Holiday Village Majorca, Protur Monte Safari, Cala Millor: We Paid £5,500 for Two Weeks and Left After One

Verdict

Would we return? NO. We didn't even stay.

We booked two weeks at the Holiday Village at Protur Monte Safari through TUI, flew Gatwick to Palma with easyJet, picked up a hire car and drove the ninety minutes across the island. Total cost for the family of four: £5,500. We left after seven days, paid again out of our own pocket, and spent the second week touring Mallorca instead — Pollença, Cala d'Or and Palma, all of which were better.

That is the review. Everything below explains why a family walks away from a week they have already paid for.

The deciding factor was the air conditioning. It is good in reception. That is where it stops. In the restaurant we ate at speed to get out before we were sitting in a pool of sweat. In the room, on maximum cold and maximum fan, it managed roughly an eskimo's breath — barely cooler inside than out. Our four-year-old woke in tears every night in the heat, asking to go home. Eventually we agreed with her.

Stacked on top: a sunbed shortage the hotel has plainly engineered, so a day by the pool costs you a 7am alarm and an hour sitting with your towels; smoking and swearing across the pool deck in front of small children; and other guests' children left shouting outside the rooms until half past one in the morning while nobody from the hotel intervenes.

The staff and the kitchen deserve better than the building they work in. Every member of staff was lovely, friendly and accommodating within the powers they had. The cooks graft in sweltering heat and the food was genuinely good. Not one of them controls the air conditioning, the towel scrum or the noise policy. Management does, and didn't.

Feel scores a 2, which under our own rules is a red card: whatever the rest of the card says, the verdict is capped at NO.

Score: 4.3 / 10 — red card on Feel

The scorecard

The Good

• The staff, without exception. Lovely, friendly and accommodating within their powers. The limits they kept hitting were set above them.
• The food, and the people cooking it. Pretty good across the board with a genuinely wide selection. The cooks work incredibly hard in sweltering heat, and it shows in the output.
• The Proty Shack. The poolside kebab, salad and chips at lunchtime was the treat of the week. Self-service beer and soft drinks alongside it is a civilised touch.
• Estrella on tap. The cheap local option, and decent with it.
• The water for small children. The toddler splash pool and the splash park water jet zone both landed properly.
• The entertainment team. A bit panto in places and not everyone's thing, but the little ones enjoyed the evening shows and the team are good at what they do.
• Getting there. Gatwick to Palma on easyJet, own hire car, ninety minutes across the island. Easy, and worth doing over a transfer coach.

The Bad

• The air conditioning. 1990s at best, in the restaurant and in the rooms. Maximum cold, maximum fan, barely below the outside temperature. A four-year-old waking in tears nightly asking to go home. This is not a quibble; it ended the holiday.
• The sunbed system. Up at the same hour as a working day, towels down, then sitting with them until 8am before they could safely be left — because there are not enough beds for the guests the hotel sells to. It may be endemic to package hotels now, but that is not a defence.
• Poolside behaviour, unpoliced. Cannonballing, smoking, and swearing across the pool deck in front of small children, with no intervention at any point.
• Night noise, unpoliced. Entertainment runs to midnight, fair enough — but our balcony was poolside and therefore stage side, and my wife and children cannot sleep through it. Families then moved to the inside bar and let their children run loose outside, shouting, until 01:30. The hotel should police its outdoor areas for the guests who have gone to bed, whatever room they are in.
• The wine. Undrinkable — the sort that burns your throat and has you wanting a Gaviscon chaser. Not one decent bottle in sight. All-inclusive does not have to mean vinegar; cheap and drinkable is a solved problem.
• Patchy housekeeping. Not a disaster, but not consistent either, across rooms and public areas.
• Poached eggs. A note for the chef: no vinegar. It is an old wives' trick and it tastes disgusting. Everything else was good.

The Detail

First light at Cala Millor — the hour we were up at, every morning, to put towels on sunbeds. Library image (CC BY-SA 3.0, Kuma142002), not our own photography.

1. Booking & Arrival — 7

Booked through TUI, flown Gatwick to Palma with easyJet, and we hired a car rather than take the transfer coach — which was the single best decision of the trip. Ninety minutes across the island, on our own schedule, no waiting on other people's drop-offs. It also gave us the freedom that later let us leave. Marked at seven rather than higher only because the arrival experience at the hotel itself was unremarkable.

