Gran Hotel Peñíscola

The Gran Hotel Peñíscola stands on the seafront of the Playa Norte, on Avenida Papa Luna, with the walled old town and its castle a short walk along the promenade. It is a large four-star hotel of the Mediterranean holiday kind — pools, spa, entertainment programme, buffet restaurant — rather than a boutique address: if you want small and quiet, the old town has better options and this page will not pretend otherwise.

This site is run by the hotel’s own commercial team, which is exactly why the figures below are published whole, with the date each one was read and the weak spots left in. An English-speaking guest booking a hotel in a town they have never visited has no way of checking a curated selection of numbers, so there is no point offering one.

What the review platforms say

Every score below was read on the platform itself, one at a time, and is shown with its own scale and the date it was checked. There is no combined average anywhere on this page: Booking and Buscounchollo score out of 10, Google and Tripadvisor out of 5 and HolidayCheck out of 6.

* One caveat on Tripadvisor: that score is derived from the published distribution of ratings, not a figure Tripadvisor displays. Tripadvisor’s own ranking does place the hotel at number 8 of 43 places to stay in Peñíscola (2 August 2026). The HolidayCheck figure rests on a sample of only 30 reviews — 100% of them recommend the hotel, but the sample is small and worth reading as such.

What guests consistently praise

Staff and cleanliness. Service is the hotel’s best Booking sub-score at 8.9/10 and cleanliness follows at 8.8/10 (checked 7 August 2026); comfort sits at 8.7/10. It is also, by a wide margin, the most reviewed property in town: 23,130 reviews across its five platforms, including the most reviewed Google listing in Peñíscola. On the distribution rather than the average, 84% of Booking guests who left a score gave it 7 or more.

What guests complain about

Food, clearly and repeatedly. The kitchen scores 6.8/10 on Buscounchollo — its lowest mark on any platform — and gastronomy 3.1/6 on HolidayCheck. Nobody should book this hotel for its restaurant. Two smaller ones: the Booking sub-score for location is the hotel’s lowest at 8.3/10, despite the building being physically on the beachfront, and parking draws recurring complaints even though the hotel has a private car park.

Facilities and rooms

From the hotel’s own listing. One clarification that matters out of high summer: the heated pool is part of the paid water circuit of the Gran Wellness SPA — the hotel pool itself is outdoors and unheated.

• Outdoor pool
• Heated pool (inside the paid spa circuit)
• Spa and wellness centre
• Gym
• Restaurant
• Terrace bar
• Daily entertainment programme
• Kids’ club
• Free Wi-Fi
• Private car park
• Private shuttle bus for guests (summer and Easter)
• 24-hour reception
• Accessible rooms
• Gardens
• Function room

Room types: Standard, sea view · Standard, garden view · Junior suite · Deluxe suite · Family room

Board options: Room only · Bed and breakfast (buffet) · Half board · Full board

Board options as defined in the hotel’s own booking conditions (checked 7 August 2026), where half and full board are described as buffet service. There is no all-inclusive option.

Where it is, and what you can reach on foot

Avenida Papa Luna 179, on the Playa Norte. The castle is about five minutes’ walk away, the walled old town about eight, and there is a pharmacy two minutes away and a bus stop — “Gran Hotel” — some fifty metres from the door. In practice you can spend a week here without moving the car.

One genuinely unusual detail: it is the only hotel tracked on this site that runs its own shuttle bus for guests to the old town, in summer and over Easter. Outside those periods it does not run, which is worth knowing if you are coming in autumn and counting on it.

When the hotel is closed

The hotel confirmed its own calendar to us: it opens from late February to early November. For the current season the last bookable night is 7 November 2026 and it reopens on 26 February 2027. Over Christmas, New Year and January it is closed, along with much of Peñíscola’s hotel capacity.

If you search for dates inside that window in the form above, it will tell you so and point you to a hotel on the same coast that stays open all year, rather than sending you to an empty booking engine.

Price

The published starting rate is 69 € a night, the lowest entry price of any four-star with a spa on this site — the next one starts at 80 €. It is a starting rate, not a quote: August and Easter cost considerably more than a weekend in October, and the form above returns the real price for your dates.

Booking on the hotel’s own engine avoids the commission the platforms charge, which is the whole reason a hotel runs a site like this one.

Frequently asked questions

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