Hôtels Melia à MELILLA

Four of us stayed here in 3 rooms, paying €258 per room for 4 nights using a Black Friday deal and my Meliá Rewards 20% discount. Although the hotel had promised me an upgrade in view of my Meliá Rewards gold status, my friends who arrived earlier than me were given better rooms than me. Diego's excellent problem-solving skills resulted in my move to a much better room with a sea view. It was only Diego's second day working at the hotel, but he gave the impression that he had been working there for years with his in-depth local knowledge and friendly efforts to make everyone happy. He was by far the most helpful member of staff in the hotel during our 4-night stay, and he speaks excellent English. The hotel's location is perfect - very close to the bars and restaurants of the city centre and also close to the beach. The refurbished rooms are very comfortable. The built-in bedside tables are far enough apart to accommodate wider beds, which suggests that the hotel intends to replace the beds at some point too. There are plenty of power sockets everywhere, and the safes are large enough for a 16” laptop. The wifi seemed to be capped at around 10Mbps upstream and downstream. The only improvement would be the shower trays, which are almost flat with no lip, allowing water to spill out on to the bathroom floor. It didn't bother me much, as it was more of a problem for housekeeping than for me. We hired e-scooters from Nova Digital, which the hotel allowed us to charge in the baggage room and even to take up to the lifts to our rooms. There was an outage of hot water for several hours during our stay, and I was delighted that the hotel left some complimentary red wine and selection of Spanish meats in my room to apologise. This was presumably in recognition of my gold status, given that my friends didn't receive this. It's inevitable that things go wrong everywhere. What matters is not whether things go wrong, but what a hotel does to put things right. This was a nice gesture. Breakfast was very well coordinated by Yamila, although I would have liked more choice for the price of €12 per head. Tomato juice was lacking, which was surprising in a country where tomatoes form such a prevalent part of the national diet. The hotel gave me 4pm late checkout in view of my gold status, which was very useful as my return flight was later than those of my friends. Melilla is such an interesting, unusual and enjoyable part of Spain. If I return, I look forward to staying at this hotel again.