Melia Dunas Beach Resort & Spa

We returned early Saturday morning from Sal after a wonderful 10 days there. I’ve previously posted about the fact that we stayed in the TUI Suneo Dunas rather than the Melia Dunas ( our booked hotel) due to no rooms being available in the latter. I’ve issued a complaint to TUI. Positives: The sunny weather, always a cooling breeze too. You can swim in the sea, especially within the areas guarded by breakwaters. You can snorkel there too. Lifeguards on duty too. Beautiful long beach. Wonderful sunsets. The gardens - they are immaculate and beautiful. Our room in the Suneo was big, comfortable and had all we needed. A la carte restaurants were good - Rancho was our favourite. Wide choice of food at buffets in Suneo & Melia. Lovely pools. Snack bar at Suneo is very good - hot food! A 5 min taxi ride to Santa Maria costing €5 each way of you can get the free bus - it was 20 mins late so we hit a taxi. Beautiful Botanical Garden - Viveiro nearby 10-15 min walk on main road. A green oasis with rescue animals. Well worth a visit! Negatives: The Suneo is a kilometre walk to the beach!! Staff at receptions at both hotels are very unhelpful and many don’t speak much English. Toilets behind the Gabi Bar at the beach are disgusting!! Other toilets are not good either. Service often very slow. Staff were often surly and disinterested! Despite our room issue we enjoyed our stay and a holiday is what you make it. Do get out and see the island. One of our highlights was the salt lake in the crater of an extinct volcano! Enjoy!

The hotel is classified as 5-star, but that rating seems questionable. The building is only 10 years old but poorly maintained. Railings are infested with woodworms, the stairs are dirty, the sofas in the reception area are both unclean and extremely worn out, broken swimming pool sunbeds and frayed pool towels. The staff is always very attentive but they appear unprepared for work in hospitality. There is a noticeable lack of proper management throughout the resort. Staff members seem to be doing their best but clearly lack strong leadership and guidance. Food hygiene needs significant improvement. For example, staff wear gloves when handling bread but use the same gloves to touch shared surfaces, compromising cleanliness. The fruit station was consistently full of flies and blowflies, which is unacceptable. The Food and Beverage manager seemed disengaged, as the buffet restaurant offered the same dishes throughout our 7-day stay. Additionally, the food was never served hot. Deserts that should be served cold, were at room-temperature. When we requested to reserve a table at the specialty restaurants, we were told they were fully booked. However, we were informed that if we paid an extra €50 per person per day for the VIP wristband, we would gain access, as they always reserve tables for VIP or “The Level” guests. Interestingly, whenever we passed by the specialty restaurants, we often saw only two or three tables occupied. On our hotel room, the living room TV was non-functional, only displaying the hotel system with no channels. After replacement, the issue persisted. Later, the bedroom TV also stopped working. There was no Wi-Fi coverage in the room, not even poor coverage—none at all. Despite raising this at the front desk twice, it was neither resolved nor communicated properly. The room cleanliness was not up to the standard expected of a 5-star hotel. Although we had a 'no cleaning necessary' sign on the door, it was evident that the room had not been properly cleaned beforehand and appeared to have been neglected for quite some time. Queues were longer than expected for services that typically don’t have such delays, like coffee, pool towels, toasted bread, and cooked eggs. I would also like to note that it seems the management often resorts to copy-pasting the same generic response to most reviews. This approach gives the impression that the feedback and complaints are not being genuinely considered or addressed. I encourage you to take a more personalized and thoughtful approach to responding to guests' concerns.

Our room was not ready on arrival, told it would be 30 mins, left in reception for an hour and a half. Room was not clean, lots of sticky marks on the floor, tired damage furnishings, curtains hanging off rails, shower screen missing rubber seal so bathroom flooded everytime the shower used and to top it all off a huge cockroach then appeared! Speaking to others this hotel has been downgraded to 3 star which isn’t what we booked or paid for. The bar and restaurant do not have enough glassware for the number of guests so you spend your time waiting for staff to bring out more… Reception have booked 2 of our 3 person party into the a la carte restaurants so we didn’t even get a choose of when we would go. We’ve been told they have staff shortages, everything seems disorganised. Really disappointed.