The catch at Hotel Lancelot

The hotel has a hall bar, a snack bar and the chill-out bar on the roof, but in 2026 the rooftop bar has at times closed by early evening, and on some days the other bars have not opened at all. There is no evening entertainment and no programme to fill the hours after dinner. This is a hotel for sleeping, swimming and breakfast, with Arrecife as the evening: Bar Picasso at El Almacén, César Manrique's arts centre, is seven minutes on foot and open until midnight from Wednesday to Friday, and the bars and terraces of the Charco de San Ginés are about 15 minutes along the seafront.

Noise is a repeated complaint. Poor sound insulation between rooms is an issue in some rooms, on any floor, so sound can carry from the room next door, and the lower rooms are the most exposed to traffic. The front of the building faces the pedestrian promenade and the beach, but roads run along its other sides, and the standard doubles are not sold with a sea view, so a lower standard room is the one most likely to be noisy. The rooms themselves are plain and clean, and the issue is sound, not comfort.

There is one pool, on the roof: a small rectangle on a sunny deck, closed in by a high white wall with porthole windows, with a solarium and the chill-out terrace beside it. The view from the roof is over the town. It is a place to cool off and sunbathe out of the wind, not a pool to spend the day around, and the hotel does not say whether it is heated. There is no garden, no children's pool, no kids' club, no spa and no entertainment; there is a gym. Families are welcome, cots are free for under-2s and there are high chairs and bottle warming for babies, but older children get nothing of their own.

The hotel has no parking of its own. It lists an arranged public car park among its services but does not publish where it is or what it costs, and the nearest is a paid public underground car park about three minutes' walk from the door. On an island where Timanfaya, the Jameos del Agua and the Papagayo beaches are 28 to 43 minutes away by car, most guests will want a car for some of the stay, and the daily parking adds to a bill that is otherwise small. The airport is seven minutes away by car, and airport bus lines 22 and 23 stop at Gran Hotel, about 110 metres from the door.

Arrecife is a winter-sun town, and the hotel prices it that way. With breakfast for two, the Double Standard is €104 on a Tuesday in June and €94 on a Tuesday in late May, against €122 to €149 on Tuesdays in January, €134 on every Tuesday in February, €134 to €139 in March, and €134 on the Tuesday of Easter week 2027. Christmas and New Year are dearer again: from 24 December to 2 January the same room costs €194 to €270 a night, peaking on New Year's Eve, and most of those nights sell only in stays of three nights or more. Friday and Saturday nights cost more than weekdays through most of the year.