The hotel is in a lovely location,the swimming pool over looking the sea made it for us! It is huge!!! even at 3 in the afternoon you have only a few people in the pool and thats in August! breakfast great variety however more staff needed about that goes for everything service at lunch evening drinks very slow!!

entertainment cringy o.k but only a handfull of guests felt sorry for the acts every evening.would be better with a disco.

we will be back as fantastic hotel,pool,we stayed in a suite it was lovely with terrace leading to pool.very clean

Hotel was relativley clean although attention to detail was overlooked, e.g thick dust, hair etc under the beds. food was excellent, not repeated like we thought it would be. in a good picturesqe location, but a dirty, out dated town. reception staff very rude, had a few problems with one of our rooms. staff were informed on day 3, told to leave it with them, we did and nothing was done about it. the animation team were excellent!!! our kids loved them. I would visit this hotel again if some staff were given training on being polite and helpful. also if they did'nt water down all the fresh fruit juices.

This was our third trip to Tunisia; first to this four star hotel.

On arriving at the hotel mid afternoon were given a key to our room. After a very long walk to the room we found that the room was not what we had booked, had no balcony or terrace.

Receptionist apologised and gave us a ground floor room with balcony that faced a path with no view.

The room was clean but in need of updating. Bathroom was clean but needed a new bathroom suite. Towels had a musty smell to them.

The hotel as a whole for a 4 star needed a refurbishment ie. a good clean, paint and modernising.

There was a damp smell along our corridor.

Having been to a four star hotel last year in Tunisia we expected the food to be of a similar standard. How wrong we were!!! The breakfasts were the worst. You could have cabbage, chicken, boiled potatoes along with other non-descript food. They did do nice crepes and omelettes. The pool bar and beach bar did nice meals at lunchtime. Evening meals had some decent food some nights and then other nights struggled to find anything. I think parents with young children would struggle to find a suitable meal.

We had an excellent meal in the Italian restaurant.

The pool area was cramped and in high season could imagine it being unbearable with too many people for such a small pool area.

The entertainment team were excellent and worked hard - day and night. The night time shows were very good.

Excellent hotel cant fault any of it if your planning a all in holiday go to the hemera you will enjoy it.

We went to the beach club. Very good Hotel. Went on the Sunday before easter Sunday stayed for 1 week and we all wished we could have stayed longer we had been there before but the children haven't so we thought it would be a good place for them. They are snooker fans and pool so they loved the snooker table because it was

Have stayed at Marinha Dourada for the last 7 years for 2 months. Would not stay anywhere else! Cleanliness is excellent. Staff cannot do enough for you. There is entertainment every night. Depends what you like.Only problem is breakfast. We have watched the MD get bigger and bigger with no extra facilities for breakfast which can get a bit hectic. I am sure the staff appreciate this and will sort it out by next season. The setting of the hotel is between two lagoons, and is beautiful.A little bit out of the town,which can be an advantage. There are many taxis outside if you need to travel. The same people go back year after year. It is so good.

The position of the hotel on the marina is wonderful and as you would expect the food was fantastic. One night there was even a small whole roasted pig on the heated range.

The hotel was a disgrace. We arrived early hours of the morning and had to face a long que of people trying to book in which took 3 hours.

We then woke up and went downstairs for breakfast, this wasnt too bad but for luch we had egg mayonaise sandwiches and found a fly in betwwen the bread,lovely!!! We noticed that the rooms had cockroches in and smelt damp.

All the local people living here called Palm Court 'Faulty towers' thats how bad it is ask any local down on the front.

This has been the worst hotel i have ever stayed in before and would not go back there again. Ever.

I am a travel agent and although you may think I get a better deal or I am biased, I am not - this is my holiday too and we pay just like everyone else!!

We stayed in the Botel for 4 nights only.

We arrived by car and found the receptionist extremely helpful as we rang for directions 4 or 5 times! The hotel car park was a small amount of euros per day and there were plently of spaces available.

Upon checking into the hotel staff were pleasant and courteous.

We had booked a suite for a special occasion and I couldn't have been more impressed. Very large bedroom area with 2 king size beds. Clean immaculate bathroom but the best bit was a glorious balcony.

