Bahia del Duque

Spent a week at this amazing hotel with my partner and we both loved the destination and the whole resort. The hotel was built like a Canarian village style and was beautifully laid out. There are lots of pools, courtyard areas and places to relax and a wonderful spa, although we didn’t use the spa. This complex is immaculately clean and the rooms are amazing, we paid a little extra for a sea view. There is constant maintenance on this massive complex (pool cleaning, pressure washing etc) but considering the resort is 30 odd years old it’s not surprising to see a few places that are showing their age but this had no effect on our holiday, and neither did the maintenance which wasn’t ever noisy. The resort is very quiet and a bit detached from bars and nightlife but actually it isn’t really a problem. We used the 467 bus that runs every 20 minutes to Playa De Las Americas and Los Christiania and it’s a 20 odd minutes ride for €1:50 per person. We spent the day time around the extensive pool areas where there is no issue finding your preferred sun bed location with Adult only and Family areas, and the pools are lovely. Our afternoons tended to be spent at the pool bar where Sarka looked after us very well and was a lovely friendly person and was excellent at her job and very good with all customers and made us feel very welcome. All the staff were friendly and gave excellent service. The pool bar is reasonably priced but as expected it is around double the price of a local bar. I.e. €6 a beer which isn’t bad for a 5 star hotel. Things to note: The resort is on the West side of Costa Adeje and about 10 minutes walk to the nearest bar and restaurant area which is the Dukes shopping centre. Great Indian (Bombay Babu), Thai (Yum Yum) and Chinese (Slow Boat) and other restaurants are there along with the Anchor Irish bar which is lovely and reasonably priced. €3 for a Dorada beer. Secondly note that the extensive restaurants on the resort are quite expensive and men are required to wear long trousers. We decided to use off site restaurants which were excellent and since I didn’t have any long trousers! There are a lot of steep steps in the resort complex and good mobility is fairly essential to fully enjoy the complex as the surrounding area is quite hilly.

We left early because the condition of this supposed five-star resort was unacceptable – families should look carefully at the photos before booking I have thought carefully about writing this review because Bahia del Duque has an excellent reputation and is marketed as one of Tenerife’s leading luxury hotels. Unfortunately, our experience was so poor that we ultimately left the hotel before the end of our stay. That is not something we have ever done lightly on a holiday. We had booked Bahia del Duque expecting a genuine five-star experience. Instead, we found a hotel with such a large number of maintenance, cleanliness and safety concerns that, after repeatedly raising issues during our stay, we no longer felt comfortable remaining there. I would particularly urge families with young children to look carefully through the photographs attached to this review and make their own judgement. Some of what we encountered went far beyond a hotel simply being a little dated. One of my biggest concerns was the condition of electrical installations and equipment around guest areas. We photographed electrical cabinets/panels that appeared open or readily accessible, including installations positioned at a height that could easily be reached by a child. In a family resort, that concerned us enormously. Small children do not understand that they should not touch an open cabinet, cable, switch, damaged fitting or piece of equipment. They explore things. They put their hands into gaps. They run around pool areas barefoot and wet. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect electrical equipment in publicly accessible areas of a five-star family hotel to be properly enclosed, secured and maintained. We also saw cables and electrical equipment around poolside areas. Again, I am not an electrician and I am not claiming to make a technical assessment of the installation, but as a guest looking at an exposed extension lead and a speaker covered in a towel for protection next to a pool where people are swimming, it was deeply concerning. There were numerous other potential hazards throughout the resort. We photographed broken sun loungers with exposed and protruding bolts. A guest sitting down without noticing could easily catch themselves on one. A child climbing or playing around a lounger could potentially be injured by it. We found damaged and uneven paving, broken surfaces and areas where drainage covers or surrounding surfaces appeared damaged or displaced. Again, think about what that means in practice in a resort full of families: children running around, guests walking in sandals, people moving between pools with wet feet, elderly guests and people walking at night. A five-star hotel should be actively identifying and rectifying hazards like these before guests encounter them. The pool areas were particularly disappointing. During our stay the main swimming pool was closed for a period due to what we were told was a technical issue. The appearance of the water was extremely poor and we photographed murky water and debris. We also saw rubbish within pool areas, including what appeared to be discarded plasters. Around the pools we encountered broken or poorly maintained loungers, dirty or abandoned towels, used glasses and bottles and other signs that, to us, suggested the area was simply not being maintained to the standard we would expect. There were also parasols with significant visible staining and what appeared to us to be mould or mildew. None of these things in isolation would necessarily ruin a holiday. The problem was that there were so many of them. Every time we walked around the resort we seemed to notice something else: damaged fixtures, deterioration, poorly maintained areas, broken surfaces, drainage issues, neglected equipment or something that simply did not belong in a hotel operating at this supposed level. Our room had its own problems. The air conditioning was ineffective, which made the room uncomfortable in Tenerife’s heat. We experienced repeated gurgling from the drainage system accompanied by an unpleasant sewage-like smell. The water temperature in the shower also fluctuated considerably and at times became extremely hot. Again, one maintenance problem can happen anywhere. What concerned us was the accumulation of problems both inside our room and throughout the wider property. Even areas such as the spa, which you would expect to represent the very best of a luxury hotel, showed visible signs of deterioration. We raised concerns while we were staying at the hotel. We did not simply come home and decide afterwards that we had been unhappy. We spent a significant amount of our holiday speaking to people, photographing problems and trying to get issues resolved. We were offered solutions to individual problems, such as changing room or using alternative facilities, but by that stage our concern was no longer about one room, one broken lounger or one pool. It was the overall condition of the hotel. We simply did not feel that moving to another room would address what we were seeing throughout the resort. Eventually we made the decision to leave Bahia del Duque altogether and continue our holiday elsewhere. For us, that says everything. We had paid to stay in what is promoted as one of Tenerife’s premier luxury hotels. We had no desire to disrupt our own holiday, pack our belongings again and move resorts partway through a short trip. We left because we genuinely felt the experience and condition of the hotel were bad enough that remaining there would spoil the rest of our holiday. What makes all of this especially disappointing is the huge contrast between the image Bahia del Duque sells and what we experienced. The property is undeniably impressive architecturally. The gardens can be beautiful. There are areas that photograph extremely well, and I can understand why someone arriving and walking through the grounds for an hour might initially think it is wonderful. But luxury is not just attractive architecture. It is maintenance. It is cleanliness. It is ensuring broken equipment is removed. It is making sure potentially hazardous installations are inaccessible to guests. It is inspecting sun loungers so guests are not sitting beside exposed screws. It is maintaining paving and drainage. It is ensuring swimming pools and surrounding areas are properly looked after. And, particularly in a resort welcoming families, it is recognising that something positioned at an adult’s waist height may be directly at a child’s eye and hand level. That is why I am uploading photographs alongside this review. I do not want anyone simply to take my word for it. Look at them and decide for yourself whether what they show is consistent with what you would expect from a five-star luxury hotel. For anyone travelling with children, I would look at them particularly carefully. Children run around. They touch things. They do not notice uneven paving. They do not understand why they should stay away from an electrical cabinet. Parents should be able to relax at a luxury family resort without having to constantly scan their surroundings for poorly maintained equipment or potential hazards. Hotels sometimes have maintenance problems and we are realistic enough to understand that. No property is perfect and we would never leave a review like this because of a cracked tile, an old piece of furniture or one faulty air-conditioning unit. This was different. It was the scale and variety of the issues, combined with the fact that we continued discovering them around the property, that destroyed our confidence in the hotel. Ultimately, we voted with our feet and left. I would not return to Bahia del Duque based on the condition we personally experienced during this stay, and I could not recommend it to friends or family. If you are considering booking, especially if you are travelling with young children, please look beyond the promotional photographs and look closely at the photographs attached to this review before making your decision.

