An honest review of luxury resort Zoëtry Mallorca in Llucmajor
It's a long one. You've been warned.
At the start of August, my best friend and I met in Mallorca for our fourth consecutive end-of-summer girl’s trip. And although we are both major travel nerds who live for a juicy itinerary packed with cultural hotspots, this particular yearly tradition isn’t one wherein we typically explore a city and uncover hidden gems.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
These annual August excursions have historically been luxuriously lazy experiences at upscale all-inclusive resorts in warm, sunny, Spanish-speaking locales where we do little other than eat, drink, read, sleep, and repeat.
This particular kind of holiday is a gift we give ourselves and each other to unwind and de-stress with absolutely nothing on our to-do lists, and it’s as rejuvenating as it is indulgent. We return from these trips rested and reinvigorated, ready to get back into our routines without a hint of post-vacation resentment.
This year, we decided to meet up in the Balearic Islands for a stay at the just-opened luxury resort Zoëtry Mallorca in Llucmajor, one of the latest feathers in the cap of the Hyatt Inclusive Collection and its Zoëtry Wellness & Spa Resorts. We booked the Endless Privileges package, paid our deposits, and started counting down the days until we’d arrive, preparing ourselves for five days and four nights of opulence and tranquility.
Fast forward to our actual experience, and what we got was certainly beautiful, but… to be honest, not exactly what we expected.
The short version:
Zoëtry Mallorca is a perfectly lovely and gorgeous resort and you’ll almost definitely enjoy yourself here, but they do miss the mark in a few areas that may bug you if you are looking for something super luxurious and actually all-inclusive.
For context:
I’m a travel writer, American by birth, lived in Spain, currently live in Amsterdam, have had the good fortune to visit many all-inclusive resorts and incredibly nice hotels around the world, and previously worked as a concierge at a luxury hotel in the States.
So through that privileged lens, here’s…
The (very, very) long version:
Zoëtry Mallorca is beautiful, and if you’re visiting for the aesthetics, you will almost certainly be delighted—but the staff does not seem to have had the same sort of training I did as a concierge (or training that staffs at *other* all-inclusive resorts I’ve stayed in seemed to have had) to “go above and beyond” to make guests’ experience as positive as possible.
I don’t mean to imply that it’s the staff’s job to exceed expectations, necessarily—but to simply meet expectations consistently would be ideal.
A sort of strange and specific example from my stay:
My monthly cycle surprised me on the first day of my stay and I was unprepared, so I called the front desk to request menstrual products (a pretty normal amenity for any given hotel to have available, should a guest need them). I was told they didn’t have any, which was kind of weird, but I figured, Okay, whatever.
At this point, when I was a concierge, if we didn’t have a toiletry a guest needed, I immediately would’ve coordinated with an available member of hotel staff to go procure what the guest needed from the supermarket and deliver it discreetly to the guest’s room. Instead, I was told I’d need to go get them myself from the nearest supermarket, which was a 10-minute drive from the hotel. Again: Okay, whatever.
I asked if I could use the hotel’s purported car transfer service—in the Hyatt app they make you download on arrival, it says you can book a car from the hotel to take you anywhere on the island—but they said no, that I would need to call a taxi and ask it to wait outside and keep the meter running while I went into the store to buy the tampons and then bring me back to the hotel. Okay, now feeling a little less “whatever” and a little more annoyed.
Having literally no alternative—I can’t very well not have tampons if I want to do literally anything at the resort, including but not limited to going in the pool—I booked a taxi to take me to the supermarket.
It took 30 minutes for the taxi to arrive at the hotel. When it did, the driver made me give him a passport while I ran inside (to make sure I didn’t stiff him on the payment for the ride to the supermarket, I guess?) and I found and paid for my tampons as quickly as possible and came back to the taxi. The driver returned the passport and I paid him what it cost for me to get to and from the supermarket.
All told, it took me an hour of my vacation time and €30 to get a pretty basic amenity that roughly half of the hotel’s guests *could* reasonably need at some point during their stay, but that the hotel neither has on-site nor seems to feel compelled to provide or procure.
Was this a hard-and-fast thing I should’ve expected of them? Maybe not! But I can’t think of another resort I’ve stayed in where they would have handled this particular situation in this weird way.
Other more general examples:
That same sort of “eh, that’s your problem” attitude from the staff could also be evidenced by the half-hearted housekeeping (they made the bed each day but didn’t clean any other part of the room, including the bathroom?), the sllllloooooowwww service at any given bar or restaurant on site, the missing minibar restocks, the empty glasses and trays of food left uncollected from the room day after day, the seemingly always empty containers where pool towels should theoretically be, the stocked but for some reason never manned the bar at the adults-only pool…
Again, all admittedly major “first-world problems” that make me cringe to even be whining about because ew, it’s giving entitlement. But at the same time, when you’re paying for a stay somewhere and electing to purchase a plan they literally call Endless Privileges™️ then yeah, it actually is kind of annoying when standards repeatedly are not met.
Speaking of Endless Privileges, it is sort of an odd moniker when the “end” to the privileges not only clearly exists, but also kind of happens abruptly? Most wines aren’t included, not one thing at the restaurant they gush about on their website with the amazing chef is included (it’s an extra €140-170 if you want to have dinner there), and room service is not included (that’s another €8 per service—also, no breakfast available for room service even though it’s supposed to be a 24-hour service? and no drinks on that menu, either).
