Wellington Hotel

Always glad to come back in this hotel, everything as always, impeccable. A little bit colder at the check in than usual, but youngest ones need a bit more of training. Christmas decorations at the entrance and at the lobby were magic as always. The room was perfect, the breakfast was a little down in the sweets department with respect to what I remember, a display of fresh home made cakes and plum cakes. Check out smooth and easy and the door - man outside smiling and genuinely welcoming and polite as always. Thank you and see you very soon 🩷

We booked 2 nights directly with the hotel, rather than through Booking.com etc. However, don't expect that to generate any goodwill with the management. Let's start with the positives first. The breakfast was excellent and my wife thought worth returning just for that, however...see below. Dinner was also quite nice in the lobby and the service both times was good. If you are English you may note that waiters at breakfast are not as fluent as in other towns and cities in Spain. We quite liked that as we are trying to learn the language and don't get much chance in other areas. Now to the room. We had a a superior twin. The view of the swimming pool area wasn't the best. The bed was comfy and the bedding was good. However, the bathroom was pretty poor and well below the supposed 5 star status. The shower had poor pressure even after toggling the head and a challenge for my wife's longer hair. Made more difficult as nowhere to anchor the shower attachment during use so having to hold between legs to apply shampoo etc. The marble floor and sinks, shower cubicle etc were estimated to be c40 years old with the gold plating on taps and handles worn down to the base metal below. It was difficult to know what was complimentary apart from tea and coffee (probably nothing else, not even any biscuits!). We recommend that you bring extra tea cups with you as there was only one in the room so we had our drinks in turn using the one cup! We had to return to the UK a day earlier than booked and gave notice on the second night's stay early the evening before. The reception after management referral was unable to offer a refund or discount due to it being 'company policy.' We asked for some discretion which was rejected by the front of house manager. After booking direct and saving the owners a margin on use of agencies they could not offer any gesture to us to compensate for the the cost of the unused second night, or even the cost of breakfast . A little bit mean we think but perhaps indicative of the hotel's attitude. Perhaps, given the state of the rooms, it needs our money more than we do. We'll book elsewhere next time but perhaps come back for breakfast.

The hotel was beautiful, and the location was excellent. Service in the restaurant and tea room was delightful. We were very disappointed to learn that the pool was closed for the season, though we had confirmed it would be open when we made our reservation. The concierges were mostly very helpful.

The one star is for the communication (or lack of) of the hotel with its clients. We did not get to stay in the hotel for the reasons below so I can not rate the premises. We booked an Executive room in this hotel because of its location and because it promotes itself as pet friendly, and we travel with a Siberian cat. Within a few minutes I got a confirmation email of the reservation. Everything ok up to this point. Well, except for a small detail. I am used to get an exact copy of the information given in the reservation form in the confirmation. In this hotel this was not the case. I wrote in the comments field of the reservation form that we are travelling with a cat, to let the hotel know. The confirmation email I received did not include this comment. A day later my wife was looking at the hotel Instagram (I do not have Instagram so I had not looked before booking) and we notice that all the photos pretending to show that the hotel is pet friendly featured dogs. So we started wondering if "pet friendly" meant really just "dog friendly". In principle the hotel knows that we are travelling with a cat since I explicitly mentioned it in the reservation form, and the reservation was accepted and confirmed, but not wanting to have any trouble at check in time at the hotel if cats are not welcome, I decided to call the hotel to confirm. I call and the lady who answers the phone does not know but she puts me through to the reservations department. Indeed the phone rings, and rings and rings and after about half minute an answering machine kicks in telling me that the number I am calling does not answer (as if I had not realized) and that I should "try later" and the connection is cut. First little red flag: a 5-star hotel whose reservations department does not answer the phone? (it was 10am, not any odd hour). I call again about half hour later: the same drill, no answer and the "try later" message. The read flag was getting bigger. I decide to write an email to the address of the reservations department shown in the website. I am travelling and I do not want to be calling repeatedly until the hotel deigns to answer .At the writing of this review, more than 24 hours later of my first attempt to contact the hotel, I have not received any answer to my email. And that was it for me. If a hotel, of any number of stars, can not communicate with a potential customer neither by phone or email in a reasonable time, I doubt it can run the facility efficiently. So we cancelled our reservation and took our business to other hotel. Just as comparison, I called four other 5-star hotels in Madrid after cancelling this reservation and in ALL of them the person who answered the phone could answer my question directly. In less than a minute I could know if the hotel accepted cats or not, without the need to be put through any other department or any waiting time. I also contacted a 4-star hotel by email and I got an answer within two hours. I think Wellington really screw it this time.

This hotel apparently had a long standing reputation for luxury, and high value guests, however, things certainly appear to have significantly changed for the worse. The reception staff were extremely rude, and bordering on aggressive and obstructive. The lady, at the desk, the first point of contact, refused to assist me with joining the iPrefer programme or adopt the pricing on the hotel's own website. Walking into the bedroom was like going back in time. The room is in desperate need of not only basic maintenance, but complete renovation. I know not how the hotel gets away with charging the rates it does. The woodwork was rotten and had simply been painted over. The plastic baby pink bath was from the 1970s and the waste did not work so I had to stand in used water to shower. The over head shower was covered in filthy limescale. No one answered the telephone when I got out of the shower to request a visit from maintenance. The bathroom mirror got so steamed up, I had to wait an hour to get ready. There were no other mirrors anywhere in the room which is frankly an astonishing state of affairs for a five star hotel. I specifically requested a quiet room and got no sleep whatsoever. All I could hear through the night was noise from above, and below, Doors constantly crashed closed. Don't be fooled by the photographs. The spa/ pool area bears no resemblance to reality. You walk out onto fake astro turf and have to be careful not to walk into a roof lantern. The pool is something you may see in a public park, rather than a supposedly high end hotel. The primary purpose of staying in a hotel is to get a good night's sleep and I left more tired than when I arrived. When I raised my concerns with the male receptionist he simply sneered at me. Calls to reception about the noise during the night went unanswered. The ethos of this hotel appears to be to treat its customers with absolute contempt which is utterly shameful.