I had the good fortune to stay in this beautiful hotel for six nights with my two teenage girls and my ten year old son . We stayed in the villas attached to the hotel and it was gorgeous. The staff are absolutely above and beyond and made our stay very enjoyable. The cleaners did an amazing job and the waitress’s at the pool bar a so lovely. we visited Kenzi Trattoria Upalupa and the Brasserie and we also ate out in La Caletta one evening at a restaurant called Troque . We had a fabulous dining experience at all the restaurants. The food and service was excellent. We love the wonderful location of the hotel with all the gorgeous shops and the beach on the doorstep. My ten year old l loved all the wildlife. The turtle pool, the beautiful swan and the goose were such fun to visit. We also adored seeing one or two sweet little cats. We spent our time relaxing between the villas pool and the resort pools. We are returning in December and can’t wait! Thank you for a fantastic stay Bahia.

Getting extremely tired lots of areas falling plaster and corniches, no oaths at the steps to get lower and ruins your expensive shoes should be closed off Food brasserie amazing Sua kinda rushed Trattoria not good service don’t care when we said about seafood linguine not having any sea food just shrugged and said ok Housekeeping hit and miss and we booked sea view suite and always lovely service previously not sure now it’s a new owner the attention to detail is as good and a few other guests also mentioned it’s gone down and won’t be coming back which is a shame as we have been coming years Very sad but GF Victoria provide a suite as a standard room and buffet is very good for a child friendly hotel high class so Bahia need to be careful as there’s lots on offer now

We have been to Tenerife for many years and always wanted to stay at the Bahia because of its gorgeous beach side location. The rooms are spacious- we were in the standard ones, and very well appointed with a coffee maker, Molton brown toiletries and bottles of water replaced every day. Unfortunately our towelling robes were falling apart and designed for very small people, we did get one replaced when we asked but really they should all be checked. I did laugh at the pillow menu - none of our three pillows were UK style and none of them were particularly comfortable, possibly could have requested a different style one. We enjoyed our little balcony, but our family member had a conservatory instead so I would request not to have that if coming back. Breakfast was excellent, loads of variety, unlimited smoked salmon and poached eggs available at the counter. It did get overly busy and on the first few days there was also an egg station outside, but this wasn’t available the rest of the week. There are lots of sun loungers and it was a nice touch that you don’t need a card to get towels. There are a number of different pools - the heated ones were still pretty darn cold, thank goodness it was August - and areas to relax, some days they would bring round fruit kebabs which was a lovely touch, no evidence of table service for drinks though . I enjoyed the aquarobics, gym, classes and water polo - the staff were excellent. Evening entertainment was also of a good standard although the burlesque type evening act seemed a bit raunchier than appropriate for a family setting. Volume was also not too loud - particularly children’s disco which is usually deafening elsewhere. We only ate at the Upalupa restaurant as I felt that most of the lunchtime options seemed too heavy, and we enjoy going out for dinner. The Upalupa (sp?) was good and in common with the rest of the Bahia del duque offering, had excellent service. Overall the Bahia Del Duque definitely lived up to our expectations. it’s not a modern style hotel more of a grand dame. The complex is quite sprawling with lovely grounds and it was a real hike up to our rooms, so unless you want to take a buggy or have a mobility scooter, it’s not ideal for poor walkers. Our favourite impression was how lovely and friendly every member of staff was to us.