Bancal Hotel and Spa

My wife and I just had a beautiful week at La Gomera en we stayed in Bancal Hotel in San Sebastian. We both can recommend this hotel to anyone. If you like swimming, drinking, sunbathing or enjoy breakfast or dinner, it's all perfect in this hotel. And the view over the ocean to Tenerife is spectacular. The shower and beds in the room were excellent. The furnishing inside the hotel and the gardening outside is beautiful. The hotel is in a peaceful area so it's a very good place to relax. And all the personel were very friendly and helpful. For us two, a second vacation on La Gomera will start in this hotel ! Theo Wijnker, Holland.

I left with mixed feelings about the Bancal Hotel. We came to stay as our partners were rowing the Atlantic as part of the Worlds Toughest Row Atlantic Challenge 2024. The hotel is only about 6 months old (note that Google maps will take you to the old location which is much closer to San Sebastián than the new hotel). From a distance it looks like a vast concrete military base. The whole hotel is pretty much concrete... there has however been alot of very lovely planting which will increasingly improve the vista as it matures. There are swimming pools on most levels and they have been done beautifully. The hotel wasn't very busy when we went and there were sufficient loungers.. in the busiest times I would be less sure. Food: We ate in the buffet most nights and the food on the whole was good for buffet food. Note that if you get there half an hour before closing choices will start to run out. Lunch down by the lower swimming pool was very tasty. Gym: Small but new gym which had all the things I needed.. if you are after very heavy weights it might be a bit lacking Yoga Some friends did the morning yoga and said it was excellent Wellness Spa One thing that is fairly well hidden both on the website and when booking is that the indoor pool and spa is extra. For hotel guests it is 25 euros per visit and has to be pre-booked. It has been done beautifully and was a nice way to spend an hour. Rooms The design of the corridors makes you feel like you are entering some kind of space pod..the rooms themselves are as you would expect and the beds are comfortable. Some annoying design features... the smoke alarms are over the bed and flash during the night, the loo and shower are screened with glass only (frosted at the relevant points) but if you are travelling with friends or a new partner you feel fairly exposed using them. Some of the smaller things that make up a good hotel are missing like tissues. Room cleaning was hit and miss... note if you leave any electronics on the bed it won't be made. Tea and coffee's were not always replenished, dirty mugs not replaced with clean . on some occasions the bathroom area wasn't cleaned. The TV's don't have an English setting .. at one point at about 11pm all the tv's received a message which caused them to turn on.. we couldn't read the message so just turned the tv off.. so it popped back on again 5 minutes later. Eventually we unplugged the TV (which also meant the wake up call wouldn't work).. apparently if we had accepted the message it would have stopped but we couldn't read that. Service You very much get the feel that this hotel is still in training mode.. the staff are incredibly friendly and very keen to please but on a number of occasions when we raised issues we were almost argued against instead of just receiving an apology and a fix. Location As mentioned before it is not as close to town as the old hotel. We would run down to town in the morning but it is not somewhere you wo

Welcome to your dorm room. From a distance this place looks like a prison; it is isolated and walled off. The room is clean and new but bare minimum amenities - no usb connection, no slippers, no washcloths, no toilet roll, no shampoo, no QR code although they are enamored with it at checkin they don’t have it to scan in the room.

We visited this hotel from 15th - 22nd November. It is a long journey flying to Tenerife South then coach to the port, ferry and coach again to the hotel. The rooms are set in tiers in the hillside. Our room was 509. It was quite large with a terrace. One tiny piece of soap and no flannels supplied. Toilet paper small squares in container attached to the wall. The room was “serviced” each day but this involved clean towels if you left them in a specific place, a quick wipe of the sinks and toilet. The sheets were not changed during the week and the floor was not cleaned all week, neither were the corridors to the rooms meaning the tiling was dusty with footprints. Electronic bracelets open the room doors. The staff are very under trained and there are too few of them. Many speak very little English. They are slow to clear restaurant tables which results in queues. The quality and choice of food is poor and not replenished quickly enough often cold. The pools are very clean but chilly. The pool towels are not fluffy but a sort of bedspread material. The entertainment is poor too. The show bar was closed all week. Football was shown in the main bar most nights. The staff need more training on serving drinks. An inch of wine is not a “drink” and like Oliver Twist I had to ask for more. If you want a very quiet hotel that is very isolated it’s fine but there is very little to do. We took a taxi into the town (the bus wasn’t running). We had lunch in the main square which was very nice. We won’t be returning.

I find it difficult to review this hotel. It is new, very clean and very well laid out but extremely isolated. The rooms are large and comfortable with nice terrace and sea views, some also of Tenerife. The TV in our roomm kept going on the blink and although the hotel sent somebody quite quickly it was aggravating. The BBC channel did not work and there was no ITV, so settled for Sky News. The pools are excellent, well laid out with plenty of differing depths, all of which are clearly marked . They were a little on the chilly side, but not bad for November. Life guards are in attendance between 10.00 and 18.00. The issue of pool towels was very haphazard. On the day before we were due to leave, when we asked for towels we were asked for our room number and then asked to sign for a 40 Euro deposit. This had not happened during the preceding week and we decided to make do with a towel from the room! The bar at the lower pool was ok but service was very slow as only one person. Hate to think what it would be like in high season. We did not use the indoor pool or spa area as there was a charge for this of 25 Euro per person per day! Fair enough if you want to use the Sauna and Steam Room, but way too much for the pool. The Restaurants disappointed. I know many people gave the food an excellent rating but I found the choice, at Breakfast and Dinner rather limited. The food also tended to be on the cold side. At busy times there were queues for tables, due to the limited staff being slow to clear and reset. The main bar was usually served by one barman, who also had to take orders from tables. He was joined after 9.00 but one further waiter. This resulted in slow service. Also, cocktail choice was limited, for example no Bloody Mary and frequently no red wine. A number of the hotel facilities were not open during our entire stay. These included the Show Bar, The Patio Restaurant and the Drinks and Cookies bar in the reception area. The bus from outside the hotel to the town had ceased to operate due to low demand. A taxi cost between 12 and 15 Euros each way, depending on how much you gave as a tip. The hotel is new and has the potential to be very good but needs quite a few more staff in all areas and more English speaking waiters. I would not recommend this hotel unless you just want to relax and do nothing.

The hotel is wonderful, new, with incredible views. The rooms are very nice, but the bathroom could have a little more privacy. The food is very good and the service is aceptable. We notice that they need more staff to have a 4 star service. One person in particular, Emanuel from the buffet restaurant, stands out. His service was impecable, very friendly and he gave us very good wine recommendations. We also saw him at the hotel bar, and again he served us wonderfully. Emanuel is the only person in both the bar and the restaurant who served us in English and understood what we were asking for, because we try to talk with the person in charge at the buffet and he didn’t understand us, and that’s is not good. This is something the hotel should look into, if the majority of your clients speak English, it would be nice if your staff spoke English as well. The rest of the hotel is very nice.