Santa Rosa Hotel

“ The Santa Rosa was appaulling! The staff were racist, rude, unwelcoming, unhelpful and the service was downright atrocious! Being a young couple ( myself white,my boyfriend asian ) we were made to feel extremely unwelcome, unwanted and left out, we booked half board so breakfast and dinner were included. On our first night we went down to the main restaurant for dinner where we sat down and waited for the waitress to come over to take our drinks orders, we were left sitting for 25 minutes! They stood and stared at us, pointed and gave us dogs abuse...they have obviously never seen anyone with dark skin before! Their behaviour was disgusting, we eventually got up and left feeling extremely upset! The management were exactly the same, on arrival they would only address me and completely ignored my boyfriend, giving him filthy looks and blatantly talking about us to our faces in spanish! Now being the PAYING GUESTS this is the opposite of how we should have been treated! Being spanish speakers, we would have expected much better service but even speaking to them in their own language made no difference. This hotel also is approximately three miles further down the road than it appears on the map!! In fact it is not even in Torrox Costa but in an entirely different village - El Morche. This area is entirely residential which makes it even worse as the locals are completely intolerant of tourists never mind someone of asian appearance!! I was disgusted with the behaviour of the local spaniards even more so than the hotel staff, they spat at us in the street every time we ventured from our hotel, they would stop and stare, point us out to others, and obviously and completely unsubtly talk about, criticise and ridicule us! I would not recommend this hotel to anyone unless they are as narrow minded and racist as these people appeared to be! They ruined the entire holiday for both myself and my partner, we felt too embarrassed to even complain to the management never mind eat in the restaurant - how would you feel trying to eat your dinner with fifty people pointing and staring at you, whilst being completely ignored by the staff? - in which the food was disgusting. There was no vegetarian option at all (unless you count lettuce as a meal ) only eggs and fish which were clearly left overs from the night before - as you could see the staff emptying two half finished dishes into a third and passing it off as another meal for the next day!!! You don't pay for a half board upgrade to be forced to eat out every single night - and we are by no means fussy eaters!! Also, if you book an air conditioned room, the a/c unit is there but half falling from the wall and completely not useable, we had five lights in the bedroom of which only two worked and the 'sliding' wardrobes were more 'pick up the door, put it on the floor then put back when done'! There was dirt on the bathroom walls and ceiling, skirting boards lying on the floor and to top it all off, I attempted to pull the spare blanket down from the top shelf of the wardrobe only to find someone had tried to conceal a 5ft long piece of metal (which had obviously been broken off some part of the room) hidden inside which fell on top of me! Thankfully I managed to get out of the way in time but imagine that had been a child! And also, having our room on the first floor, I wanted to keep the balcony door shut and locked at all times (as it would have been extremely easy to gain access from next door) but each time we came home the cleaners had opened the balcony door wide to the world for anyone to enter. On one occasion we stayed out late at night so were still in bed sleeping at eleven o'clock when the maid knocked on the door, she came in, saw we were still sleeping and left and for the next hour and half came over and repeatedly banged on our door to waken us up !!! I'm sorry but if i want to sleep in when I am ON HOLIDAY I will and felt this was both extremely rude and wholly inappropriate! So much so that come one o'clock she barged into the room to find myself - having just woken up and en route to the shower - standing in my underwear and decided to stand infront of me with the front door wide open for the next five minutes whilst she pretended not to understand my spanish! All in all if the objective of the staff in this hotel was to embarrass and degrade their guests, make them feel unwelcome and ostricised, then they succeeded superbly! This hotel should not be on offer to british guests ( in fact we heard of another family that were to stay in the Santa Rosa a few weeks before us that arrived and left 2 days in to their 2 week holiday because the staff treated them in the same manner as they did us because the english man had tattoos on his forearms and a shaved head!!! )

“ Top Tip: The one saving grace in this holiday was the discovery of a lovely english bar along the front 'the bounty', the owners were lovely and far more welcoming than any of the local spaniards or hotel staff.