Hotel Mainake

The Hotel Mainake is the four star hotel of the town, on Calle los Fenicios, in the centre and a few minutes from the sand. Of the five hotels I list in Torre del Mar it is the one with the widest range of rooms, from singles to suites, and that is the practical reason it works as well for a couple on a short break as for someone here on business.

It holds a 4.2 across more than nine hundred reviews. I read that as the mark of a solid town hotel rather than a resort, and I mean the distinction seriously. You are staying in a working Spanish town with schools, a market and a health centre, on a quiet street, two minutes from the shops of Avenida de Andalucía. What you are not getting is an all inclusive compound, because there is not one here and I would not want the town to have one.

The thing I would tell you before booking

Five hotels for the whole town is a small number, and it catches visitors out every summer. Rooms in July and August go earlier than they would in a larger resort along the coast, and when they run out the alternative is the holiday apartments rather than another hotel. Book well ahead, or shift your dates to June or September, which on this coast are the two months I would pick anyway: the sea is warm, the beach has room, and the town is still itself.