And when you do manage to flag someone down from one of the always-busy-and-overwhelmed bars or restaurants to order things that are included in your Endless Privileges, don’t even think about leaving the table before they bring you the bill to sign even though you aren’t paying for anything! They will chase you down for your signature, and you will get very embarrassed when they shout for you to come back like you’re a thief who has dined and dashed—even though in reality, you’ve waited for 20 minutes for them to come collect your empty plates so you could sign and go back to the pool, and you just got tired of wasting your limited vacation time waiting around.
The adults-only pool is where we spent most of our time, which was beautiful. We did find that both pools were almost always overcrowded, so it was tough to get a lounger unless we got there very early (and as mentioned, even tougher to find a pool towel). Most loungers were in full sun, so we really had to make it a priority to arrive early if we wanted to nab one in the shade. The pool bar is at the non-adults-only pool, though, and although they did sometimes sort of sporadically offer drink service at the adults-only pool (for some guests, here and there, with seemingly no rhyme or reason), we mostly ended up walking back and forth between the two pools anytime we wanted water or a cocktail or whatever. Because the collection of dirty dishes tended to take so long, there were also constantly flies crawling around on tables and in empty glasses—I feel like fans would have helped with that, maybe?
Though the website confidently asserts that this is a wellness resort, the spa is sort of hidden away—you really have to want to find it, which we did, if you want to take advantage of the 25-minute head and neck massage included with Endless Privileges.
We were eventually able to make our way to the spa to ask if we could book massages for the next day. We were told the spa was fully booked for tomorrow, but we could get our massages right that moment if we were ready now. A bit odd, but we shrugged and took them up on it, and they said we could add on another 55 minutes of massage time for €70 (note: the spa menu says it’s actually €115, so I’m not sure if they were running a special? either way, worked out for us).
After our immediate massages ended, I hoped we’d be able to take advantage of the eucalyptus-scented baths they talk about on their website, but all we found was a large, cold indoor pool with no discernible scent. Behind it, the steam room and sauna were functional, but all the other spa features (there was an agua-dorm, a sensation shower, and a foot bath) were out of order, which was a bummer.
We did both like our massages, but the rest of the spa was just kind of a letdown. I wish we had made time to try one of the yoga classes, but they tended to be scheduled when we were eating (or sleeping in, because vacation) so we never made it to one. Our bad on that. They were probably cool.
We tried to attend one event that they listed in the programming for Friday, a cocktail hour in the chapel garden—but when we asked about it a few hours before it was scheduled to begin, we were told they canceled it because not enough people had signed up for it in the app. So we had our cocktails at the pool bar instead—until 18:00, when it closed so it could be “transformed” into the tapas restaurant, which didn’t open until 19:00.
Our options for dinner were that, the main restaurant Es Mercat, or room service for an extra fee. We tried all three options and the tapas bar was probably our favorite—except for our final night, when the tapas bar and Es Mercat were both randomly closed and the only option was a barbecue in the courtyard? Which was fine, in terms of food quality and taste, just not what we were expecting.
Generally speaking, the food was pretty good, the drinks were pretty good, and the wine that was included in the Endless Privileges was pretty good. I think oddly enough, the breakfast was probably our favorite. They just seem to want to pretend they have more bars and restaurants and amenities than they actually do, just to fill up the directional signs at the resort and make you feel like you are getting more than you are, maybe? So every location seems to kind of double as two locations, and some things (like the “football field,” a dry brown field in full sun with no other discernible qualities making it a legitimate football field?) just seemed like filler.
Oh! One last thing, which was actually the first thing:
After we checked in and were brought to our room, we got a knock on the door and were told that someone else wanted the room we’d just been brought to (the other guests specifically wanted twin beds; we also would have preferred that, but to decline switching with them seemed like we’d be jerks, so my friend and I sucked it up and just rolled with sharing a double bed). The person who brought our luggage to the second room assured us it was much nicer, which may have been true? Just a bit of a weird first interaction, which we both sort of brushed away as probably a one-off thing, but ended up kind of setting the tone for the rest of our experience at the resort.
To sum up:
So! That’s my honest (and incredibly long-winded) review of our stay at Zoëtry Mallorca. Like I said, it is so so so beautiful and well-appointed. The servers were easily the kindest people on staff, and it seemed like the slow service was simply because they needed to have more of them, as they were always a bit busy and overwhelmed. The reception and guest experience manager weren’t unkind, necessarily, more just… disinterested, I guess.
Am I still glad we came? For sure, it was a mostly great vacation with one of my best friends! Would I recommend this resort specifically if someone I know asked me where to stay in Mallorca? Probably not! Would I stay here again in the future? Probably not! Will I still post pictures of it on my travel blog and Instagram? Yep, because it’s gorgeous! But I’ll also point to this review if someone asks how I liked it, because context is important.
Was this a helpful review? Honestly, who knows! But it’s as truthful as I can be about my experience here, particularly as a travel writer dedicated to total transparency, and it’s what I wish I’d read before we booked our stay here to set my own expectations appropriately, so here it is! Hopefully, the hotel staff will see it as constructive criticism and actually implement some changes to address the issues mentioned. Good luck, I guess? Enjoy!