It was twice the size of any other balcony we could see and it overlooked the harbour and gardens. It was kitted out with table and 2 chairs and 2 sunloungers too.

The only down side was we could see into everyone on the lower ground's rooms from our balcony and when the curtains aren't drawn you really can see everything!!!

The hotel has its own private section of beach, yet only 2 minutes walk from the main beach.

The pool area looked fab, although we are beach people.
The only negative but we expected it was when eating lunch in the hotel it was rather expensive.

Breakfast however had a wide variety, no queues and suited everyone.

Highly recommend.

I was part of a group of travel agents sent to inspect First Choice's Holiday Village - Costa del Sol. In fairness to the hotel as it opened in early May 2004 we wanted to give the hotel a few months to work out the normal opening problems. We visited the hotel over the course of one week in mid July 2004. Additionnally we did not tell the hotel that we were agents as we wanted to get an unbiased view.

The following are excerpts from the report, but cover the main aspects of the issues of the hotel. First Choice is a large UK based travel oriented company. They have several Mediterranean destinations and have a very good marketing and customer service departments. In short you get good value for your money with First Choice under most circumstances.

The Holiday Village - Costa del Sol hotel is a V shaped building. Inside the rooms are tastfully done and the lobby and restaurants are all quite nice. The service has some teething problems but overall what was to be expected for a 3 month old hotel of this caliber.

However as this is southern Spain most of our activities were oriented towards being outside and here is where (in our opinion as professional travel agents) real problems occur. As mentionned before, the hotel is constructed in a V shape and the building is more or less oriented towards the south. However on the south side of the hotel is a carriageway about 10 meters away and on the north side along one wing and only 20 meters away is a rail track. I want to repeat this. An entire wing of this brand new hotel has been built paralell to an active railroad and if you are on this wing your room will overlook this railroad. We did some investigation on the rail service and found that there are four trains per hour that pass by the hotel. They start at 06:30am and go to 23:59 (midnite). Every 15 minutes a train passes by your room. And the local government is planning on adding another track in the next couple of years to increase service.

On the south side of the hotel is a motorway that is one of the main routes along the southern coast of Spain. Make no mistake about it; this road is a major heavily traveled one with with, buses,trucks and very load motorcycles passing by at all hours. Again the hotel is only about 10 meters away from this road and about 5 meters above it on a small hill. In fact to get to the "Beach Club" from the hotel one has to walk accross this road on a small steel foot bridge. It just wasnt very pleasant. Additionallywhile swimming, resting on sun beds, you areright next to the road, so truck drivers, buses and anyone walking by is staring at you.Who wants to spend time next to a pool on holiday whith all this commotion just a few feet away. Every time you wanted to go the "Beach Club" from your room one had to cross the carriageway on this steel bridge. Remember we were supposed to be on a Mediterranean holiday, not crossing a busy street in London.

In the evenings the hotel has an outdoor theater and provides entertainment from about 8pm untill midnight. However the location of the entertainment area bewildered us. Behind the stage about 15 meters away was the railroad track (with the passing trains) and behind us (the audience) and only 5 meters away was the carriageway. Again all this is outdoors so there are no sound barriers between the audience and the road or railroad. It was very annoying to hear the trains and trucks buses,etc pass by continually. An outdoor entertainment area built between a railroad and a carriageway just does not make sense.

The "Beach Club" is in name only, there is no beach nor any one close to this hotel. The "Beach Club" is a pool and food service area built accoss the carrigeway from the hotel that overlooks the sea.

We as the inspection group concluded the First Choice really "blew it" on this hotel and the problem is the location. We cant figure out why a very market savvy and customer oriented company built a resort hotel in such a location. It is just too close to the rail tracks and carriageway. Its noisey and just plain unpleasant. And they plan on building 6 more hotels right next door "in the very near future." So guests will also have to deal with the noise and dust etc of construction.

First Choice is offering a lot of incentives to go to this hotel as they have invested millions of Euros in the project. Their travel brochures are very lovely but do not show the road nor rail tracks. The vacationner should be made aware that this hotel is not recommended by travel agents who have visited the site.