Hotel Playas de Guardamar: My Honest Review After Staying

I went to the Hotel Playas de Guardamar to find out whether a hotel this cheap, with the beach on its doorstep, could be worth it, or whether the low price comes with poor service. It’s a three-star in Guardamar del Segura, in southern Alicante, and its online reviews are neither good nor bad.

We stayed in early September 2026 on full board, and we paid for the stay ourselves, out of our own pocket and with no invitation. Here’s the good, the bad and who I’d recommend it to.

The short answer: yes, I recommend it, as long as you find it at a good price. I was expecting something a lot worse. The room is basic and the food is decent at best, but the natural beach in front of it and everything it offers children are worth more than what you pay.

My take on the Hotel Playas de Guardamar in two minutes

I give it 7.3 out of 10. Its highest score is the beach, at 8.5, followed by an 8 each for the bed, the kids’ facilities and the adult facilities.

What drags it down is what you’d expect from a three-star that has a few years on it. The bathroom, the room size and dinner stay at 6.5: they do the job, with nothing to write home about.

And the best part is how close the beach is: you go out through one of the hotel doors, cross the dunes on a wooden boardwalk and you are on the sand in a minute.

The best and the worst of the Hotel Playas de Guardamar

Where it is and what arriving is like

The hotel is in Guardamar del Segura, in the south of Alicante province, right next to an area of protected dunes. On the other side of those dunes is Moncayo beach, the big reason to stay here.

Parking: skip the hotel car park

If you’re driving, you don’t need to pay for the hotel car park. It’s €11 (about £9) a day and practically the same as the dirt lot next door, as both are open-air. The lot is fenced, has an attendant and charges €5 (about £4) for the whole day. Find a space nearby and it’s free.

Reception

Check-in was quick, with no queue, even though the hotel was almost full. Inside, attractive areas sit alongside others that are crying out for a refurbishment: it won’t wow you like a modern four-star, but it doesn’t make a bad first impression either.

Moncayo beach: dunes, a Blue Flag and shallow water

The beach is the reason to choose this hotel, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s Moncayo, one of Guardamar’s beaches: natural, with a Blue Flag and surrounded by protected dunes.

Getting to the sand

One of the hotel’s doors opens straight onto the dunes. You cross them on a wooden boardwalk with a small bridge, and a minute’s walk later your feet are in the sand.

What the beach is like

The sand is fine, with no stones or pebbles, and the water deepens very gradually: you have to wade out quite a way before you lose your footing. With small children it’s a very easy shoreline, as long as you keep an eye on them.

There were hardly any waves while we were there and, even with the hotel almost full, it never felt crowded. People bunch up where the hotel path comes out, but walk two or three minutes along the shore and you have it almost to yourself, because the beach is huge.

The beach bar

Right on the beach there’s a bar we really liked, with good service, music from the 80s and 90s and a crowd aged 40 or 50 and up. A beer and a soft drink came to €5.40 (about £5), a fair price for somewhere on the sand.

What you need to bring

The most useful tip in this review: there are no parasols or sunbeds for hire on this beach, so bring your own. The only thing you can rent is a Balinese bed, and we didn’t ask the price because we never use them.

The pools: the children’s pool steals the show

Along with the beach, the prettiest thing about the hotel is the children’s pool. It’s bursting with colour, with little ducks, pirates and a giant duck in the water.

It has a striped slide sized for the youngest children, and from the hotel terraces you can see the whole thing, next to the big pool and the play tower. The slide is small, mind: if you’re after a water slide hotel, this isn’t one.

Overall, the pools were a pleasant surprise. The main one is big and has a family feel, with children, parents and other adults all mixed together, and a lifeguard watches over both this one and the children’s pool.

Around them there’s artificial grass and sun loungers, although with the hotel full there aren’t quite enough. That’s the only complaint I’d make about the pool area.

There’s also an indoor heated pool, but it only opens from the autumn: in summer it’s kept empty.

