It’s becoming a bit of a tradition for us to go away during May half term, favouring the Canary Islands which have great weather throughout the year. The H10 hotels we stayed in for the past 2 years (you can read about them here and here ) set the standards quite high. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure any other hotel was going to top the H10s. The Sunlight Bahia Principe Tenerife hotel had been in our radar for a while; in fact we nearly booked it last year, but like I said earlier we loved the H10 hotels so much we decided to stick with that chain. Fuerteventura and Lanzarote are gorgeous islands, but too windy, and we felt the weather wouldn’t be 100% clear at this time of the year. This is why we decided to return to Tenerife.
Our holiday requirements change year on year, as our kids get older. At 7 and nearly 10 they have now outgrown some of the kids clubs and they’d rather spend time in the pool or participating in hotel activities for older children. They never want to leave the resort, so it doesn’t really matter to us if we are not near beach or the hustle and bustle. A bit sad, I know, but I’m sure things will change when they are teenagers. Because of this, one of our requirements when looking for hotels is that they have enough things going on to keep the kids entertained.
The Sunlight Bahia Principe Tenerife has a Mediterranean vibe, surrounded by lush vegetation, with low-rise pastel coloured buildings which look down onto their two main pools. There is also a baby pool and a jacuzzi. One of the highlights of our stay was the heated pool. Yes, it was properly heated, which is a plus, if you are like me and always find pools or sea water cold no matter what time of the year. A heated pool meant the children spent hours on end playing and splashing around. I have the feeling a heated pool will be in our list of requirements whenever we look at hotels in the future!
One of the downsides of the hotel was the lack of sun loungers. Maybe it was because it was half term and it was very busy, but unless you were by the pool with towels really early in the morning it was hard to get any space at all. One of the mornings, no later than 9:30 we found ourselves with nowhere to sit down, but luckily the hotel sorted it out and got some extra loungers out for us. That was a minor issue that was promptly resolved, showing what good customer service the hotel offers. I guess this could also be a problem during the high summer season.
The food was great, with one main restaurant that had outside and inside sitting. I love eating outside whenever we are on holiday, it’s really nice and something we don’t get to too much of a chance to do in the UK. As part of the all inclusive deal, there was the option to eat in 3 of the a la carte restaurants within the hotel. We ate in the Italian and the Asian, which was particularly great.
Facilities are shared with the neighbouring sister hotel Sunlight Bahia Principe Costa Adeje, which is bigger. We visited a few times, especially in the evening as most of the kids entertainment was there. However the highlight of that hotel is the infinity pool. It was the first time for all of us in an infinity pool and we loved it.
Our stay at Sunlight Bahia Principe Tenerife was excellent, much better than we hoped so and we “might” be already looking at another Sunlight Bahia hotel for our next holiday.
