Royal Palms

This place wasn’t fit for pigs. You can get far better for lot less money in Benaulim. Such a simple solution is if the owner has pride in his apartment. He’s never going to be a real businessman. It’s could be fit for tramps , I think they would find it difficult after a few weeks .

NK Royal Palms is NOT to be confused with Karma Royal Palms, a fact we did not appreciate prior to our arrival. Karma appears to be well run with daily cleaning whereas NK consists of privately owned apartments which are very run down. Karma R P reception desk has nothing to do with NK so when we arrived there was no-one to meet us in spite of an email with our eta - Karma reception kindly made a phone call for us. Bed was extremely hard and when we requested a mattress topper it was suggested we put the underneath one on top - this was disgusting so no thanks! The pillows were equally filthy so we asked for replacements which were not much better. None of the bedding fitted and 'clean' sheets and towels, which were so thin you could see through them, were often marked. We were only provided with two towels to start with so had to request more. Apparently there was only one key to our apartment so when we wanted it to be cleaned this had to be dropped into the office down the road. Cleaning, it has to be said, was minimal - sloshing water round the bathroom and a quick mop round the rest of the apartment. On the plus side this was a good location with restaurants right outside and only a 15-20 minute walk to the beach. The pool on site, very well run by Karma, was available for us to use but unfortunately we were not entitled to pool towels.

There are 2 pluses for this place - its location and the pool ( but that is thanks to the Karma part). This is a gated community mostly run by Karma Royal Palms. They take a lot of care, providing their clients with a frequent cleaning service and pool towels etc. Karma Royal Palms is a type of time share and you can only stay through them if you are a member. All other issues for NK Royal Palms are not good, or could be described as awful! The apartments are not maintained well, mostly are impossible to clean because of flaking paint or staining. We specifically asked that we should be met on arrival but no one was there and Karma reception had to telephone to get someone to come with the key which took at least 30 minutes. The first room we were shown was dark and dingey. The second at least had a pool view and was bright. This had a small fridge which had no shelf, no freezer door and it was filthy! They changed it within hours! We were on the second floor - 40 steps up and mostly with no handrails at all - extremely dangerous for an elderly or infirm person. We were 'cleaned' twice a week and had to ask for more than one towel each. The mattress was a lump of foam with a white sheet/cover over it (torn). The dining chairs had ill fitting seats, there were no side tables and only four very small drawers - two of which were in the bed side cabinets and two in the dressing table. As I said earlier, pool towels were only available to Karma members.