Hotel Zapata

This is a basic hotel in a quiet town,we stayed as we were attending benicassim festival and travel to and from was provided on beach front...The hotel is clean and i found the staff friendly enough..Certainly not rude

Normally I only write reviews when I have something good to say, but this time I'm making an exception so as to warn anyone who thinks it's a good idea to go to this hotel. From arriving at the hotel you can easily tell that it has been around for more than 50 years and once you've stayed there for a few hours that 50 feels more like 100. When we arrived the bedroom was sparcely furnished, the bathroom was quite literally falling to pieces, the sheets were dirty, the bathroom lacked towels, shampoo etc, we saw that the door to our room couldn't be locked, anyone could literally walk in at anytime and the TV didn't work. My wife, daughter and I didn't really mind that though, as we were not planning to spend much time in the room and would take any and all valuables with us at all times. After mentioning it to the general manager on reception (who made us wait 5 minutes while she finished gossiping with her friend while smoking on the porch) she told us that the mistake must be ours and they had to be there “somewhere”. After an hour or so we got a housekeeper to deliver our towels and change the sheets so we ignored the bad start and tried to enjoy the rest of our stay. The we encountered the rest of the service... The staff clearly hate customers and seem to resent being forced to work, instead wanting to watch the television, drink beer and smoke cigarettes in the bar (which is actually illegal). When I mentioned that smoking indoors is nasty, illegal and to please not do it around my 2 year old (in Spanish since NO-ONE spoke English) I was given threatening looks and the already abysmal service somehow managed to degrade to the point where I was actually feeling more stressed while on holiday than was worth it. The quality of the food is what you'd expect from a 2 star hotel and to be honest at times it was better but the waiters worked from 8am till 2 am every day and you can tell that they had just stopped caring. One morning I was even served spoilt milk for my daughter's hot chocolate, as well as for my coffee, and I don't think the waiter cared enough to change it unless someone complained first, which the person on the table next to me did before I could. We somehow managed to stay there for 5 nights without walking out, which when looking back on I still find hard to believe. I am not normally the type of person who rants or complains about little discomforts or mistakes in a hotel but please believe me when I say that this place was a disaster. Two redeeming qualities. It was next to the beach and it was sunny.

The hotel itself is an a perfect location especially for FIB which we stayed in the hotel for. On the door strep is a small but lovely beach, plenty of shops,bars, resturants and a supermarket. Is more of a one star than a two star for the following reasons- rooms smell!, no air con, no hot running water certain times of day, no regular maid service, no water pressure, breakfast very poor stale bread and sweaty cheese/ham. Even worse than the above was the attitude of the owner who seemed to despise english people and would not provide basic customer service ie ringing a taxi. The rest of the staff were friendly but help was limited due to the owner. Also not the best place if you do not speak spanish as locally english is not widely spoken