjust it manually. You’ll get Sky News, BBC World, CNN, CNBC, 3 kids cartoon channels, sometimes Sky One / BBC 1, plus a few Spanish channels. The lack of remote and Pay TV won’t bother you if you don’t watch TV on holiday, but if it rains or if you want to relax in front of the box it’ll get on your nerves.
The bathroom was grimy. The grout between the tiles had gone a muggy grey with dirt especially around the shower area. The shower curtain had some mud on it when we arrived and black hairs on the shower hose. Yeuch. Some of the chrome finishings were shades of greyish green in places especially in drainage areas. I would not put my toothbrush into the toothbrush holder in case I caught something.
The small catering work surface had cupboards that were all out of alignment and nearing the end of their useful life. Not a major flaw if you’re on an all inc holiday but just another example of this hotel’s culture.
The balcony door lock/latch was unusable and failed to lock (a recurring theme judging from other reviews on the internet). This would have been a serious problem if we had kids with us. I wasn’t too fussed from a security angle as this was on the 1st floor. The patio door frame looked like it had been replaced, and the door itself had been curiously forced from the inside (rather than outside).
The ceiling and walls looked as if they’d been repainted with matt paint in the last couple of years and so were generally acceptable - if you like an AA Car Recovery yellow scheme that is. The doors and frames could do with a lick of new gloss paint. The fridge is grubby and old.
Don’t expect any temperature control in the room other than natural ventilation. In January it is possible for Tenerife to get cold at night so you may find the room too cold for your liking. We switched on the electric cooker hobs to warm the room a little but would not leave them on throughout the night as we didn’t trust the electrics. Of course there is no air conditioning which we expected. I would not consider booking the hotel for the summer because of this even if Tenerife is known to have a mild climate. You’d have to leave the balcony patio doors open for ventilation and be prone to noise / security issues during the night.
The hotel clientel – now this is trickier to review. Perhaps 95% UK people. The hotel attracts many elderly couples that are generally a joy to speak to, cheerful, well behaved and a shining example to some of the younger generations. In contrast some younger families don’t care if their kids are screaming their heads off after midnight and jumping up and down on their hotel beds. The budget pricing of this hotel may attract the living ethics of a rundown council estate – beware. Be prepared for people returning back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning, shouting, laughing, slamming doors and having sex. If you’re one of them then it’s not a problem I suppose! The doors slam particulary loudly, like shot guns and echo down the long hard corridors as there are no carpets / soft furnishings to soak up the reverberations. The gaps around the room doors are not sound insulated in any way so you’ll know if anything is going on in the middle of the night, and on the a windy night the wind will whistle down through the gaps like a banshee.
The evening entertainment goes on until around 11.30pm in a dark and dank hall in the basement of the hotel that looks like a retired workers club. The entertainment itself is classic Butlins style, which won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but can actually be very good at times with acts such as comedians and knife thrower. Plenty of karaoke singing and bingo type of entertainment. A lot of the acts come in and rely on the audience to tip them / pay for photos / contribute to a charity to make it worth their while. The reps are hard working and do quite a good job doubling up as entertainers.
Whilst it is your choice whether you attend this hall, and you can have quite a laugh doing so, the downside is that you will hear it resonate throughout the hotel every night because of the loudspeaker system. If you have an early morning flight back or have booked a morning excursion the next day then you may have problems getting any early shut eye.
The evening bar in the entertainment hall is overall quite good. However, one Spanish waitress will shake the tips tray vigorously (which is actually half a fan mesh cover hanging from the ceiling) when you walk up to the bar to encourage you to give a tip. If you do give a tip, she rattles the dispensing spirit bottles together to make a clang in public - in effect announcing that you have given a tip. This is funny and curious at first, but rude and intimidating later.
The colour paint schemes are a bit loud in places, and could do with being toned down to more pastel shades. It’ll be fine however if you like bright orange and red schemes in the dining area, but for me it just made the place look cheap rather than attempting any sort of class image.
There is a strange smell of medicated detergent around the hotel, most notably in the accommodation hall ways. This stems from the cleaning fluids that the cleaners use to mop the floor. Sorry Ocean Club / First Choice, but it makes the place smell like a communist hospital for days after the cleaning stops. The complimentary soap in the bathroom whiffs of the same stuff so if you do stay here bring your own soap etc. You’ll build some tolerance to the smell after a couple of days exposure to it. It is rather like Dettol.
