Kempinski was a bit of a disappointment for several reasons. The rooms were very mediocre...definitely not a luxury hotel room. The bathroom was clean and decent sized but teh cupboard that held the trash can was broken and made it awkward to throw things. The hotel website pictures are so deceiving! The food was also sub-standard, especially at the prices charged! Nice grounds but all in all, not really worth it. Popular with families with kids. Beach is terrible but you go expecting that. Next to the hotel is a little shopping village and one of the delis there serves better food at more economical prices. Luckily there is a careefour nearby to stock up basics instead of paying sky high prices at Kempinski. AM not one to complain abt prices charged by 5 star places for food coz atleast you get some exquisite food at those prices. Not at Kempinski.

You get what you pay for - an expensive quality hotel as described amply in previous reviews (pools, grounds, breakfast etc etc). Negatives mostly relate to where the hotel is, rather that what it is... Despite being beachfront, the front of the hotel backs onto a dual carriageway which is very noisy. I would suggest paying the extra to being in a sea-view room. We stayed initially in a junior suite but the noise on the balcony was pretty bad. We then moved to a side sea-view room which was ok, but as it was on the 4th floor (ground, believe it or not) the room was pretty dark and the balcony caught no sun at all. The beach is ok actually, though we had no intention of swimming! Major positives included the level of service (impeccable), child friendliness (activities, high chairs everywhere, kids menus). We loved how spacious the grounds were. Oh, one other positive / negative depending how you look at it, but the hotel is incredibly cosmopolitan and during our stay we felt this meant people kept themselves to themselves... Not the most friendly bunch in the world, but hey you can't have everything!!

We had carefully chosen this resort , while looking for a place that what would be appropriate for a mixed age group, as the vacation was a family reunion.
The resort looked very impressive on the internet photos and had some very good reports.
I had booked 8 ! rooms directly at the hotel and was promised very nice rooms with sea view. Unfornately, not all rooms were up to the standard and we had to insist to change some of them, which was quite anoying to start a vacation.

The resort itself is beautiful, very nice pool area with several pools merging into each other and lustrous plants around it.
The beach was very disappointing, I should actually have been warned by a traveller here, who pointed this out in his review.
The water was extremely cold in beg. September and full of algues, nothing one likes on your skin. The sand with little stones.

The breakfast buffet is up to the expectation, but food in the other restaurants cannot be recommened. After one dinner and one lunch we always went to other places, which means,taking the highway and going to another place some 15 min. drive away.

We stayed in room 730 (a "Diamond" direct ocean view room) May 26-29, 2007. It was a good sized room with a King bed, chair, desk with chair, TV, nicely furnished and with plenty of storage space. Had a marbe tiled bathroom with a tub, separate shower, and separate toilet with bidet. The room was very quiet and was separated from the public hallway by a long hallway into the room.

This hotel has many very large rooms with very large balconies. It appeared that the majority had large balconies. Ours was quite small, lacked much sun, and was set back. I wasn't terribly happy with it but the front desk staff said it was impossible to change, although the resort looked far from full. Our balcony was about 6' x 10' with 2 chairs and a table. The staff, otherwise, was excellent and friendly and everyone spoke perfect English.

The beach is very rocky with pebbles; the surf does not appear to be swimmable and I saw no one swimming in the sea. There is a great view of Gibralter from the beach (and probably from some rooms) and of the Morrocan coast in the distance. There were comfortable chaise lounges fronting the beach and in a lawn area, and all were adequately spaced to avoid crowding.

An outstanding buffet breakfast was included with everything you could think of beautifully displayed. There was an egg/omelette station and even a separate buffet on a low table for kids. The Italian restaurant was so-so. A friend accompanying us returned one of her entrees and it had poor quality meat which had been overcooked.

There is really nothing else in Estepona and traffic going towards Malaga was very congested. I could recommend this resort only if you intended to just stay put there.