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This is a review of your stay at the Iberostar Club Cala Barca (Cala d'Or, Spain, Mallorca) from 04.08. 2011 to 18.08. 2011. This trip was organized by the agency "Natalie Tours".
For my part, I want to fully confirm the validity of the claims of many tourists to "Natalie Tours".
Were in the indicated hotel from 04.08. 2011 to 18.08. 2011, family of four, parents with children. The situation looked like this. Immediately before receiving the documents at the Natalie Tours office on Pyatnitskaya, I got acquainted with negative reviews, which indicated problems with the settlement of Russian tourists in unrepaired buildings (11th, 12th and 21st). Arriving at the office, he asked a question about the validity of these claims. To this question, the manager Anna Gavrilova, listed on the agency's website as the "best manager of the month", squinting her eyes to the side, replied that, of course, this is all a lie and "black PR", that they do not know anything like that, which the hotel confirms to them numbers for all buildings, etc.
Upon arrival at the hotel, we, like all other vacationers who arrived on the Natalie Tours bus, were naturally given the keys to the room in the 11th (that is, just in one of the negative reviews) building. The rooms in this building were exactly what was described in those reviews earlier: a refurbishment of a sample from around the end of the 80s. , jamming of all sliding doors, the smell of dampness, non-working air conditioning, falling apart plumbing, etc. That is, a complete discrepancy with the level of a four-star hotel. At the same time, according to the formal characteristics, the rooms correspond to the declared ones (in our case, the Family Room): two rooms, four beds, a bathroom...
It is characteristic that when issuing keys, Russian tourists are also given an envelope with information about the hotel, where (! ) the hotel, without shelving it, immediately offers Russian vacationers such a service as "improvement of living conditions": Junior Suite for 49 euros per day and Suite for 75 euros per day.
Obviously, this confirms the presence of collusion between "Natalie Tours" and the hotel.
An attempt to consult the hotel guide Olga about this situation, as expected, did not lead to any result: we were told that "all the rooms in the hotel have flaws, there is nothing special in the 11th, 12th and 21st buildings. " Which, however, was immediately refuted by what we saw, when the hotel manager took several Russian families at once, who did not want to spend their holidays in a damp kennel, to view Junior Suite rooms - these were freshly renovated rooms that fully corresponded to the declared level of the hotel. The result was a massive relocation of Russian vacationers (including us) to other buildings for an additional fee. A similar picture was observed, by the way, in the future on the days of arrival of Russian vacationers.
Thus, we have to state a completely undisguised deception of customers on the part of the Natalie Tours agency and all its employees, which, under the guise of a four-star hotel sign, sells its customers rooms whose living conditions do not even correspond to three-star ones. There is also a conspiracy among Natalie Tours employees in order to hide truthful information and attempt to mislead customers (in particular, the denial of the selective settlement of Russian vacationers in specific buildings and the denial of obvious differences between the rooms in the 11th, 12th and 21 building and rooms in other buildings of the hotel) and collusion between Natalie Tours and the Iberostar Club Cala Barca hotel, as a result of which Russian vacationers find themselves in obviously worse conditions compared to other hotel customers.
Another - less expensive, but also unpleasant - surprise was the Natalie Tours health insurance system, which, as it turned out, of course, only on the spot, does not cover the first doctor's visit, but only "further service"; for the first visit to the doctor, you will have to pay an additional 35 euros per person from your own pocket. Of course, tourists are informed about this only directly at the place of rest.
Separately, I would also like to note the completely dishonest performance of their duties by the hotel guide Olga, who, apparently, considered only the sale of excursions to tourists as such. For those who were not interested in excursions, she did not consider it necessary to devote even a minute of her time at all.
In particular, when asked to consult on medical care, this lady offered to carefully read the insurance ("everything is written there") or "be patient a little" (presumably - until the house, although there was still a week and a half left before the end of the holiday) and, citing employment, retired to sell excursions to the next group of Russian vacationers.
About the hotel itself. Overall, the impression was that Cala Barca is not the jewel in the crown of the Iberostar family.
The hotel area is large and not very comfortable. The buildings are located along the street, which goes up and down. There is no communication, except for walking, between the buildings, so even the way to their buildings with suitcases along numerous slides and stairs, vacationers (and absolutely everyone) have to do it on their own. The hotel staff is clearly not able to cope with the number of guests.
There are constant queues at the reception, any problems are solved with great difficulty. In addition, in general, one gets the impression that either the hotel staff does not exhaust themselves with work, or its capabilities clearly do not correspond to the scale of the hotel: the size of its territory and the number of guests. In particular, one time I had to watch the picture when at 11 am (! ) there were no sunbeds around the pool yet (once, because we didn’t swim in the pool, but went to the sea; most likely, it was like this every day). Another example: it took the technical staff a day (and four calls to the reception) to get to our room and check the operation of the air conditioner.
