Qawra Palace Hotel, Malta

...on the sea front in Qawra (“our – ra”), the hotel lives up to its name from a distance – large and palatial like, and the second largest in the resort (though being next to the largest one does make it pretty obvious that this one aint the biggest). Every guest we saw was on a package deal, though these were with various firms, from Thomas Cook to Neckerman to the Dutch bit of TUI to some random French set up. This variety explains one of the problems ...
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The area of Qawra is dead and not just because we were there in April – there were no boarded up shops ready to open come high season, there was just absolutely nothing there. Buggibba was within walking distance, but was hardly a happening tourist resort itself, though it did have a selection of restaurants, bars and shops. The hotel was supposed to offer a daytime and evening entertainment program, but didn’t. During our stay the owner ... more

When I was a 19 year old holiday rep, I spent several months living in an All Inclusive hotel on a Spanish Isle. It was my first taste of such a set up, but I was impressed enough to suggest that we stay in an AI hotel this Easter – my last holiday as a student. We decided on Malta because it was somewhere we’d never been, and close enough to Italy to get good weather at this time of year. Ringing round at Christmas is became apparent that several hotels were booked out, but swapping our dates and jiggling hotel names, we managed to find room at this hotel.

Situated on the sea front in Qawra (“our – ra”), the hotel lives up to its name from a distance – large and palatial like, and the second largest in the resort (though being next to the largest one does make it pretty obvious that this one aint the biggest). Every guest we saw was on a package deal, though these were with various firms, from Thomas Cook to Neckerman to the Dutch bit of TUI to some random French set up. This variety explains one of the problems with the hotel, I think. It’s a place that could desperately use some investment, but with no Tour Operator having it as an exclusive, none will be willing to do so, as they have no incentive to, and many would resent paying to improve somewhere only then to be used by other firms’ guests as well.

The reception area is one of the few sparkling places in the hotel. There are two desks, one for keys and checking in/out, and one marked “cashier” for anything else. This immediately caused problems, because the cashier’s opening hours were limited, split into 3 x 2 – 3 hour slots throughout a 24 hr period, meaning it usually took several trips to do everything from hiring sports equipment to getting an internet token to leaving a safety deposit box deposit to changing some currency. Obviously only certain members of staff are trusted enough to deal with the little cash box.

The rooms are spread out on 8 floors, all served by 6 lifts, though most people only ever realised there were the 4 main ones in the lobby, the others being tucked away down long corridors. While we were there the lifts were never all working at the same time, and being so small only 4 people could squeeze in at once meant long waits unless you were mad enough, as we were, to climb 6 flights of stairs half a dozen times a day. The rooms came in 2 types – twin and family, and we had one of the former. Arriving around 10pm having been travelling (and, ahem, airport shopping) since noon, we were just happy to have arrived, and thought it looked quite ok. In the morning, following a good night’s sleep, little faults started to emerge. The loo could only be flushed once an hour since it took so long for the cistern to fill up again. The bath, though clean, was decidedly grotty in one corner, and the shower head gave only a pathetic trickle when switched onto full blast. Luckily I know the best way to deal with this – a cocktail stick – and after a quick jab in the holes, the water came gushing. The beds were comfy but made up oddly, with sheets topped with tatty patterned quilts (with no separate covers) and covered with throws. Both my quilt and throw had cigarette burn shaped holes in them, and felt a little tatty, so though clean (and changed every day), my bedding didn’t really make my bed somewhere I wanted to go after a hectic day of lying in the sun. All the rooms looked similar, and had desks and stools, plus tables and chairs, bedside tables, lots of individually controlled lighting, a balcony and storage space – the usual wardrobes (top marks for removable coat hangers) and drawers. Bathrooms housed baths with shower attachments, loos, sinks, the usual. Some rooms had hairdryers (those that didn’t could borrow them from reception for a deposit) and all had free toiletries. They very much liked their deposit thing, and asked for 5 Lire (~ £7.50) in exchange for a remote control, essential for changing the channels on the otherwise unusable TV. That seemed quite a lot to me since this was an AI hotel, so people wouldn’t necessarily have brought a lot of spending money. The TV, it turned out, wasn’t even worth it – we had BBC World and Italian MTV, but the other channels were unwatchable – around 20 in Italian, Maltese or something unrecognisable. We had no German channels despite the number of guests from there, and only one French one. Finally, there was a very worrying English language Christian channel that got me hooked for a while as I wanted to figure out if watchers actually believed that “Jesus loves us” just because a dodgily dressed man with a bad moustache told them so.

The rest of the hotel was tackily ornate (statues, plants, marble stairs – all of which had the potential to be nice had they not looked so cheap). The ground floor was home to a large lobby, a café (the only place not covered by the all inclusive deal), the tour operator notice boards, 7 internet terminals, a gift shop and a permanently unlocked luggage room (to be talked about later). Floors 2 upwards were bedrooms (they called the ground floor level 1 in a terribly German way). Level 0 was home to the restaurant, a lounge bar (with TV on constantly, changing from Sky News to Sky Sports to Italian MTV, depending on which bar tender had control of the remote), a ball room, an indoor pool (linking to the outdoor pool area) and a gym. Or rather a “gym” – 3 machines, all older than me I would suspect given the level of rust, tucked away next to the kitchens in a dark little room which doubled as their massage parlour thanks to a tatty looking bed in the corner. Needless to say, I looked once, decided against it and spent the rest of the week running up and down the stairs whenever I felt restless. I would have swum had the water not been so bitterly cold. Though the indoor pool was heated, it was too small, constantly filled with children and an ominous cloudy green colour. My rule never to swim in a pool I cannot see the bottom of ruled that one out, and though the outdoor one was larger and cleaner, the water never seemed to get about 3 degrees. The one good thing the hotel had, though, was a large sun deck around the pool, with plenty of sun loungers. Matresses were available at 75p per person per day, which, althought comfy, were not worth having more than once or twice. There was lots of room, but we were there in early season, so what it would have been like in mid August I don’t know. The staff would annoyingly begin to put away sun loungers around 4.30pm, though the pool was open until 6pm. Unfortunately when it shut, so did all the outside areas, meaning no meals al fresco and no sitting outside to enjoy the evening unless you left the hotel and went elsewhere.

