Lopesan

Lopesan Costa Meloneras, Resort & Spa

Lopesan Costa Meloneras is a vast pool resort in the south of Gran Canaria, for families who want a lazy river and the Meloneras promenade. It is about 30 minutes from Gran Canaria's airport, with 1,138 rooms, six heated pools including a children's pool and that lazy river, six restaurants, seven bars and a large spa, in gardens above the Meloneras seafront. It is not a direct-sand beachfront hotel, and the pools are what people come for. Guests praise the pool complex, the architecture, gardens and grounds, the dining and bar variety, and the promenade position. The complaints are all-inclusive rules that need confirming rate by rate, the absence of a beach at the door, and a scale that feels busy in season. The thing people wish they had known is that all-inclusive exists here but the hotel is not best understood as a wristband resort, and that direct beach access is not what it sells. All-inclusive is one board basis among several, and where a rate carries it the specialty restaurants and the Unique Club venues keep rules of their own, so confirm the dining and drinks grid before you book; Wi-Fi and the children's club are included as standard, while the spa, babysitting and the airport transfer are extra. The 37-square-metre Deluxe View is the standard worth booking, the 45-square-metre Family Room sleeps four, and Unique Deluxe View adds the club. Anyone who wants to walk from the room onto sand should look at the hotels on Maspalomas beach itself.

Lopesan Costa Bávaro Resort, Spa & Casino

Lopesan Costa Bavaro is the modern megaresort of Punta Cana, for families and groups who want every facility on one site and do not mind a crowd. It stands on Bavaro Beach about 25 minutes from the airport, with 1,042 rooms, seven pools, a water park with a lazy river, a casino and a nightclub, and a resort boulevard that reads more like a small town than a hotel. A week here is a week that never needs to leave. Guests love the grounds, the pools and the range of dining, and families with teenagers rate it highly. The complaints are the ones scale brings: service that is warm one day and stretched the next, waits and friction around restaurant bookings, and a beach that can carry sargassum in season. The thing people wish they had known is that Unique by Lopesan, the upgrade tier, changes where you can sit far more than it changes the room you sleep in: it buys a quieter pool, beach and bar zone, not a different suite. The plan is a true all-inclusive with the nine restaurants inside it; the wine bar, the spa and the transfer cost extra, and the premium spirits and the minibar are limited rather than open. The entry Tropical Junior Suite keeps the same room size as the rest, so the money is better spent on an ocean view than on the Unique by Lopesan upgrade unless the crowds are the thing you want to buy out of. Couples after quiet, and anyone who dislikes a walk to dinner, should look at something smaller.

Lopesan Caoba Lagoon Resort, Spa & Casino