Royal Son Bou Family Club in Menorca: Accommodation Review

Having returned from what can only be described as THE best all-inclusive family resort we have ever been to, with over 1000 photographs, I realised, it’s not possible to review this resort in just one blog post. It just wouldn’t do it justice. So here is part one of my review of Royal Son Bou Family Club in Menorca – the accommodation.

After some issues with taxis, which I briefly touched on in my post about visiting Mahon, we arrived at Royal Son Bou Family Club in Menorca, just after dinner service had finished. We weren’t expecting dinner that evening, as we knew we were arriving late, but the resort had thought ahead. We were greeted with an extremely warm welcome on arrival and told that the hotel had taken the liberty of arranging dinner in our apartment for us and that the chefs were packaging it at that very moment. They were extremely apologetic that this “might take five minutes”, but we were blown away by the gesture, which we’ve never had offered to us before. This is what Royal Son Bou consider standard procedure for guests who arrive late. Wow!

We walked around the beautifully lit (and very inviting) swimming pool and found our room very quickly, thanks to the animal coded rooms, designed so that children don’t get lost finding their apartment. When we opened the key-carded door, we were instantly hit by the wow factor. An incredibly spacious lounge, with two sofas (which double as extra beds and are already made up underneath the sofa covers), huge flat screen TV and a coffee table, a dining table and chairs.
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A large balcony opens out to a view over the pool, with an outdoor dining table and chairs – giving you the choice of eating indoors or outdoors.

Cupboards that open out to reveal a kitchen, complete with everything you’d need to cook for a family, eat, drink and even washing up liquid and utensils. The front door also had a chain lock high up, to prevent toddlers from escaping, which was very much appreciated by our family.

Down the hallway we found the children’s bedroom, with discreet safety bars over the window, so there’s no danger of them falling out, a huge built in wardrobe and child-friendly pictures on the walls.

Next was the children’s bathroom, decorated with sparkly shiny tiles, huge mirrors and two sinks – of different heights, to suit children of different ages. There was a bath as well as a shower, again to suit children of all ages.

That was just the first bathroom. We were in a Kiko Royal apartment, which meant we also had an ensuite bathroom coming off our own bedroom. Our ensuite had an enormous shower, a monsoon shower nonetheless and I can tell you… that shower was utter heaven and I could have quite happily spent the week in the shower! We also had sink, toilet and bidet. Both bathrooms were kitted out with great big white fluffy bathsheets and handtowels for everyone, along with toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs, moisturiser, makeup remover as well as the usual shower gel, shampoo and hand soaps.

Our bedroom, was immense… it even had a dressing room area with a floor to ceiling dark mirror and seating. The superking sized bed had a “pillow menu”, which not only gave you a choice of pillows, but explained what type of pillow was best suited to you, dependant on whether you were a back sleeper, a tummy sleeper or a side sleeper.

A full guide to all the hotel’s services was also found in the bedroom, along with another flatscreen TV and a remote control and instructions on how to use the free air conditioning. We found we didn’t need the air con though, due to the huge thermal blackout curtains, which when drawn, kept the heat (and light) out. The whole apartment had a variety of different types of lighting in EVERY room, even the bathrooms, so you could set the ambience however you wanted it.

We were still looking around, when just a few minutes after entering the apartment, the chefs assistants arrived with our dinner. They filled the fridge with bottled water, milk, fruit, cheese, tomatoes, salads and Spanish ham. They placed containers of hot bread rolls on the table and discreetly slipped out. We sat on our balcony and tucked into our dinner blissfully in the 22 degree heat at 10pm on our first night, utterly wowed by our apartment and looking forward to checking out the rest of the hotel.

Royal Son Bou Family Club has a large family swimming pool (which was utterly gorgeous to swim in) and a separate children’s pool with slides. Club Kikoland (the children’s club) and the hotel’s two restaurants are so impressive, that they warrant their own blog posts!

The main bar can be accessed from both indoors and outdoors. A large lounge area, including pool tables and air hockey can be found indoors, whilst outdoors has seating and tables for many families around the main stage, ready to watch the evening entertainment. All inclusive board includes the majority of the bar items, including a choice of seven cocktails and the menu clearly indicates with a little blue star, everything which is included.

Just across the street are supermarkets, car rental shops and there’s a fantastic little shop inside the hotel too, selling clothes, swim items, inflatables, children’s flip flops and souvenirs. Our toddler twins kept trying to escape us, running to the shop and sitting in little boats in the doorway!

A pretty little pathway and a bridge, lead you straight from Royal Son Bou Family Club and onto the beautiful sandy Son Bou beach. Son Bou beach is 2.5km long, but you might want to note in advance that the far end of Son Bou beach (furthest away from the hotel) is a popular spot with naturists, as I found out the hard way!

Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) at Royal Son Bou Family Club was immaculately clean. There was not a speck of dust to be found (and yes… I do act like the hotel inspector’s Alex Polizzi when I’m in hotels). Every morning we would go to breakfast and by time we got back, our apartment had been cleaned top to bottom, beds made and fresh towels put out. The hotel also provides separate poolside towels (dark blue so they don’t get mixed up with the bathroom towels) and you can change those for clean ones twice a week or more often for 1 Euro per towel if you so desire.

Having worked in hospitality for ten years, done my degree in hospitality management and written my dissertation on quality standards in four star hotels, I am extremely critical of all things hospitality… but I absolutely cannot find anything at all to fault about the Royal Son Bou Family Club. Not a single thing. Do you know how fantastically enjoyable that made our holiday? We just didn’t want to go home. I would wholeheartedly recommend Royal Son Bou Family Club to anyone looking for a holiday destination for children. The whole resort was designed around children – the children’s facilities weren’t an afterthought – they were the initial ethos for everything and they are spot on with their tagline “The Children’s Paradise”, because it really is – and it’s paradise for the parents too!

Don’t miss parts 2 and 3 of my review, which will explore the adult and child entertainment offering and Club Kikoland, as well as my post on the incredible food at Royal Son Bou Family Club… these posts will follow this one over the coming days!