We requested a room "high up", ended up on floor 4, but with the lay out of the hotel the view from our room was poor to say the least. The roof top the block in front of us was extremely visible, the breakfast terrace, a bit if mountain and a bit of sea if you were standing!!!! I did request another room, howver, the hotel was full, which I knew, and nothing could be offered for 3 days, I wanted to start my holiday on day one not day 3 or 4.

The room was nice, and plenty of room, and even the mini bar was cold this time, which it has not been in a previous H10. The young woman that did our room added some lovely touches, making bows out of hand towels and arranging my make up in it.

Clean towels when ever you want them. Pool towel changed every day if you wanted.

The staff were mostly very good. However, they do tend to speak to you in German but soon change (if they can ) to English. We found out that we were only one of four English couples in the hotel, it does not bother us but it may bother others.

The Reception area if nice, Claudia on reception is very efficient and her English is excellent. Teresa is also very efficient and helpful. There are maps of Costa Calma available at Reception.

If you want lots to do then Costa Calma is not the place for you. If you want a hotel based holiday with fantastic beaches, then if you get the right hotel this is the place for you. You can walk for miles on the beaches, feed chipmunks who live in the cliffs on the beach, and watch the windsurfers, kite surfers and kite flyers.

We did not use the entertainment in the hotel, except the bar on the odd occasion. Two baileys with ice 8 Euros. House wine 8.30 Euros for a bottle, the white is better than the red.

The one BIG let down was the food. Boring, not enough selection and a real let down after staying in the H10 Timinfaya Palace, Lanzarote last year. The Playa Esmerelda really needs to check the restaurant out at one of their sister hotels.

Not enough chefs at breakfast,. some food that was on the previous night was out again for breakfast the following day, carrots, peas etc ? Not enough choice in the evening.

You can go all inclusive at this hotel but it is just not geared up to it and is not recommended. Go to a dedicated all inclusive hotel.

We have stayed on the island before at Calete de Fuste at the Barcelo, and had a great time. Horses for courses, and not everyone likes the same thing.

Pool was extremely cold, but as ithe weather was warm even in November, it was refreshing. I did swim most days, and the small indoor pool was a bonus, except they turned up the heating on the 23rd of November and it was like gertting into a very warm bath.

The hotel is not good if you have walking difficulties, lots of steps, poorly desinged and not enough lifts. To get to our room we carried our suitcases down a small flight of stairs into the lift. It also took us a good 20 minutes to find our room and 2-3 days to work out the best way to the pool.

We had a walk to the African Market on the Sunday morning, usual stuff. Not impressed, but we had a good walk.

We will not visit this hotel again or stay at Costa Calma, as we prefer a little bit of more life in the evening, a nice walk to be had or a little bar to sit at and watch the world and water go by, you can't do this at Costa Calma.

Safe is 10 Euros deposit and then daily charges I think 2 E a day, Mini Bar is 5 E deposit, buy 6 Bottles of water to put in it,then go to the Spar and stock up, the Spar is 20 mins walk away. Pool towels 15 E deposit each.

My wife&I were at this hotel June 13th-27th 2007 also March2006
&November2006.We have always enjoyed our breaks at thishotel which is part of a bigger chain of the H10 group
The staff are from all parts of the world Germany Argentina Poland France Spain& Portugal, and we have always found them most polite&curteous. Normally we have found we were
the only English couple in the hotel at times and the treament we received was 1st class.
The hotel is very popular with German tourists who are usually all inclusive. Well behaved and polite plus their standards are very high regarding food&service.The food is good, a good variety to suit all tastes. The only problem we encounted were the towels on the sunbeds ,but management were taking steps to sort this out
The pools-restaurants-general areas are all well maintained&clean, there is also a good masseur paid for by the individual. The beach is just below the hotel well clean, toilets.Sun beds&umbrellas about 9 euros,you can also feed the chipmunks quite child friendly.
Across from the hotel are apartments which include a supermarket,quite well stocked,also outside reception main entrance,a bus stop.Thebus goes downtown and the African market. Taxis are quite cheap.
For a quite,relaxing, sunny holiday this is the place,nightly entertainment good 10/10

We stayed a week (end August 07) in H10 Playa Esmeralda and we were rather disappointed. Here are some pros and cons:

+ (room itself)
Large room, comfortable, air-co, enough hot water, balcony with a view on the swimming-pool, cleaned every day, lots of storage
+ (hotel in general)
well situated on one of the most beautiful beach of the island (long walk on the right with amazing seaside lanscape and turquoise water), two pools (inside=warm or outside=pretty cold), bus service for the town center just next to the main entrance, buffet-style meals with a large variety of food (even if in that sort of complex, you tend to eat the same food every day), wines not too expensive

- (room)
very large complex, so you can get a nice room or a badly-situated one... we were rather lucky on that point
- (hotel)
*EXTREMELY BAD SERVICE for guest!
Only two out of 10 people working at the reception desk could understand English (no French at all) -> with German absolutely no problem :-)
They seem not to care for their guest! You ask for something you paid for (we ordered water and fruits in the room for our arrival - was arragend by the travel agency... we never got it!!). We had a special meal for our honeymoon arranged - They forgot it and we had absolutely nothing special on this day. We complained, they said they never got any information about that (two e-mails, a fax and a phone call made by the travel agent in front of me). We told that to the guy working for the tout operator - he sorted it by offering us a bottle of house wine the last evening (€6!)
We needed a key to open the minifridge, but nobody told us on the arrival. So we went back to the reception (15mn wait again) just to understand that we can only get it in the morning, and must pay in advance what is in the fridge (rather expensive:€2.10 for half a liter of water) - no refundable she said with a smile... :-)
*Quite a long walk to the beach, depending on where your room is (10mn walk to be on the beach)
*Be careful with the hygiene at the restaurant. We both got 'tourista' and so were our three friends staying in the same hotel.... Some food is not so fresh. Put some anti-dirrhea tablets in your bag before leaving home)
*activities in Geman or Spanish language

My conclusion: rather a 3star than a 4, except for the size of the room and the hotel building itself, including pools.
Would not go again in H10...

Last October we stayed here and had a great time, we had a quiet room off the reception area. In July Costa Calma beach is extremely windy, sandblasted on beach. The hotel is full of children that scream until 11pm at night. We had a room looking out on the pool cafe this time, so very noisy all day. The kids run up and down the corridors until 11pm, so it was hard at times to hear our film in our room. After a week the food gets very boring, as the menu is very similar each night. The staff do not speak good English, as most of the guests are German. The children run around the restaurant helping themselves to food they can hardly reach. I would not recommend July as a good time to visit this hotel. Jandia beach is not windy and so we went there most of the time.