The room: basic, but you sleep well

We booked the standard room, the cheapest one. It’s a typical three-star room: about 17 m², simple furniture and a built-in wardrobe with plenty of space, plus a fridge, a safe and air conditioning. It’s made for sleeping and showering, not for spending the day in.

Ours was on the second floor and, although it didn’t face the pool, it had a bit of a sea view. It’s on the outer side of the hotel and turned out to be fairly quiet.

The bed and a good night’s sleep

What surprised me most about the room was the bed. It’s medium firm, leaning towards soft, and I slept really well; the pillow was also better than I expected. They aren’t the best I’ve tried, but for a three-star they are more than good enough.

The air conditioning cools well without making a sound, and the room smelt of jasmine when we walked in. Small touches, but welcome in a hotel at this price.

The terrace

The terrace is small, about 3 or 4 m², but it does the job. It comes with a folding clothes airer that takes up no space and is perfect for drying swimsuits.

The bathroom

The bathroom is the weakest part of the room: functional, but old. The shower is over a bath with a half glass screen, there’s a bidet, and you get shower gel, shampoo and hand soap. Nothing else stands out.

The wifi

If you need to work, watch out for the wifi. We ran a speed test in the room and got 1.3 Mbps download, and the test itself warned that videos might load very slowly. It’s enough for messages and browsing.

The food: lunch is the best meal of the day

We were on full board and tried all three buffet meals. It isn’t gourmet cooking, it’s three-star hotel food, but lunch was a pleasant surprise.

Lunch

At lunchtime we found things you don’t usually see in a three-star, such as really tasty beef steaks, several kinds of fish and a well-made paella. The rest is the usual spread: salads, chicken, pickles and potatoes, either chips or sliced and oven-baked.

What I’d single out are the homemade desserts. The egg flan was so good I finished it, and at buffets I usually just taste desserts and leave the rest. The homemade yoghurt is worth it too; the brownie, on the other hand, was just a plain chocolate sponge.

I missed having cut fruit at lunch and dinner: the only time I saw melon, watermelon or oranges was at breakfast.

Dinner

Dinner is similar to lunch, but a step below it, in both variety and ingredients. Lots of lunchtime dishes came round again, and of the two live cooking stations only one was left, doing fish. The beef, for example, was gone.

If you’re coeliac

The buffet labels which dishes are gluten-free. At Sunday lunch the sign listed twelve, from gazpacho and seafood paella to beef steak, and it warned that gluten-free bread has to be ordered at the previous meal.

Breakfast

Breakfast is the most basic of the three. There’s plenty of it and a fair amount of variety, especially pastries, but the quality is three-star, with quite a lot of factory-made products and little choice of cold meats.

Even so, I found some tasty things that not even some four-stars have, like chocolate chip cookies and four sugar-free products. The big hit is churros with hot chocolate: almost everyone goes back for more.

A tip for the coffee, which comes from a machine: order an espresso and add the milk separately. The milk in these machines is usually powdered and sweetened, and it ruins the coffee.

The dining room, and when to go

The dining room is huge, and it has to be: the hotel has around 500 rooms. With so many families, I reckon there can be up to 800 people eating at once at peak times.

My advice: go as early or as late as you can. Breakfast opens at 8; at 8:20 it was almost empty and by the time we finished it was starting to fill up. Note too that guests here eat dinner very early.

The bars and what they cost

On full board, anything you order at the pool bar is paid for separately, but prices are normal: a white coffee is around €1.80 (about £1.50).

For kids: games room, ball pit and entertainment

The ones who enjoy this hotel most are the children, and you can tell the hotel knows its guests: there are different spaces for each age group, indoors and out.

The games room and the ball pit

The games room is in the basement, and it was so packed with children on the consoles, playing Mario Kart or FIFA, that we could barely film. Right next to it there’s a ball pit for the little ones, up to 3 or 4 years old.

I liked where they’ve put it. Being in the basement, with hotel staff nearby, children can’t wander out onto the street or get lost around the hotel.

The playground

Outside, by the pool, there’s also a playground with a slide and spring riders. It has soft rubber flooring and the trees keep it in the shade.

