Review: the 14th century Hilton Sa Torre, Mallorca hotel (Part 2)
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This is the 2nd part of my review of Hilton Sa Torre, Mallorca. Part 1 of my Hilton Sa Torre review can be found here.
Let’s look at our room. Because this is a conversion of an old building mixed with some new additions, the website does not adequately cover the numerous options available. For anything more complex than a standard room it is worth emailing with your requirements.
Hilton has a very attractive chain-wide family policy – you can book a 2nd room for your children at a 50% discount. This saved us €160 per night. My Hilton Diamond status also saved us money because we got full breakfast for all four of us included. We were not upgraded – nor did I expect to be – because we booked specific rooms.
We took a Garden Suite with a connecting Double. The Garden Suite has a sofa bed so, in theory, you could sleep six people with this combination. The rooms connect via their external doors – there is a separate joint front door which you lock and you leave the individual room doors propped open.
This was in one of the new 1-storey buildings built along the side of the adult swimming pool, although we didn’t have a view of it. The rooms had no real view at all despite having patios, not that it mattered given that we were in the middle of a quiet resort with plenty of places to relax.
This is our Garden Suite reception room with sofa bed (there is a big desk out of shot with plenty of sockets):
Garden Suite bathroom (shower and loo out of shot) – the bathroom has the standard Hilton Peter Roth toiletries which felt very out of place here:
Garden Suite bedroom, with doorway to patio:
Garden Suite patio:
Connecting Double Room:
As you can see from the website, the rooms in the period Hilton Sa Torre buildings look totally different to ours. If you have something specific that you like the look of, you should make it clear when booking.
A full review of the hotel would be excessively long so I will just focus on a few key points which were important to us. As always with resorts, different things may be important to you. Ask a question in the comments if necessary. Here we go:
Like most Mallorca properties, the hotel is in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is walkable. The nearest town, Llucmajor, is very pretty (photo below) and has a good Friday market.
You don’t need a car. Sa Torre is 20 minutes from the airport although not on the flight path. The hotel has a free shuttle bus to the nearest beach and to Palma although with only 8 seats (ie 2 families) you need to book a couple of days ahead.
Note that, if you bring a car, the local beaches are closed by the police early in the morning once the handful of parking spaces are taken. The shuttle bus can get through so you may prefer it even with a vehicle.
The local beaches themselves are fine although very busy and with the usual beach club. The tiny village attached is a dump.
There is an adults only ‘sea club’ 10 minutes drive from the hotel to which guests have access. This appears to be on the edge of a cliff and has no beach. We didn’t go because of the ‘no kids’ rule.
The hotel kids club is OK but not very well equipped. It is small (a converted room with a garden) and has just one member of staff. It closes for lunch. The woman running it, however, was impressive and she does a two hour session of pool games daily. The club is closed on Monday.
The guests were mainly German although there were a number of British groups. All of the staff speak perfect English as did most of the non-English guests.
The Hilton Sa Torre breakfast is impressive, this is only a fraction:
There are two eating areas (you can’t really call them restaurants). In the courtyard it serves a tapas-based menu. In the rear outside the old stables is a more formal menu – the hotel had a Michelin star at one point. Weirdly, I ordered an identical dish from both menus on separate days – the only difference was €7 as the tapas menu is cheaper!
There is also a small pool bar / restaurant which has its own tables or will serve at your sun lounger. It has a BBQ and you can pick out a piece of meat, chicken or fish to be cooked for you. We found this worked well with the kids.
Food and wine is cheap for a luxury hotel. Kids eat free. As long as an adult is eating, children under 11 do not pay. Given the modestly priced adult menu, you find that you spend very little on eating.
Kids are only allowed in the indoor spa pool for two hours in the morning. This made no difference to us because the weather was great, but could be restrictive out of season.
There are conference facilities here, tucked away. This is presumably why they use the Hilton branding. If you are looking for a unique conference or meeting venue out of season then I would recommend this.
Internet was generally OK. It had to be reset in our room twice when the speed dropped to almost nothing but always recovered after that. What was good is that there is coverage everywhere on the property.
The resort is compact and easy to get around. Our room was almost the furthest away from the main building but within 24 hours our 5-year old had memorised the entire resort and we were happy to let him wander around by himself.
We had a good week at Hilton Sa Torre in Mallorca and would return. We didn’t see much beyond Palma, Llucmajor and the local beach but that is the downside of having two young kids …..
In terms of cost, we paid around €675 per night after the 50% discount for the kids room. I genuinely don’t see what the St Regis Mardavall, reviewed here, would have offered for €2,000 per night or the Park Hyatt for €1,500 per night to justify the difference. (OK, better toiletries than Peter Roth but apart from that ….!) Mallorca is, unfortunately, extortionately expensive in August.
On the upside, I banked 166,000 Hilton HHonors points due to my Diamond status and the current ‘double points’ promotion. I also renewed my status for another year.
The Hilton Sa Torre website is here if you want to learn more.
How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards (April 2024)
There are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.
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Did you know that the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are a great way of earning Hilton Honors points? Two Virgin Points can be converted into three Hilton Honors points. The Virgin Atlantic cards are the only Visa or Mastercard products in the UK which can indirectly earn Hilton Honors points. You can apply here.
You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly with:
- American Express Gold (20,000 bonus Amex points)
- American Express Rewards Credit Card (10,000 bonus Amex points)
and for small business owners:
- American Express Business Gold (20,000 bonus Amex points)
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The conversion rate from American Express to Hilton points is 1:2.
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