La Manga - hotel or villa?

[mckenzie]

Can anyone offer me the benefit of their experience please?
Hotel seems very expensive but will other activities be cheaper if we stay there?
Can we use the hotel's child care if we stay in the villas?
I can only see Los Lomas villas on line but I know we've stayed in a villa before in other parts of La manga - are they private hire villas perhaps? (it was a long time ago and I cant remember)

TIA

Hi, we've stayed at La Manga three times - twice in Los Lomas (apartment and villa) and once in a private villa. In Los Lomas we used the hotel's babysitting/nannying service which was great. Use of the indoor pool/spa facilities were included when staying there but not included with the private villa (which had it's own pool anyway). We found it all very child friendly. HTH.

Thanks thaigreen.
Did you find the location of los lomas ok? Not too remote?

Bump please.
And does anyone know how far, in km or miles, it is from the hotel to los Lomas?

Hi McKenzie, we had a hire car each time and did tend to drive around the resort, it's not huge distances though. Probably less than 5 minutes drive to the hotel. 10-15 minutes to the private beach. You could maybe walk but Las Lomas is on a big hill. As I recall there is a minibus service run by the resort which we used in the evening once or twice. We didn't go to the hotel much - had one evening meal and one lunch at the pool bar there. There are a couple of restaurants, cafe, shop, playground, outdoor pools, as well as the La manga club club spa (with the indoor pool) all up at Las Lomas so we mainly used the facilities there. Including booking day and evening babysitting at the reception. The la Manga resort is huge and there are restaurants, cafes, bars, shops and sports facilities at various locations throughout. Not sure when you are thinking of going but the outdoor pools and some of the facilities were closed when we visited in February, and one of the outdoor pools was closed when we visited in April. So you may want to check. If you do hire a car there is an absolutely stunning beach just East of the resort at Calblanque regional park - not to be missed.

Thanks thaigreen.
We've booked now for August. Not booked any car hire yet though. Nor airport transfers.
We are being quoted £180 return for the 8 of us; that sounds quite toppy to me. Do you have any erperience or do you collect a car at the airport? Who do you use for car hire?

I think we used airport transfers the first time and then booked a hire car through the resort which was a bit pricey but great car. The second and third visits we flew via Alicante and hired cars from the airport, but were not impressed. Unfortunately can't remember the companies we used. Sorry not much help, Did you go for the hotel?

We stayed in las lomas last year and enjoyed it. I'd say a car is essential though - the mini buses are fine but I wouldn't have wanted to rely on them for every trip down to the supermarket or beach. We also had a couple of trips out to the most beautiful beaches in the National Park nearby.

We had complementary childcare in the kids club as well which was good and las lomas residents seemed to get various other benefits - hotel rated on the golf and free sun beds at the main tennis centre pool, for example. The couple of restaurants in las lomas village were good.