Hotel Faustino Gran - Relais & Chateaux

“A magical place to visit while in Menorca”

We visited Menorca for 5 days and read that Ciutadella is the neighborhood to stay. Faustino Gran is a quiet luxury 3-building (palaces) property located in the heart of Ciutadella. What we loved: 1. Location - the best you can find in Ciutadella! Walking distance to the port, to the center of tow… more

We visited Menorca for 5 days and read that Ciutadella is the neighborhood to stay. Faustino Gran is a quiet luxury 3-building (palaces) property located in the heart of Ciutadella. What we loved: 1. Location - the best you can find in Ciutadella! Walking distance to the port, to the center of town, to all the beautiful alleys of shops, restaurants, the big church and sights all within a 5-10 minute walk. 2. The property & grounds - Faustino Gran is situated over 3 distinct palaces (think of unique, historical former residences) within the main little streets of the neighborhood. Palace 1 or the main property where you first check in upon arrival, has the breakfast patio, spa and restaurant/bar right by the port. At first glance you might think this is the property to be (we made this mistake at first) but after situating ourselves in the second palace nearby, we realized that they made special touches for each palace. Palace 2 where we stayed had a view of the church, the shady and tropical pool and beautiful large bedrooms with terraces overlooking that pool AND was actually closer of a walk to the main part of town, shopping areas, restaurants and more. The third palace has the cave indoor swimming pool, an amazing mural and beautiful common areas to lounge, read and more and is also closer to the main center of Ciutadella where you want to be and explore. 3. Service (except for one blip) - On the whole we loved the service and staff of this property. From the GM Maite who greets every guest to the hands down amazing and excellent concierge Mark who literally sent us to THE BEST restaurants and locals-only spots (love his honesty, listen to his advice) and his colleague (I forget his name) who recommended our private boat for an outstanding sailing day to hit all the best calas without the crowds, plus the excellent breakfast service team every morning and Lara our spa goddess/therapist who gave us the best massages and Menorcan treatments, we truly loved our experience from the team here. We did have one negative experience with one female night manager who somewhat gave us the wrong first impression (will get to that in a moment). 4. The spa - we immediately booked treatments on our first morning as this was our goal, to relax. All guests can use the spa for an hour everyday. DO NOT miss it. This spa is magical! In addition to the outdoor pool of Palace 1, they have their own indoor cave pool. We love that Lara schedules guests to have their own private hour that is not crowded with guests. Love this thoughtful touch. When we got to our service we opted for the Menorcan treatment. We got scrubbed, massaged and I was so relaxed at the end. Highly recommend this treatment. 5. Bespoke touches throughout - we loved seeing the live pianist at twilight while relaxing with a drink in the patio or the cookies we received in our room, complimentary water in the room everyday. My only regret is they only had availability for those 4 nights or we would have stayed longer. Negatives: 1. Late night arrival / very poor service from night manager: When you book, the hotel gives you a phone number to ring when you are about 15 minutes away from hotel so they can meet you outside of the main gate of palace 1. If it's your first time in Menorca (like us), most guests rent a car to drive from airport to Faustino Gran. Coming from the US, WhatsApp did not work for a call or text to the hotel. We tried multiple times. This is a major negative. We have been to small hotels in countries with little infrastructure and they call or text via WhatsApp. Faustino Gran needs to activate this ASAP. It would have been helpful to send us a text 24 hours before via WhatsApp so we could communicate in real time. Many hotels have a text feature, Faustino Gran needs to get with the times. So we emailed the hotel from the airport (as our data allowed this) 40 minutes from our arrival to the hotel. We told them our ETA of 10:40p and that we would be looking to have dinner. Once we arrived, the area with yellow lines where they tell you to park temporarily, was full of cars. The streets are very narrow so my husband slowly backed up in front of one of these cars. I ran in to check-in. When I arrived the manager was on her phone scrolling. She looked up at me all surprised. I asked her did you receive my email? She quickly opens up the message and says "yes I did just now. Oh I see here you need dinner but our restaurant is closed." I see panic on her face and in her demeanor. She gets up then tells me, where is your car, I said outside. Now mind you, we had been driving 40 minutes, needed to use restroom, were both hungry and so confused. She walks me to our car, takes our luggage and verbally pushes me to go to the restaurant down the stairs. I asked her may I quickly use the restroom. She said no, walk down there right now so you can get a table because they will close at 11p (she was wrong, restaurant kitchen was open until 11:30p, it was 10:45p). Meanwhile she tells my husband go park the car at this dropped pin and walk back to restaurant to meet your wife (my phone was the only one that had data, not my husband's, we were sharing data from my phone so it was not ideal to split up). And here is the best part. It turns out, this designated port parking lot is a long 13 minute drive AT NIGHT from the hotel because the town doesn't allow direct access to it via city streets after 6pm. So if you've never been there, you need to be prepared for this little known fact. So my husband asks her, can my wife and I drive together? She says no, she needs to run to the restaurant now. So off I went all harried and rushed. Thankfully my husband parked in the town parking spot nearby (He didn't listen to her) because he was so confused how to navigate where this port lot was in the dark when Google maps was telling us to go around the perimeter of the entire city. Mind you during the day this is literally a 5 minute walk from hotel. Not the case at night (and everyone there knows it). You'll know once you've visited how easy it actually is but not when you have never been there. This was the one negative that could have easily been AVOIDED, had the night manager checked the email, called the restaurant, booked us a table and welcomed us the right way. Needless to say we were both so annoyed that she was ordering us around for HER MISTAKE, sleeping on the job and not checking guest emails when they knew we were checking in that day. The hotel knew of the fiasco the next morning because then they sent over the concierge to give us a proper tour of the property and that's when we realized ok this is actually a beautiful property but we had a terrible first impression from that one hotel employee. When we returned after dinner on that first night, fortunately that employee was no longer there. We were greeted by a very kind male manager who gave us good information and was very helpful. We are seasoned travelers. Things like this happen. But this is something to note if your flight is arriving late. Make sure they receive you and prepare for your needs, not when you arrive but before. Overall, apart from this unfortunate start, everything else went amazingly well. No complaints. Would highly recommend Faustino Gran and hopefully we can return in the future.

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