We chose to visit the Holiday Inn Alicante Playa de San Juan for a week in July after having three very pleasant stays in Express by Holiday Inns in the UK. We were not sure what to expect in terms of quality, however it was probably one of the best hotels that we have ever stayed in.

The cost was €94 per night for an en suite room with king size bed and an “almost double” sofa bed. The room was on the third floor of the hotel and had a view of another apartment block to the rear of the hotel. However, this did not cause any problems as the apartments were quite a distance from the hotel, therefore not blocking the panoramic view.
THE HOTEL
The hotel building is over 7 floors: the ground floor, floors 1 to 5 and a floor called '-1'. If you are given a room on the '-1' floor, don't think that they are shoving you in the basement! The hotel is built on a hill, therefore the '-1' floor actually becomes the ground floor half way across the hotel. The area of the hotel surrounding the swimming pool consists of only the ground and first floors – to stop the building from shading the pool area.

CHECK-IN
Although the policy is 4pm for check-in, we arrived at around 11am due to an early flight. The hotel receptionist was very helpful and checked to see if our room was ready. Although the room was not ready at this time, she called a cleaner to have the room cleaned straight away. We were allowed to leave our luggage either behind the reception desk, or in a locked “luggage room”. Within an hour the room was cleaned and we were able to get into the room. Hotel staff speak English and French, in addition to Spanish. When we booked, we were almost put off by the fact that only smoking room were available on-line. We booked a smoking room anyway, but non-smoking rooms were allocated on arrival to anyone who wanted that type of room. We did encounter one small problem though – the room that we booked was a prepayment room. The amount was converted, by the hotel's bank, without our knowledge, and charged to our card in pounds sterling. This service levied a 2% charge from the hotel's bank which only became apparent when they gave us the credit card receipt on arrival.
THE ROOM
The cost was €94 per night for an en suite room with king size bed and an “almost double” sofa bed. Unlike most hotel sofa beds, the bed at the Holiday Inn was very comfortable and actually allowed you to have a full night's sleep! The windows had a very thick curtain which completely blocked all light – perfect for a lie-in on a sunny morning! A mini-bar was present, although this seemed quite expensive compared to the vending machines in the tennis court area (e.g. €1.90 for a can of soft drink in the mini-bar, €1.00 for the same item in the vending machine). The bathroom consisted of the standard toilet, washbasin and a bathtub with an overhead adjustable shower (which you could detach from the wall). A sponge, cotton wool, sewing kit, shower cap and soap were supplied in the room, free of charge, along with the obligatory Holiday Inn bottle of Lux Shower Gel! The television was not great for English speaking people: there were a selection of Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian and English channels – however the only English channels were CNN and CNBC.

SWIMMING POOL
The facility that we made the most use of was the hotel's swimming pool. This consisted of three sections – the main pool (1.35m depth throughout), the children's “splash” pool and a whirlpool. For most of the day, a lifeguard was present. Around the pool were about 40 sunbeds. The hotel supplied clean towels for the sunbeds. An excellent feature of this particular hotel is that they do not operate a “towel reserves the bed” policy as is performed in many other European hotels. Every twenty minutes, any unused towels are collected to ensure the bed remains free for everyone to use. Between 2pm and 5pm the pool is very empty – this is an excellent time to get hold of a sun bed for the evening as the pool starts to become more popular again at 5pm.
FOOD & DRINK
The hotel had a main restaurant area where breakfast was served. We did not have breakfast at the hotel and therefore cannot comment on this. Drink prices in the bar were fair, but not excellent (e.g. a 20cl bottle of soft drink cost €2.20, a coffee with milk cost €1.75). The hotel served a dinner menu, with most meals costing around €10 each. A snack menu was available for most of the day. Next to the swimming pool was a small bar which sold drinks and pizzas. The drinks here were considerably more expensive than the inside bar – soft drinks cost €2.50 and pizzas cost €6 each. For evening meals, I would recommend walking to the beach or town where there is a greater selection of food and more reasonable prices. E.g. on the beach, a Chinese restaurant offered a 3 course meal for €7.95. The beach also has a McDonald's and various other food outlets.

OTHER LEISURE FACILITIES
The hotel has a tennis court, although there is an additional charge for this facility. The hotel gym is free, and has most of the equipment you would expect to find. As someone who doesn't regularly use a gym, I am unable to comment on this! In order to use the gym, you must have your room key activated for the gym at reception.
TRANSPORT
The hotel were very helpful with local travel and transport, however I'll mention a few pointers here:

To the beach: The beach is approximately 500m from the hotel and can be reached within 5 minutes on foot. To get to the beach, you'll find it quicker to use a little gate at the side of the car park. This is opened using your key card. Once outside the gate, turn right and keep walking. You'll see the beach straight ahead of you!
To the San Juan shopping centre: Pretty much the same as the beach, except once you've come outside the gate, take the second road on the left and keep walking. The shopping centre is further on your left. The shopping centre included a supermarket – this is not very obvious as it is located in the basement of the shopping centre.

To Alicante City Centre: Exit using the main hotel exit, turn right. Take the first left. At the roundabout, turn right and you will see a tram station. The tram costs €1 each, single. The station does not make it clear how to purchase a ticket, so I'll cover that here. The station in the centre of Alicante is called “Mercado”. The station nearest to the Holiday Inn is called “Avda Naciones”. You can board the train without a ticket, however you must have the money to purchase one from the conductor. If you are travelling to Mercado, you will need to get off the tram at La Isletta and change to the tram destined for Mercado. Keep your ticket that you purchased on the first tram, as this will also allow you to travel on the second tram (provided the ticket shows your destination as Mercado). You also need it to leave the station at Mercado. On the return journey, make a note of where Mercado station is located, in relation to your destination – I say this as Mercado station is underground and can easily be missed due to the lack of signage!
To Alicante Airport: Taxis from the airport to the hotel are readily available in the taxi stand outside the arrivals area. They cost about €20-25 – our taxis cost €20 and €23. Some websites quoted us as much as €45 to book a single journey. Taxis in Alicante are metered by time, not distance, therefore the price may vary considerably with high traffic. For the return journey, the Holiday Inn staff were happy to book a taxi which turned up on time, as requested.

OVERALL
If you've managed to read this far, you've probably realised that we really enjoyed staying in this hotel and could talk about it all day!! All-in-all, the stay was excellent and we are definitely considering going back next year!