Occidental Jandia Playa

Simply not a 4* hotel, while it was clean and had a good pool area it did not provide the 4* experience we were expecting. Food was not the best and we often found birds sat in the bread baskets at breakfast. The dining area was awful, very loud and resembled a school dining room. The rooms are in need of an update with flimsy plastic furniture and no privacy in the bathroom. Not necessary a terrible hotel but would not return.

Overall a nice hotel, lots of sun beds and multiple pools, one which is heated. Spar shop and burger King nearby is great but its a 20min walk to a Chinese restaurant and there are no Indian restaurants in the vicinity! Personally it just falls short of 4 star for me. This is mainly due to the carbonated drinks not being fizzy at all.. flat coke, flat fanta, flat beer! The food variation was OK, including good breakfast options. However no a la carte restaurant option was a surprise as most other 4 stars I've stayed in offered this.

The OJP is a maze of rustic style concrete pathways running between 9 (?) blocks of rooms, swimming pools etc. First impression of the room (Block 3 - nearest to the beach with sea view) was of dark wood that needed sanding and varnishing. Not at all modern. Bed was massive and very comfortable - 5cm memory foam topper, shower always hot and powerful. We were All Inclusive (I think everyone was) and the food was very good - always lots of choice and always with meats being cooked on the large griddle at dinner. Drinks were local lager and (I'm a Scotch drinker) Ballentines/J&B. The beach is wonderful with some nice beach bars - great places to buy a coffee or beer and watch the world go by. Big waves, with surfers, so didn't swim. I used the gym 6 times (I know - sad isn't it but I've been a gym user for over 45 years) and it's a bit cramped. 1 treadmill that was worn out and difficult to use, 3 bikes, a broken leg press, leg extension, seated chest press, seated shoulder press, seated lat pulldown, free weight shoulder press, bench press, dumbbells from 6Kg to 22Kg. Towels and water provided in the gym. One warning - On checking in our party of 4 were offered the safe and beach towels. Safe was 24ish not refundable, towels 10 each refundable. 2 tokens to collect/change each towel. In the confusion I signed whatever papers they put in front of me and only on check out did I find they'd given me a paper for 1 towel and not 2, at 10 Euro. Although we returned 2 towels they insisted I'd only paid a deposit for 1, so I lost 10 Euro. Not a massive issue and it could have been a mistake on the paperwork on their part, but we all remember me paying for safe and towels with a 50 and getting about 5 in return. I'd love to know who ended up with the missing 10 Euros.

The actual hotel was amazing. The hotel was very large, open and bright. There are lots of bars, entertainment and lots of outdoor seating areas. The pools were amazing. Very large and amazing views too. We sat round the quieter pool which was so lovely and peaceful, it was close to the snack bar too which was good. They had lots of snacks throughout the day and lots of drinks too. The burgers weren’t very nice though. The buffet restaurant was ok. Lovely and sunny in there and well set out but the food wasn’t great. There wasn’t very much variation from day to day and the food all tasted the same. The chicken I had was undercooked too so I didn’t touch that again. The chips were good though. The room itself was nice, lovely sea view and the room was quite big too. The bed was lovely and comfortable and massive too! It was quite dated though, they definitely need updating. We really didn’t like the Louvre door on the bathroom. It obviously wasn’t soundproof or very private at all. All in all though, we did have a lovely holiday and made loads of memories. The hotel just needs updating and the food changed too. Would come again