Gran Hotel / RH Don Carlos
Two hotels in Peñíscola, compared with the numbers each platform publishes — including the ones that do not favour the hotel behind this site.
If you have narrowed it down to these two, the useful comparison is not a list of adjectives: it is the same figures for both, each on its own scale and with the date it was read. That is what follows — the score of every platform, the Booking sub-scores one by one, what guests actually write about, and the price and board.
One thing to know before reading: this site is published by the commercial side of the Gran Hotel. That is exactly why the section below starts by saying where RH Don Carlos scores higher, with its figure. A comparison that only flattered its own hotel would not be worth reading, and you would notice within two lines.
The short answer
RH Don Carlos scores higher on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Google and HolidayCheck.
On volume the gap is the other way round: Gran Hotel carries 23,130 reviews across 5 platforms against 4,760 across 4 for RH Don Carlos. That does not make it better — it makes its figures harder to move with a handful of stays, which is a different and more boring virtue.
Score by platform, face to face
Each platform on its own scale. Booking and Buscounchollo run out of 10, Google and TripAdvisor out of 5, HolidayCheck out of 6 — we publish no average across them, for either hotel.
| Platform | Scale | Gran Hotel | RH Don Carlos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking.com | out of 10 | 8.2 (4,427) | 9.0 (1,448) |
| TripAdvisor | out of 5 | 3.6 (2,219) | 4.6 (1,204) |
| out of 5 | 4.2 (11,361) | 4.5 (2,097) | |
| Buscounchollo | out of 10 | 8.3 (5,093) | — |
| HolidayCheck | out of 6 | 4.4 (30) | 5.3 (11) |
Read one at a time, with the number of reviews in brackets. A dash means we have not measured that platform for that hotel, not a bad score. Each figure carries its consultation date on the hotel’s own page.
The Booking sub-scores, one by one
Booking breaks its score into categories and publishes them for both, which makes this the only strictly comparable table on the page: same platform, same scale, same categories.
| Category | Gran Hotel | RH Don Carlos |
|---|---|---|
| Staff | 8.9 | 9.6 |
| Facilities and services | 8.4 | 9.2 |
| Cleanliness | 8.8 | 9.4 |
| Comfort | 8.7 | 9.4 |
| Value for money | 8.4 | 9.0 |
| Location | 8.3 | 9.5 |
| Wi-Fi | 8.4 | 8.5 |
Booking’s own breakdown. We neither recompute nor average it.
What guests write about, both hotels
Counted from the review text rather than summarised into a star. The two samples are different sizes, so read each hotel’s balance between its own two columns — never one hotel’s total against the other’s.
| Theme | Gran Hotel + / − | RH Don Carlos + / − |
|---|---|---|
| The room | 42 / 34 | — |
| Location and beach | 57 / 15 | — |
| Food and restaurant | 31 / 39 | — |
| Staff | 55 / 8 | — |
| The pool | 11 / 33 | — |
| Cleanliness | 37 / 0 | — |
| Breakfast | 9 / 11 | — |
| Spa and wellness | 18 / 0 | — |
| Facilities and upkeep | 14 / 0 | — |
| Entertainment programme | 12 / 0 | — |
| The bathroom | 0 / 12 | — |
| Parking | 0 / 11 | — |
| Views | 9 / 0 | — |
| Value for money | 8 / 0 | — |
Mentions, not scores, and over different sample sizes: 346 reviews analysed for Gran Hotel and — for RH Don Carlos.
Price, board and what is verified
Only the fields with a citable source behind them. What is not stated for a hotel appears as such rather than as a no.
| Gran Hotel | RH Don Carlos | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting rate | 69 € | 95 € |
| Category | 4★ | 4★ |
| Pool | Yes | Yes |
| Spa | Yes | Yes |
| Board | Room only · Bed and breakfast · Half board · Full board | Half board · Full board |
| Parking | Yes | Not stated |
| To the castle | 3,806 m | 702 m |
| To the water | 240 m | 285 m |
A starting rate is the cheapest room in the cheapest week each hotel sells, not a quote for your dates.
So which one?
If the only thing that matters is the average score, the answer is in the table and we are not going to dress it up: RH Don Carlos scores higher on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Google and HolidayCheck.
But an average is not the only figure that decides a booking. Gran Hotel has more board options, its own parking and a lower starting rate. And it carries 23,130 reviews against 4,760, which means its behaviour — the good and the mediocre — is harder to distort with a small sample.
In short: if you want the highest average and do not need what the other one adds, RH Don Carlos is a solid, well-rated choice. If you want more facilities, a lower entry price and a much larger body of reviews to lean on, Gran Hotel fits better. Both are on the same beach.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better rated, Gran Hotel or RH Don Carlos?
RH Don Carlos scores higher on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Google and HolidayCheck. Each figure is on its own scale and with its own date, and we publish no average across platforms because mixing a score out of 10 with one out of 5 would invent a number nobody measured.
Which is cheaper?
Gran Hotel: 69 € — 95 €. A starting rate is the cheapest room in the cheapest week each hotel sells, not a quote for your dates.
Which has more reviews?
Gran Hotel, with 23,130 across 5 platforms against 4,760 across 4. Volume is not quality: it is how much confidence a score deserves.
Can I trust a comparison published by one of the two hotels?
Judge it by what it does rather than by who signs it. This page says first where RH Don Carlos scores higher, publishes both sets of figures with their sources and dates, and argues for its own hotel on facilities, price and sample size — never on the average score, which it does not win.
The full comparison is in Spanish
The Spanish version of this comparison adds the written argument hotel by hotel and links to a page per platform for each of the two, with the reviews broken down theme by theme.
Also in English
The rest of what we publish in English: