QAWRA Palace Resort & SPA

Overcrowded. Really overcrowded. Revamped of room and bathroom is needed. Food is ok'ish. Service is good and friendly. System of mandatory booking to access the so-called asian, south-american and carribean restaurants is lousy. The food from these restaurants do not really correspond to what you would expect from these regions.
Too many people who come there to drink and drink and drink... and end up drunk, leading to fights due to stupid behaviors - it has happened twice at the roof top pool during our stay...

Great location and nice roof top view

On arrival, we got at hotel early which is fine as we knew check in wasn't until 3pm so went and had lunch at the buffet which nice. There is plenty for everyone and a great range. Although wine and beer feels watered down. Then we came to 3pm and still not able to get in room bearing in mind we have been travelling since 3am! Eventually after some fuss at 3 20pm they got us into our room and in their defence had given us a bottle of fizz, some swan towels and nice biscuits.

The hotel, the week, we stayed had a lot of guests and it felt crowded and cramped. The pool is not nearly big enough and being with a teenager under 17 we could not use the top pool. The sunbeds are so close together that you can't relax and all sun beds are taken by 9am so you can't get one anyway. The sea pool area is nice but again you have to hunt for a sun bed.

The room was clean. The cleaning team do a fantastic job and replacing towels, making up the room was never too much trouble. We had a sea view with balcony anything less than that would have felt cramped and the rooms facing the court yard are aittle depressing so the view was lovely. Shower great and the room was quite at nice with great air conditioning.

Evening entertainment was ok but lacked alittle something as did the pool side bar where the drinks were watered down and you had to queue. We cottoned on to the Lume Bar in the evening where the drinks seemed better and it was a lot more chilled.

The meals in the buffet resturant were good but agree with people that it should be enforced the etiquette for dining. No swimwear, and no football shirts. It lowered the tone of the experience. Food was of good quality and plentiful but the same options every night. We booked one of the themed restaurants and they were nice and a lot less crowded.

This is not a 4 star restaurant and talking to our friends who are Maltese this was seen as a 5 star on the island. I would say a good 3 star but no 4 star. Its too busy, crowded and not chilled. If we had not been going out everyday and only hung in the hotel we would have been very disappointed.

We paid over the price i think for our stay which is disappointing and we will do more research next time. Hope this review helps!!

Let me start with the positives - a clean hotel and room which is well stocked .
The extra plus is the air conditioning.
The negatives - poor check in by the man that checked us in - not interested in doing his job properly -
Important prescribed Medication removed from my bed side table - was returned after I kicked up a fuss - manager was apologetic but the reason given was poor once I went away and thought about . I did accept it at the time but at no point should anything be taken from a room in a hotel that you have paid for . The trust is gone .

We stayed here for 4 nights for my milestone birthday and holiday combo.
The hotel is opposite St Paul's Bays. We had a sea view front. The hotel is huge and lots to do. There are numerous restaurants where you need to book prior as spaces are limited. My favourite was the Carribbean and Asian restaurant. The buffet restaurant Develle was fab lots of selection and different dishes everyday.. no need to book here. Great food. The hotel has a roof top bar which the scenery is spectacular. My favourite was the SPA area where there is a indoor pool and it's tranquil and a very relaxing area. Massage treatment was excellent. On my last day I spotted the mini golf. The service was very good from reception on entry to the reception, restaurants, bars, gym, spa. Staff are so kind and helpful. Amazing hotel x

Basen na dachu

Clean and great food!

Great location.
Great food selection.

Property was perfect

Absolutely beautiful location on beachfront. Hotel was very clean and staff were very pleasant. Our room was a standard sea view so it had a smaller balcony but that was fine for us. Plenty of choice at breakfast, lunch and dinner in the buffet. We also tried one of the speciality restaurants, the Asian one and it was lovely. If we had to pick anything at all that we would have loved to have been better, it is the carrying through the policy of not being able to reserve sunbeds. We would have our breakfast and be at the adult only area on the rooftop at 8.15am with hardly any sunbeds available. Almost every bed had a towel on it and no-one was there. Some people didn’t arrive until lunchtime. Also, enforce a better dress code in the buffet restaurant, state was is acceptable to wear and what isn’t. We do t want to see wet swimwear and half naked bodies during lunch or dinner.

We came here as a family of 6 and having stayed in 4 star hotels on the island already, I can honestly say that the Qawra Palace is not 4star. The rooms need modernising especially the showers. The showers and especially the shower attachment needs a good scrub with bleach to remove the build up of mould. Its something that needs attention on every departure. The pool area can also do with modernising as can the facilities on floor 0 and 1, the hotel is very dated.

Food is what id expect in a 3star hotel not 4star although we always found something to eat. The restaurants you pre booking are nothing special, if you miss out, you are not missing much. We found the Lume ok though out of the 3.

We had the 3rd floor Seaview room and the views are stunning.

There are no sunbed wars however if you want a good spot, you need to wake at 5am to go grab them, or you could simply leave your towels overnight as some did.

There is a wide variety of drinks and the entertainment is ok as was the kids club. All 3 star standard in my opinion.
We usually stay at the Seabank which is 100 times better and at the cost of this holiday I expected the same standard or there abouts.

The staff are all lovely and very helpful, nothing is too much trouble. Extra towels & pillows were always brought straight away.

Unfortunately we wont be staying here again and will not be recommending this hotel.

We stayed at the Qawra Palace from 20th - 27th July. We’d booked the hotel based on the photographs on the Easy Jet website and the positive reviews, so we were expecting a lovely holiday. The reality was quite different.

The hotel appeared to be at maximum capacity. Everything was crowded and it’s clear the hotel doesn’t have the facilities for the amount of rooms it has. There are 12 floors in this hotel and rooms from floors 1/2 - 11 with, it appears, 90 rooms on most floors (Google says there are 597 rooms but I believe there are more than this). This is where the issue lies. There are two pools at the hotel and both are small. There is the main/family pool on the lower level and the rooftop pool on level 12. The space around each pool is small, therefore there isn’t enough space or sun loungers for all of the guests. You have to be up early to get a sun lounger. By 8/8.30am, all the sun loungers were gone. They are packed in tight and you are elbow to elbow with the person next to you. This doesn’t make for a relaxing experience especially as the umbrellas at the lower pool are fixed in position and cannot be moved. You are either going to be in the shade or the sun all day. There’s no control over this. At the roof top pool, there are electronically controlled canopies over both levels (beds on both floors 11 and 12) which are out all day, so most beds are in the shade, unless you can get the ones on the very front row (even then, you will be in the shade from 2pm onwards).
It was so busy whilst we were there, people were having to sunbathe on tables and chairs . Every single available space was taken. I have never seen anything like it.

This then has a knock on effect for the pool bars. There were only two people serving at each and queues of 15 people waiting at one time. This made getting a drink extremely difficult. They also ran out of ice at midday. There was also a queue for the toilets at the lower pool, as there were only two.

The buffet restaurant was also very crowded, with tables packed in and no space to walk between or have any privacy from other guests. I saw a guest in a wheelchair struggling to get through as there was no space.

Getting a lift was also difficult, with wait times of up to six or seven minutes each time (again, due to too many guests and too many rooms with inadequate facilities). The lifts take you to different parts of the hotel, which has a very confusing layout. You can’t get to the spa via stairs. You can’t get to the rooftop pool via certain lifts. I spent 15 minutes one morning trying to get up to the rooftop pool and wandering aimlessly between floors and lifts!

I raised the above issues with Easy Jet and the hotel, whose answer was, “it’s high season”. They didn’t seem to accept that high season should make no difference, IF YOU HAVE SUFFICIENT FACILITIES FOR YOUR GUESTS! I have never stayed in a hotel that was packed full of guests like this one. It shouldn’t matter if you are high season or not. This is pure greed on the part of the hotel, who are building even more rooms, when they can’t cope with the amount of guests they already have.

Moving on, the food in the buffet was fine, albeit limited. Only a few choices of hot food each day (both sides of the buffet serve the same food). Lots of pork dishes. Plenty of choice or salads and cold meat. Poor selection of fruit. The desserts were all very bland and disappointing. The ice cream machine was a welcome addition and the only thing we used for dessert.
The Maltese night was dire. Two rabbit dishes and one fish dish. A couple of pasta dishes. The desserts were equally as bad.

There are three “à la carte” restaurants of which you can use once each during a week’s stay. This is very misleading as only “Lume” (the Caribbean) is à la carte (with a very limited menu). The rest are buffet restaurants.
The drink menu at the bars doesn’t have spirits shown as included. We queried this with Easy Jet and were told they were included and to ask at the bar. The restaurant staff didn’t know which spirits were included. This caused unnecessary confusion.

Our room was dated, but pretty clean, with a good amount of storage. The bathroom was a bit grubby with some mould and nowhere to place your toiletries, so they had to go onto the floor (I hate this in a hotel). The water pressure was poor and washing your hair was difficult. The shower flooded the bathroom every time you used it. The bed was rock hard and so uncomfortable. I asked reception twice for a mattress topper and it never materialised. The balcony situation was dire. Just enough space for two chairs and a view of all the other rooms. It was how I’d imagine the view in a prison to be.
The safe in the room was an actual key, rather than a code. When we checked in, there was no mention of the safe. When we eventually could check into our room, we had to go back to reception and pay €20 for the safe key (this information would have been helpful before we’d gone up to the room, especially as there are long waits for lifts).
I didn’t like having to traipse around the warren of corridors to find the water machine to fill up a vase of water for the room.

We complained to Easy Jet about the hotel two days into the holiday, at 1230pm. They said they’d speak with the hotel. I got an email saying the hotel would change the shower head. I stated changing the shower head wasn’t going to fix the poor water pressure or the bathroom flooding. At 1030pm that evening (10 hours after we raised our complaint), we were in bed asleep (as we had to be up and out early the next day for a trip) when we were awoken by someone trying to get into our room and banging on the door. My husband opened the door to find a maintenance man holding a shower head in his hand. He was told it was an unacceptable hour to be trying to fit a new shower head. We complained to reception about this the following morning.
Five days into our stay, we had a letter put through the door saying the manager wished to speak with us. We told him the issues, of which he dismissed all of them. When asked why a maintenance man was banging on our door at 1030pm at night, he said they’d tried to come earlier, but there was a “do not disturb” sign on the door. This isn’t true as we never use the “do not disturb sign”. When I asked him what the point of the meeting was, he said he would move us to an upgraded room. This room had a partial sea view (if you craned your head to the left, otherwise it was a view of the road), a slightly more comfortable bed, a bigger bathroom and a jacuzzi. The room had a really unpleasant smell and the floor was filthy. My feet were black from walking barefoot around it. We couldn’t use the jacuzzi as it took forever to fill up and dirt and hair came out of the jets. Whilst we appreciated the gesture, being changed room at 3pm on the Saturday when we were leaving at 8am on the Monday, was a tad too little, too late.

This is not a four star hotel and it really can’t accommodate the amount of guests it has. The management’s greed ruined our holiday. Luckily, Malta is lovely and we spent the majority of our time out of the hotel, so we did manage to salvage our holiday. We went on an amazing boat trip, for which I have left a review if you are interested. We also went to Valletta and Mdina for the day. Mdina is particularly beautiful. We used the Bolt app for taxis, which was reasonably priced and a lot quicker than taking the bus.
This wasn’t a cheap holiday and the hotel definitely was not worth the price, especially as we spent as much time away from it as possible. The photographs on the hotel and travel agent’s websites are misleading.
In conclusion, I would not return to this hotel and I would not recommend it to anyone.

La propreté

We stayed at the Qawra Palace for a week at the end of July. Before going I was nervous because of the reviews I had read but the price was over £1300 cheaper than other hotels for the same duration so we took a chance.

My family, husband and two 17 year olds, had a great time. We had two rooms side by side and they were absolutely adequate, clean with everything in we needed including a glass bottle that could be filled with drinking water at the various stations around the hotel. The bathroom is small but you get used to it. Keep the plug pushed down in the sink when not in use to avoid any smells that might creep in (we had no issues but I have seen reference in reviews). Balcony is small on the inward facing rooms and initially scary, but again room for two and you adjust to the height quickly.

I don’t understand the food reviews, all 4 of us had a varied and balanced diet whilst there with plenty of fresh fruit, salads and vegetables at lunch and dinner. Only thing missing for me at breakfast was an omelette. We had a very enjoyable dinner in the Asian restaurant which was part of the AI package.

As my kids are 17 they were able to use the rooftop pool which was gorgeous. Sun loungers were reserved very early each day, but the staff were more than happy to remove towels if no one appeared and there are plenty up there. The family pool looked very crowded but we did not use this so I cannot comment. There are also loungers available by the sea, but equally the rocks are surprisingly comfortable for a change of scenery.

The drinks are as expected on an AI package, I found the wine palatable by day 2 and discovered a liking for blue slush with the local version of Malibu. According to the family the beer was good.

We didn’t experience any problems during our stay and just enjoyed having quality time together in a really nice environment.