2. Room — 2

The air conditioning defines it. On maximum cold and maximum fan the room was barely cooler than the outside air, and our four-year-old woke in tears every night because of the heat, asking to go home. Add the position — a poolside balcony that is also stage side, with entertainment to midnight and other guests' children shouting outside until 01:30 — and the room failed at the one thing a room on a family holiday must do, which is let the children sleep.

3. Cleanliness — 5

Patchy. Some areas were fine and some let it down, across the rooms and the public spaces. On its own this would be a grumble rather than a finding; in a resort already struggling with heat and noise it added to the sense of a site being managed down to a price.

4. Service — 5

Two different things wearing the same badge. The staff were lovely, friendly and accommodating within their powers, and the kitchen team worked visibly hard in brutal heat. But service is also the decisions nobody made: no towel policy, no smoking enforcement at the poolside, no intervention on language in front of small children, no noise control after midnight. Front-line staff earn an 8. Management earns a 2. The guest gets the average.

5. Food & Drink — 6

Pretty good, with a strong selection, and lunch outshone dinner — the Proty Shack's poolside kebab, salad and chips was the highlight of the week. Self-service beer and soft drinks is a good call. Estrella, the cheap local, is perfectly decent. What drags this down is wine that was undrinkable for the entire stay, and vinegar in the poached eggs. Neither costs money to fix.

6. Kids' Programme — 7

The strongest part of the resort. The toddler splash pool and the splash park water jet zone were pitched right for our ages, and the evening entertainment worked for the little ones — panto-ish, but delivered with commitment by a team who are good at their jobs. Marked down only because everything around it kept undoing the good work.

7. Facilities & Entertainment — 3

Plenty on paper. In practice the pool deck is the problem: not enough sunbeds for the guests sold to, so access is rationed by who is willing to get up at 7am, and the tone around it is set by cannonballing, smoking and swearing that nobody checks. The adults-only pool, hot tub and cabanas looked genuinely lovely and sat mostly empty — which tells you they are not built for the family market this resort actually sells to. If you want adults-only, go somewhere that means it. Santorini is stunning and we would send you there ahead of this.

The bay from the Punta de n'Amer headland. Library image (CC BY-SA 4.0, JYB Devot), not our own photography.

8. Location & Transfers — 5

Cala Millor is quiet, which is the best thing about it. The seafront is typical tatty Spanish stalls selling toot, fairground rides that look like they have been there since 1980, and a couple of basic restaurants. You could kill an hour. With a hire car you are far better off treating it as a base and driving — which is precisely what we ended up doing permanently.

9. Feel — 2 (red card)

The row that carries the verdict. Some of our fellow guests were the football-shirt, cannonball-into-the-pool, smoking, swearing-across-the-poolside-in-front-of-the-children sort, and that is not for us or for our children. We are not claiming the hotel created that. We are saying it never once addressed it — not the language in front of the toddlers, not the noise at 01:30, not the smoke drifting over the family pool. A week of that, in a room too hot for a four-year-old to sleep in, is why we packed.

10. Value — 1

£5,500 for two weeks, of which we used seven days, then paid again to escape. There is no reading of that which represents value. From here we will book a villa for the same money and have our own privacy, our own sunbeds, air conditioning that works and our own dining. The week we improvised across Pollença, Cala d'Or and Palma cost more on top of a holiday already paid for, and was still the better half of the trip. That comparison is the whole case.

The seafront promenade cafés. Library image (CC BY-SA 3.0, Usien), not our own photography.

What we'd change

• Replace the air conditioning. Rooms and restaurant. Nothing else here matters as much, and no amount of good staff work compensates for a child who cannot sleep.
• A time-stamped towel policy. Clear any towels laid before 09:00 and the 7am scrum disappears inside a week.
• Enforce the no-smoking areas around the pool. Visibly, and daily.
• Police the outdoor areas after midnight. For every guest who has gone to bed, not only those in poolside rooms.
• Buy drinkable wine. It does not have to be vinegar.

Fix those four and this would improve enormously — which is the genuinely frustrating part, because the staff and the kitchen are already holding up their end.

Also read

• Cabu by the Sea, Dymchurch — YES / 7.75
• Emerald Maldives — MAYBE / 7.4
• La Signora Hotel, Kefalonia — YES / 7.8

Image credits

We have no photography from this trip. Rather than use AI-generated or misleading imagery of the hotel, every image here is a freely licensed library photograph of Cala Millor and its seafront, not of Protur Monte Safari. Each is captioned to make that explicit.

Out of Ten reviews are self-funded. No affiliate money, no press trips, no comps. We name the operator, the airline and what was really included because that is part of the review.