Entertainment

There’s entertainment throughout the day, split by age. We saw the entertainers with 4 to 6-year-olds, with somewhat older children and, near the pool, playing games with adults too.

The TV in the room has a channel showing the day’s programme, with the time and the group for each activity: mini club, maxi club, teens, adults or families. On the Sunday we were there it was darts, mikado, mini golf, a mini disco and, at 10 pm, a pirate party in the disco.

For adults, and the gym

There isn’t a huge amount for adults, but there are some welcome corners. It has two cafés, a nice quiet lounge, a sun terrace and an air-conditioned reading room where we didn’t see a soul. It’s good for reading, working on a laptop or getting through a rainy day.

The gym surprised me as well: it’s been renovated, it’s clean and the machines are new. There aren’t many, but enough for weights and cardio. There are towels but no water. When we went, one of the press machines had a broken cable. It may have just happened, but if it’s still like that, it’s poor maintenance.

And at night, what I liked best was the terrace with its bar.

The staff

We didn’t deal with the staff much, but everyone was friendly and keen to help. There were two of us, but we asked for a table for four because it had better views, and they said yes without any fuss. They didn’t know who we were, either: I booked with my personal account and said nothing on arrival.

One member of staff, with glasses, long hair and a beard, deserves a special mention. We asked him about the evening activities and he explained everything with a level of detail and kindness I don’t remember in any of the more than 200 hotels I’ve stayed in. Somebody give that man a pay rise.

Hotel Playas de Guardamar scores, category by category

Category	Score	Why
Overall	7.3	The average of the twelve categories
Cleanliness	7	Clean, but with worn details that make it look older.
Bed and pillows	8	Better than expected: you sleep well.
Bathroom	6.5	Functional, with a bath and a bidet, but old.
Room size	6.5	About 17 m² plus the terrace: for sleeping, not for lounging.
Breakfast	7	Plenty of it, average quality; the highlight is churros with chocolate.
Lunch	7.5	The best meal of the day: beef, fish, paella and homemade desserts.
Dinner	6.5	More repetitive and less varied than lunch.
Pools	7	A big family pool and a colourful children’s pool; not enough sun loungers.
Kids’ facilities	8	Games room, ball pit, entertainment and a playground.
Adult facilities	8	Reading room, renovated gym, cafés and terraces.
Beach	8.5	Natural, with dunes and a Blue Flag, a one-minute walk away.
Staff	7.5	Friendly overall, and one of them a perfect ten.

The average of the twelve categories is 7.33, which gives the overall 7.3. The highest score goes to the beach, at 8.5, and the three lowest are the bathroom, the room size and dinner, at 6.5.

Who the Hotel Playas de Guardamar is for, and who it isn’t for

It’s your hotel if:

• You want the beach and full board without spending too much.
• You’re travelling with small children and want water that stays shallow.
• A simple room is fine by you, as long as you sleep well.

It isn’t your hotel if:

• You want a modern or characterful hotel with stylish rooms.
• You choose hotels for the food.
• You want proper water slides: the only one here is a small slide in the children’s pool. Have a look at the Albir Garden Resort & Aquapark, a family hotel in Alicante with a water park.

If the Hotel Playas de Guardamar isn’t for you

• Family hotels on the Costa Blanca, our guide to the Alicante coast, with every hotel we’ve stayed in.
• Family hotels in Spain, all scored out of 10, if value for money is what matters most.
• Family hotels in Benidorm, with a budget filter to compare it against other affordable family hotels.

Do I recommend the Hotel Playas de Guardamar? Yes, if you get a good price

Yes, I recommend it, as long as you get it at a good price. For what it costs, it’s one of the best-value options I’ve visited.

The food is reasonably good, the bed is comfortable and children get entertainment, a games room and a colourful pool of their own. Above all, it has a natural beach with protected dunes right in front, a one-minute walk away. At this price, that’s hard to find.

Just keep your expectations realistic. If you want a modern hotel, stylish rooms and better food, you’ll have to pay a lot more, close to double. If what you’re after is a few days at the beach with the family without spending much, you won’t go wrong here.