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Hotel Amaika

Calella

Costa Brava

January 2008

Those of you who read my first report on the Amaika hotel in January 2005 will remember that my first visit to the hotel in Calella was memorable. So I decided to revisit the hotel to see if any disability improvements had been added since my fist visit.

As I entered the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was still the clean tidy hotel that I remembered years previous.

When my wife and I booked in, I found that the first change that I noticed was that the hotel had added an "all inclusive tariff," so taking advantage of this, we upgraded to the all inclusive tariff.

After checking in we went to our room on the fourth floor and found that it was totally unsuitable for a wheelchair user in all aspects. I had to return to the check in desk and when I informed the staff that the room was unsuitable, I was told that all the rooms were the same!

I explained to the receptionist that I knew that all the rooms were not the same as I had stayed at the hotel two years previous.

Once the staff member realised that I had stayed at the hotel previously and had received a wheelchair friendly room, she relented and after a few moments on the computer she informed me that there was a suitable room and another member of the reception staff showed me to the room on the first floor.

The room was not adapted for a disabled guest, but it was all that I was going to be offered, and it was large enough for my wheelchair and I could easily get into the bathroom. After I stated that the room was fine and wheelchair friendly it was left to my wife and me to move our luggage from the fourth floor to the first floor. Alarm bells were beginning to ring in my head as I thought that this was not how I remembered the Amaika in 2005.

There had been no disability improvements in the bathroom; everything was exactly as I remembered it from my first visit. So I guess nobody listened to my suggested improvements the first time.

Later we went to the downstairs lounge and instead of the waiter service that we had first received in 2005, it was now self service. Apparently, since the hotel has introduced the "all inclusive tariff" it has gone downhill and is no longer offering "four star" service that we had received in 2005. I would state that it is now more like a "three star" service, but still classing it as a "four star hotel."

I went to the disabled toilets in the reception and found that it still had the two heavy doors to the toilet and although I managed to get into the toilet, it was a struggle.

When I visited the dining room for the evening meal I was pleasantly surprised to find that improvements had been made as the food counter had been moved away from the posts and that I could now reach the counter, so I no longer had to rely on other people to get my food. Of course I needed help getting a cup of tea of a bowl of soup, but I was happy that I still had the majority of my independence in there. The food is very good as there is plenty of choice and ´guests are sure to find something they like. I found the food hot and tasty, my opinion satisfactory for a four star hotel.

I hired a scooter and it was waiting for me on my arrival to the hotel. The hotel allowed me to keep it in the foyer to charge it up at night no problem at all.

Overall I would state that as the only improvements for a wheelchair user were in the dining room, leaves the hotel exactly as I rated it before, it is a wheelchair assisted hotel only.

When my daughter went for a drink one of the bar staffed told her to “get back in the bloody queue!” My daughter explained that she was getting a cup of coffee and the wait looked at her and told her to “go on then.”

This is a very big come down for a hotel that I first thought of as being grand.

I would like to state that while I was at the hotel, the new “all inclusive tariff” has attracted quite a lot of unsavoury characters known as the “three day cig runners.” Guests who visit Spain purely for the purpose of buying cheap cigs. The hotel had quite a number of “three day cig runners” who were rowdy, drunk, hostile, and verbally abusive to other guests. So, on that basis I could not recommend the hotel as a family hotel.

Personally I would never return to the hotel and I will never again stay at a hotel that states it has all inclusive in its tariff as I found that in a lot of cases some guests could not get enough of the free alcohol and became abusive and a few were drunk from lunch time.

As for Calella town itself, I found that although there are new ramps in certain places, but where I really needed them there were none. So Calella is definitely still a wheelchair assisted town.

Mike Coatesworth

Disabled access in Amaika Hotel, Calella, Costa Brava, Spain 2005

Disabled Access in Amaika Hotel, Calella, Costa Brava, Spain 2005

Disabled Access in Barcelona, Spain

Disabled Access in Barcelona, Spain 2005

Disabled access on the railway from Calella Costa Brava to Barcelona

Disabled Access on railway, Costa Brava to Barcelona, Spain 2005

Visit my other disability access pages

http://www.btinternet.com/~mikeco158/disaccess2.htm

http://www.btinternet.com/~mikeco158/disabacc.htm

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My Family in Memoriam