By the way, the operation of air conditioners is a different story: absolutely throughout the hotel they do not work constantly, but according to some incomprehensible algorithm. At night, for example, they generally turn off. And in the building where the reception is located, they do not work at all.
There is no Wi-Fi in the hotel, Internet access is possible only from computers located in the reception area at a price of 1 euro for 10 minutes. Cell phones do not work on site either. The reception of the TV signal in the rooms is hovering for 20 seconds every 5 minutes.
The hotel's beach is rocky, and there are sharp stones. True, on the sides of the bay you can go down into the water directly from the rocks, there are ladders. The nearest beaches are beautiful, but utterly crowded, people literally sit on each other's heads.
In fairness, I would like to leave a positive review about the work of restaurants: here, surprisingly, everything is very professional. The food is varied and tasty: there are both national dishes and international dishes of European cuisine, there are no problems with food for children. Despite the large number of people, it was almost always possible to find a free table in the restaurant without any problems.
In conclusion, I would like to add one more touch regarding the work of "Natalie Tours". When accepting documents for a visa, the agency's managers refused to make copies of the documents. It is not very clear why the agency then charges money, since the cost of a visa exceeds the consular fee for a Schengen visa by 25 euros. It is also characteristic that when the copies were made independently and the documents were handed over to the agency, the manager Amina Abdulaeva, also, by the way, designated on the agency's website as "the best manager for 2010" literally threw a tantrum that the copies were made incorrectly, that they should be double-sided and not one-sided. When she refused to redo copies, she reacted as follows: "now managers will have to do your copies for you after hours. " I think comments are unnecessary. It is interesting, by the way, that the website of the Spanish Visa Application Center does not contain such requirements for documents submitted for a visa.
I would also like to note that, no matter how hard Natalie Tours and the hotel administration tried, to spoil the impression of the island of Mallorca, its wonderful climate, its beautiful white sand beaches, its warm sea with blue water, its wonderful cities and villages, it did not succeed. We were not in Mallorca for the first time and we will definitely go there again - but not with Natalie Tours and not to the Iberostar Club Cala Barca hotel.
For my part, I want to fully confirm the validity of the claims of many tourists to "Natalie Tours".
Were in the indicated hotel from 04.08. 2011 to 18.08. 2011, family of four, parents with children. The situation looked like this. Immediately before receiving the documents at the Natalie Tours office on Pyatnitskaya, I got acquainted with negative reviews, which indicated problems with the settlement of Russian tourists in unrepaired buildings (11th, 12th and 21st). Arriving at the office, he asked a question about the validity of these claims. To this question, the manager Anna Gavrilova, listed on the agency's website as the "best manager of the month", squinting her eyes to the side, replied that, of course, this is all a lie and "black PR", that they do not know anything like that, which the hotel confirms to them numbers for all buildings, etc.
Upon arrival at the hotel, we, like all other vacationers who arrived on the Natalie Tours bus, were naturally given the keys to the room in the 11th (that is, just in one of the negative reviews) building. The rooms in this building were exactly what was described in those reviews earlier: a refurbishment of a sample from around the end of the 80s. , jamming of all sliding doors, the smell of dampness, non-working air conditioning, falling apart plumbing, etc. That is, a complete discrepancy with the level of a four-star hotel. At the same time, according to the formal characteristics, the rooms correspond to the declared ones (in our case, the Family Room): two rooms, four beds, a bathroom...
It is characteristic that when issuing keys, Russian tourists are also given an envelope with information about the hotel, where (! ) the hotel, without shelving it, immediately offers Russian vacationers such a service as "improvement of living conditions": Junior Suite for 49 euros per day and Suite for 75 euros per day.
Obviously, this confirms the presence of collusion between "Natalie Tours" and the hotel.
An attempt to consult the hotel guide Olga about this situation, as expected, did not lead to any result: we were told that "all the rooms in the hotel have flaws, there is nothing special in the 11th, 12th and 21st buildings. " Which, however, was immediately refuted by what we saw, when the hotel manager took several Russian families at once, who did not want to spend their holidays in a damp kennel, to view Junior Suite rooms - these were freshly renovated rooms that fully corresponded to the declared level of the hotel. The result was a massive relocation of Russian vacationers (including us) to other buildings for an additional fee. A similar picture was observed, by the way, in the future on the days of arrival of Russian vacationers.