The restaurant was where we “ate” 3 times a day. Breakfast was the same every day and included Maltese style cooked English breakfasts, rolls and jam (the same types of both every day), butter, cheap own brand cereals, vending machine made hot drinks, cordial style fruit juice (and no cold water available for the likes of me who drink neither of these), fruit (bruised, battered and/or mouldy) and plain yoghurt. On the first day it seemed ok. On the second, it was edible, but by the last day I was down to eating virtually nothing, and waiting for the AI snack bar to open and start serving me ice cream. Lunch offered a soup (different every day), 3 main courses (non vegetarian), salads (some – vegetarian, but most not), those breakfast rolls again, some cheese and biscuits and a couple of puddings, usually a cake of sorts and a jelly concoction. Dinner was a little better, with the same type of foods as lunch, but with a completely separate vegetarian menu. This was very much hit and miss, however – one option was usually an omelette, and the other could be anything from nut roast (neither nutty nor roasted) to pizza (a lump of dough with as many veg as possible piled on top, topped off with a boiled egg) to past and rice (hard to spoil, really, though I’m sure they tried). Vegetables usually made 3 appearances – first as veg to accompany the hot dishes, then the next day as part of the salads, and finally the day after that as part of the soup. They never wasted food, that’s for sure…

AI included “snacks” though in keeping with the standards of the hotel only some were edible – the crisps and ice cream went down quite well, but the sandwiches (hotel made plastic packed ones – and always ham and cheese) did not. Drinks were available from 11am until 11pm (AI regulations for most companies state they must offer at least 12 hours of bar service), which was annoying but no doubt sly on their part since most guests were tucked up in bed long before the final call (it was Malta, remember, full of young kids, pensioners and, um, me). The drinks varied from bar to bar – the pool one was not serving anything resembling diet coke though it called it that. The lounge bar was a little better, but the best had to be the ballroom where they had no real bar, so served things out of bottles rather than over-diluted syrup from a tap. I went abroad assuming I would gain weight eating and drinking all day long, and doing no exercise. I actually lost 3 kg while I was there, despite the odd emergency trip to the sole supermarket nearby for chocolate rations. It really was that bad – and even my mother who, in her own words, “will eat anything” agreed.

On the whole, the staff seemed to resent having us in the hotel (though since Malta has no industry outside of tourism, they’d all be unemployed if that hotel had not been there). At times we asked for things at the bar only to be told “Not all inclusive”, even though there were no signs up indicating what was or wasn’t. One morning we booked an early breakfast (available any time from 4am) only to be told my 3 groups of people – in the lounge next door, at the entrance and later by our section’s waiter that we were too early and we should leave. A benchmark hotel for customer service this wasn’t, and the staff were, at times, truly appalling. They didn’t spoil my stay because, in my time, I have been a waitress, a holiday rep, a shop assistant and much more, so knew to take anything they said or did with a pinch of salt, but I can understand why some older guests could have cause for complaint.

The area of Qawra is dead and not just because we were there in April – there were no boarded up shops ready to open come high season, there was just absolutely nothing there. Buggibba was within walking distance, but was hardly a happening tourist resort itself, though it did have a selection of restaurants, bars and shops. The hotel was supposed to offer a daytime and evening entertainment program, but didn’t. During our stay the owner died (see, we weren’t the only ones desperate to get out of that place) which resulted in a mourning staff (it was a family run affair) and even lower standards of service for our last few days. Signs immediately appeared notifying us that “entertainment is cancelled due to family brievment (sic)” which would have been fair enough had they had any on in the days leading up to his death, which they didn’t. As it was, we stuck around the hotel most nights, playing cards, reading, making up rude German stories about the infamous Tiddles Taylor (my mum’s porn star name) and so on.

Malta is very much like Poland (anyone been to Gdansk? You’ll see what I’m saying) and this hotel fits in, in a way. They think things will change wonderfully on May 1st when they join the EU, but I’m not so sure. The weather was wondeful and I am now as brown as that famous button, but I’m sure there must be nicer places on the planet to go for a tan.

This hotel is not to be recommended, and I really feel for those poor people staying there for 28 nights in a row, as so many we spoke to were. The food is barely edible, the staff appalling, and the hotel interior shoddy. It may have 4 stars in the Maltese system, but it gets two very definite thumbs down from me.

We probably won’t go all inclusive again. That said, we probably won’t do packages again either – though we say this every time, and somehow change our minds later when it seems like the easy way to get a week in the sun. I’m spending 12 weeks in the States this summer, and return to the UK only to start my graduate working life immediately, so probably won’t even be having as many holidays in the future. These are all probables, but one thing is certain: we would *never* return to this hotel.

<< We paid £350 pp for a week including flights, transfers, accommodation and all food, drinks and snacks. There are no prices available for nightly stays since all guests come on packages, but from my experience of holiday companies, I would expect the hotel only to get maybe £150, if that. For a little over £20 pppn all inclusive, what can you really expect?>>
 

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