Hotel Fariones

We stayed for 6 nights in Oct 21 . The Hotel is beautiful . The vista and public areas and bedrooms superb(We had a junior suite / Suite. However having stayed in other luxury hotels. The personal touch is missing here. Who is the General Manager? Front of house do not automatically acknowledge guests as they walk past( some do). I always try to greet every member of staff I walk past. The service on the Terrace was poor . We had 2 dinners and 3 lunches there . At busy times there do not appear to be enough staff.Orders are not delivered or missing key elements. One lunch for 9 left 2 without their lunch . It had not been processed.Food arrived cold. Again there does not seem to be a key person in charge. The personal , personality touch was missing. Housekeeping staff and breakfast staff were very good. When my husband checked us out with a Hefty bill . No one asked had we had a nice stay ! Including the person who managed the process. Surely this is fundamental to good service. Personal hospitality and good manners are free. I am sad to write this as was so excited to stay having visited Lanzarote many times and love the island and it???s wonderful people. This hotel should be a shining light with the attitude of inviting someone into your home . Making all guests feel special ,again it???s free to have this ???spirit??? and such a beautiful Hotel deserves it.

Just back from a wonderful week at the hotel, truly a 5* experience, plentiful breakfast buffet and dinner buffet, a small suggestion would be to have a few other vegetarian options. The pool area with the infinity pool was lovely and there were additional areas with sun beds around the hotel and 2 jacuzzis to enjoy. The rooms are stunning with robes, slippers, flip flops, tea and coffee and complimentary mini bar restocked each day. The bathroom had a huge walk in shower with rainfall shower and full size bottles of shampoo, conditioner and shower gel. The only issue we had at the end of our stay was being charged for other peoples bar bills, this with quickly sorted as the hotel keeps signed receipts but maybe they should invest in a digital system whereby you tap your room key or wrist band, it would save time and the hotel money in the longer term. Thoroughly recommend this hotel.

The hotel is newly refurbished and they seem to have done a good job. The rooms are comfortable, bathrooms well-equipped and each room has a view of the sea. A constant thorn in the side is the lack of any nightlights if you need to make a visit to the toilet during the night. The automatic light in the toilet comes on as you open the door, bathing the whole bedroom in blinding light! The hotel is in a great location - 5 minutes walk away from the main strip and next to the old port area, right on the beach. The beaches next to the hotel are both very good and the hotel has direct access to both of them. Gym facilities were offered in a nearby building across the street - not a great situation to be honest. To the port side of the hotel is a building site right next door. It's not clear whether this is part of the hotel (are they planning a spa?), but when they do start work there I can imagine it will be very disruptive to guests staying in rooms that side. The hotel grounds are well laid out, with plenty of space away from the pool area, and plenty of palm trees to provide shade if required. The pool and pool area are both a bit limited given the size of the hotel and the area is crammed with sunbeds, which doesn't make for the most relaxing experience. The check-in experience wasn't the best if I'm honest. They didn't cover the sort of things we subsequently found out we needed to do to book the a-la-carte breakfast for instance amongst a couple of tother things. No questions over room servicing and turn down times, which led to the turn down lady knocking on the door at 5.45pm one evening. That said the staff were extremely friendly and helpful most of the time. We were staying in a suite that allowed us access to the rooftop pool. Initially our room cards wouldn't allow access for some reason so we had to get 2 new ones. The area is nice enough but it can be extremely windy, and the rooftop bar was closed the whole time, meaning there was no easy way to get drinks or anything else. Generally we found the service at the outside restaurant and bar to be slow. They seemed to operate a system by which only certain people could take orders for food or drinks on a hand held device and then other staff would deliver them. This sometimes resulted in the farcical situation of seeing 4 delivery staff chatting idly by the bar whilst we waited for someone to come and take our order. It also meant we couldn't easily add to an order when anything was delivered, as the delivery staff then had to go and find the ordering staff to process the request. The additional requests never arrived. It may look efficient to a manager, but the guest experience is anything but satisfactory. We ate in the hotel buffet one evening and I can say that the experience was probably the worst I can ever remember across the many 5 star hotels we have stayed in. The hot food was Luke warm at best, they ran out of the main roast dish at the cooking station and told me it would be another 15 minutes for the next one to come out. The service was non-existent, as the staff seemed more intent on setting up tables for breakfast the following morning. During the meal what looked like a senior staff member walked up to our table, picked up a water bottle and emptied it in the nearest glass and then left without a single word. Hardly the sort of thing you would expect in a people facing business, but it was indicative of a remote management not getting out and about, seeing the guests and interacting with them to ensure they were having the best time possible. We didn't try either of the two specialist restaurants, as the menu options were ridiculously limited and didn't cater for my vegetarian wife. We walked past the Asian restaurant one evening and it looked like it had only 3 tables occupied in a vast room. They desperately need to widen themes options, including vegetarian, and try harder to get people in there to give it more of a buzz. It had all of the buzz of a funeral. We did have an issue with the a-la-carte breakfast, as nobody had told us it needed to be booked - we turned up and got seated without a problem on the first day, but the second day the waitress asked if we had booked. We had no idea we needed to, as the place only had 6 tables in use. When I tried to do the booking for the next few days I was told by reception that it was fully booked. When pressed, I was told they only offered 3 slots every half hour, a ridiculously low number given the space available in the restaurant. Anyone can book for a ???5 fee, meaning that guests such as ourselves, who were staying in a top of the range suite couldn't have breakfast a-la-carte, despite having already effectively paid for it. I did raise the issue over breakfast access, food quality and temperature in the buffet and service with the manager via email. To be fair he did ensure we got access to the a-la-carte each day, but he never made the effort to meet me, and his response was pretty offhand. Overall we had a reasonable stay at the hotel, but for us the pool area was too cramped, the food and drink options and quality were poor and the service wasn't up to standard. The hassle over breakfasts further detracted from the experience.