Thus, we have to state a completely undisguised deception of customers on the part of the Natalie Tours agency and all its employees, which, under the guise of a four-star hotel sign, sells its customers rooms whose living conditions do not even correspond to three-star ones. There is also a conspiracy among Natalie Tours employees in order to hide truthful information and attempt to mislead customers (in particular, the denial of the selective settlement of Russian vacationers in specific buildings and the denial of obvious differences between the rooms in the 11th, 12th and 21 building and rooms in other buildings of the hotel) and collusion between Natalie Tours and the Iberostar Club Cala Barca hotel, as a result of which Russian vacationers find themselves in obviously worse conditions compared to other hotel customers.
Another - less expensive, but also unpleasant - surprise was the Natalie Tours health insurance system, which, as it turned out, of course, only on the spot, does not cover the first doctor's visit, but only "further service"; for the first visit to the doctor, you will have to pay an additional 35 euros per person from your own pocket. Of course, tourists are informed about this only directly at the place of rest.
Separately, I would also like to note the completely dishonest performance of their duties by the hotel guide Olga, who, apparently, considered only the sale of excursions to tourists as such. For those who were not interested in excursions, she did not consider it necessary to devote even a minute of her time at all.
In particular, when asked to consult on medical care, this lady offered to carefully read the insurance ("everything is written there") or "be patient a little" (presumably - until the house, although there was still a week and a half left before the end of the holiday) and, citing employment, retired to sell excursions to the next group of Russian vacationers.
About the hotel itself. Overall, the impression was that Cala Barca is not the jewel in the crown of the Iberostar family.
The hotel area is large and not very comfortable. The buildings are located along the street, which goes up and down. There is no communication, except for walking, between the buildings, so even the way to their buildings with suitcases along numerous slides and stairs, vacationers (and absolutely everyone) have to do it on their own. The hotel staff is clearly not able to cope with the number of guests.
There are constant queues at the reception, any problems are solved with great difficulty. In addition, in general, one gets the impression that either the hotel staff does not exhaust themselves with work, or its capabilities clearly do not correspond to the scale of the hotel: the size of its territory and the number of guests. In particular, one time I had to watch the picture when at 11 am (! ) there were no sunbeds around the pool yet (once, because we didn’t swim in the pool, but went to the sea; most likely, it was like this every day). Another example: it took the technical staff a day (and four calls to the reception) to get to our room and check the operation of the air conditioner.
By the way, the operation of air conditioners is a different story: absolutely throughout the hotel they do not work constantly, but according to some incomprehensible algorithm. At night, for example, they generally turn off. And in the building where the reception is located, they do not work at all.
There is no Wi-Fi in the hotel, Internet access is possible only from computers located in the reception area at a price of 1 euro for 10 minutes. Cell phones do not work on site either. The reception of the TV signal in the rooms is hovering for 20 seconds every 5 minutes.
The hotel's beach is rocky, and there are sharp stones. True, on the sides of the bay you can go down into the water directly from the rocks, there are ladders. The nearest beaches are beautiful, but utterly crowded, people literally sit on each other's heads.
In fairness, I would like to leave a positive review about the work of restaurants: here, surprisingly, everything is very professional. The food is varied and tasty: there are both national dishes and international dishes of European cuisine, there are no problems with food for children. Despite the large number of people, it was almost always possible to find a free table in the restaurant without any problems.
In conclusion, I would like to add one more touch regarding the work of "Natalie Tours". When accepting documents for a visa, the agency's managers refused to make copies of the documents. It is not very clear why the agency then charges money, since the cost of a visa exceeds the consular fee for a Schengen visa by 25 euros. It is also characteristic that when the copies were made independently and the documents were handed over to the agency, the manager Amina Abdulaeva, also, by the way, designated on the agency's website as "the best manager for 2010" literally threw a tantrum that the copies were made incorrectly, that they should be double-sided and not one-sided. When she refused to redo copies, she reacted as follows: "now managers will have to do your copies for you after hours. " I think comments are unnecessary. It is interesting, by the way, that the website of the Spanish Visa Application Center does not contain such requirements for documents submitted for a visa.
I would also like to note that, no matter how hard Natalie Tours and the hotel administration tried, to spoil the impression of the island of Mallorca, its wonderful climate, its beautiful white sand beaches, its warm sea with blue water, its wonderful cities and villages, it did not succeed. We were not in Mallorca for the first time and we will definitely go there again - but not with Natalie Tours and not to the Iberostar Club Cala Barca hotel.
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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OTHER REVIEWS ABOUT THE HOTEL
- no beach
- Deception of tourists by the agency "Natalie Tours" and the hotel
- about. Majorca
- Mallorca island
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