I’ve really struggled with this review because unfortunately we had a really bad experience staying here, however a large part of that was down to Airbnb being incompetent and really unhelpful, so I will keep this review solely about our experience with this apartment and host.
The first thing I will say is the host did have good communication. When we struggled to access the property they called me quickly and always responded to messages quickly, however as someone who has used Airbnb for a long time I cannot in good faith give this place a good review. If I was planning to stay here I’d want confirmation from the host that these issues have all been fixed.
The main issue we had was the roof flooded in the lounge, leading to a lot of water down the walls and on the floor. Now I appreciate that Malaga doesn’t tend to have heavy rain and this is rare, however when we contacted the host about this they said the owner was aware of the wall issue and didn’t have time to paint them before we checked in. This leads me to believe there had been flooding before and instead of fixing the problem, the ‘evidence’ was going to be painted over.
We were also unfortunate enough to all get bad bed bug bites when staying here. The apartment did seem clean and I know bed bugs aren’t necessarily a sign of things being unclean, however I have a feeling these must be deeply rooted in mattresses as guests in both rooms experienced them. This led to uncomfortable bites, expensive antihistamine purchases, and having to wash all of our luggage on a hot wash when we returned home.
These two major issues led us to almost checking out after two nights
(we were due to stay five), however Airbnb failed to find us replacement accommodation. I will say that during this time the host was sympathetic and I appreciate there wasn’t a huge amount they could do at the time on their end.
There were other ‘minor’ issues that need to be looked at. The apartment has induction hobs, but the majority of pans didn’t work with them (these kinds of hobs require special cookware), so this was a bit annoying to discover once morning after already buying food.
The electricity also posed a problem. When the air con/heating was on, if you either showered or even plugged in another electrical device, the electricity would completely go off. Luckily we found the fuse box and a quick ‘on/off’ did the trick. However after realising what was causing the issue (after three blackouts), we accepted we couldn’t use the heating.
In conclusion, this apartment looks very nice, but doesn’t seem fit for purpose. It reminds me of a show home where on the face of things it looks perfect, but many things don’t actually work. If the above things are all fixed then it’s in a great location (just outside of the main area but a short walk away), and the big window that opens out onto the street is a great addition in the sun.