First Impressions:
Before I forget - when you pull up outside the hotel my first impression was that it was a sizeable hotel but that it looked somewhat neglected. The front grounds were covered with plenty of weeds and the plastic neon cover was missing on the letter N in Ocean Club. Two outhouses infront of the hotel had complete corners missing off their tiled roofs. I was worried what lay inside from these early warnings. The swimming pool had middle of the road pop songs being played over the pool speaker system at a fair volume so make sure you like this sort of set up.
The reception hall is large, old, but generally clean like most of the hotels public areas. The sofas here are pretty knackered and sun faded. Sit on one and you’ll sink really low to the ground!
The receptionist(s) are OK, but you get the impression sometimes you are troubling / bothering them when you ask a question. They’ll never say “Can I help you?” if you are near the reception. You have to catch their attention. It's the ocassional bad example of Spanish employee culture, and it won’t just be unique to this hotel. Some waiters are cheerful and smiley, some waitresses seem as if they long to be elsewhere with their long faces.
Going out:
There’s only a couple of streets in a T shape, with some reasonable looking restaurants and bars within 5 minutes walk. The coastline is just a few steps further and you sit on some benches and admire the cliffs and sea but forget about any beach/sand. Costa Adeje / Playas Americas further down the coast offers nice beach facilities and nightlife so be prepared to travel if you get bored. The “Freebird” whale sightseeing cruise was probably my best day out in Tenerife if you can catch it whilst the weather is good and you don’t get sea sick – highly recommended.
WARNING: Don’t get pestered into any holiday accommodation by a girl hawking scratch cards near the money exchange place near the hotel itself. She’s a very good saleswoman and will claim you’ve won some free ice cream and then a camcorder/euros/free holiday accommodation. I smelt a rat and dismissed her within a few minutes.
Conclusion:
Whilst you’ve probably gathered by now that I won’t go back to this particular hotel, you may also see that I hold a balanced view. I do understand why certain people will return to the hotel year after year and thrive in its environment. You just have to work out whether you are that type of person and whether you want to play Russian roulette with the cleanliness of your room. If you’re an accountant you’ll be saving your money to go elsewhere perhaps, if you’re a trucker you could be in for a good laugh. If you’re an elderly couple on a budget you might think it’s quite a good deal but have to put up with some of the younger folk at times. If you’re a family that likes to have a drink and keep the kids up late then it’ll work for you probably too. If you’re a group of lads/girls then other resorts will have the better action. Sorry about the stereo-typing here but I’m just trying to get the overall impression across. A holiday maybe what you make it…but I couldn’t magic myself a better room once here. I’ve stayed in 2 star accommodation plenty of times before without the hassles. I loved Tenerife but I missed my clean and fresh bedroom back home. First Choice should take this hotel off their list until the rooms are revamped. It’s damaging their brand name. In the mean time, where ever you go…happy holidays and enjoy Tenerife.
Final rating:
Food, pool and other public facilities is 3 star at best.
Accomodation is 1 star at best unless the hotel changes it’s accommodation cleaning quality control policy and updates it’s old fixtures and fittings.
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| Ocean Club Reservations |
| Ocean Club: ocean club by Craig Caine |
| Posted 22 November 2004 about a visit in September 2004 | Overall rating: 2.5 |
Well what can i say but it was hell not worth the money we paid £1400 it was hell i can tell you STAY AWAY it will damage your life afters//we went last year couldnt fault it at all well worth every penny but this year well first the food you could not eat the slop it was realy that bad next the room well sheets changed once in 10 days then on last day changed again ///then the night entertainment well god what a load of pigs swill that was singing singing and singing for the hold 2 weeks it was like 2 cats fighting realy that bad well now its up 2 you if you book this holiday from hell but after what ive said i hope you dont
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| Ocean Club Reservations |
| Ocean Club: Ocean club aka Stalag 17 by Sue Worrall |
| Posted 01 June 2004 | Overall rating: 4.0 |
we have just returned from a fortnight in this hotel, if you can call it that. We saw cocroaches dirt and plaster hanging off everywhere. You're forced out of lounge reception and anywhere else at 12pm you have to have your drink put into a paper cup. Last orders are 11.45 you're given 15 mins to finish and they are harassing you all time flashing the lights on and off and cleaning up right around you.
The food is unhealthy no brown bread no yogurts no adults cereal. It's repeatative and not very nice at all. We spent £500 eating out because we could not stand the food. The drinks are watered down. The snacks are left out in the open for the birds to feed off.
Its full of kids who are allowed to run riot while the parents get lashed.
Couples are treated like second class citizens.
Good luck if you want to go here!
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