Twenty-two buildings on the beachfront, 312 rooms, 200 apartments and a single design idea: turn the whole resort to face the water. This full hotel renovation in Torremolinos — 35,161 m² of built area — turned a 1973 holiday complex into a four-star hotel. The commission reached us through the engineering firm managing the asset: basic design, construction project and site management. The main works were completed in five and a half months.
The commission: a 1973 resort with two lives
The resort had two operating models side by side under one name: 312 hotel rooms and 200 apartments. The owner, a property holding company within an institutional hotel platform, appointed a large Spanish engineering firm as project manager, which in turn commissioned us for the basic design (proyecto básico), the construction project (proyecto de ejecución), the health and safety study, the waste management study and site management. The file registered with the College of Architects puts it plainly: renovation of a hotel and upgrade of its category. To understand the local context, you can read our guide to hospitality architecture in Torremolinos.
The scope covers blocks 1 to 19: 35,161 m² of the resort’s 50,306 m². Blocks 20 to 22, with 168 rooms, remain outside it. The works were processed under building permit (licencia de obras) no. 22/18 from Torremolinos Town Hall, with the splash park handled under its own application.
From apartment to hotel room
Moving up a category is not a matter of decoration: it is a matter of typology. The 200 apartments in blocks 1 to 18 stop being apartments and become hotel rooms, with all that this entails in terms of building services, fire protection and accessibility. The renovated scope settles at 340 rooms: 34 singles, 113 doubles, 84 triples and 109 quadruples. That mix is no accident. It is a hotel designed for families, not couples.
Finishes were chosen to withstand heavy use, which is what really puts a hotel to the test. Vinyl flooring over a levelling screed in bedrooms and bathrooms. RF-30 (30-minute fire-rated) oak entrance doors. HPL panelling in the corridors around every door, exactly where the housekeeping trolleys hit. Ceramic tile rugs in the junior suites. And before the main works began, we built the pilot rooms, certified on 3 August 2018, four months before the contract was signed. Debating a room you can walk into is far cheaper than debating it with the works already under way.
Moving the water to the centre
The pool sat to one side, in a basin with an awkward perimeter, and the café-bar was also off-centre. The design decision was to bring both to the centre of the site. A new overflow pool, with 504 m² of water surface and 1,740 m² of lounging area around it. The café-bar moves from the side to the centre, beside the water: pool and bar have worked together ever since as the social heart of the resort. Around them, a pool bar with its own plant room, new pergolas on the events plaza and the splash park, processed under a separate application. If our hospitality architecture interests you, you can also see the Beach Club at Hotel Puente Real, also in Torremolinos.
The decision that shows most, however, is one made in section. We raised the level of the pool terrace to match the events plaza. The two surfaces now read as a single plane, and the sea horizon appears unbroken from further inland. The bedroom façades of the main block already stepped in a sawtooth pattern, with the terraces set on the diagonal, pointing towards the water; the new ground plane completes that geometry at the lower level instead of fighting it. Vehicle and pedestrian access to the resort was also rebuilt.
Five and a half months on site
The programme called the shots. The main works contract was signed on 4 December 2018 and the final completion certificate was issued on 16 May 2019, with the splash park’s following a day later. To meet that date, the works were split into three tender packages: bedrooms; ground floor and common areas; the complex as a whole. At one point four different contractors were on site at the same time: main works, finishes, pool and splash park. Ruth Buján and Juan A. Goñi signed as site managers, with Vicente Bejarano as construction supervisor (director de la ejecución).
One chapter of the works explains the project better than any render: the work arising from the ITE (inspección técnica de edificios), Spain’s mandatory periodic technical inspection of buildings. The repairs the inspection required on a 1973 building were not set aside for a later application or left for the following season. They went into the same works, with the same contractor and on the same timeframe. It is cheaper and cleaner, but it means looking at the structure before choosing a single finish. Beneath the finishes, columns and sections of floor slab were strengthened in the main block, a steel portal-frame structure with spans of around 6 m.
The resort came out of the works with 340 hotel rooms where there had previously been a mix of hotel and apartments, its category upgraded to four stars and the pool frontage turned into the centre of gravity of the site. The final certificates for the hotel, the pool and the splash park were signed in May 2019. And the file stayed open afterwards, with the legalisation of the restaurant and of works already carried out: on a hotel asset, the renovation does not end on handover day. You can also see the Kids Club at Hotel Puente Romano in Marbella or Hotel Origen in Alcaidesa (Cádiz).
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Project data
- Typology: Hospitality · full renovation of a beachfront holiday resort
- Use: Hotel. Application for renovation of a hotel and upgrade to 4-star category
- Location: Torremolinos, Costa del Sol (Málaga)
- Design year: 2018 (basic design in April; construction project in July)
- Construction year: 2018-2019
- Status: Built. Final completion certificate issued in May 2019
- Built area: 35,161 m² of intervention scope (blocks 1 to 19), within a 50,306 m² resort of 22 buildings
- Units: 340 rooms after the renovation (34 singles, 113 doubles, 84 triples and 109 quadruples), compared with 344 previously
- Client: Property holding company that owns the hotel asset, through a large Spanish engineering firm acting as project manager
- Permit: Building permit 22/18 from Torremolinos Town Hall; splash park under a separate application
- Contractors: Verosa S.L. on the main works, with Ferrovial on the final completion certificate; Proffetional Finishing Design S.L.; Vortex on the splash park
- Site management: Juan A. Goñi Uriarte and Ruth Buján Varela (Klic Arquitectos)
- Construction supervision: Vicente Bejarano Reyes, building engineer (arquitecto técnico)
- Building services engineering: Monier (HVAC and electrical)
- Structure: Juan Morilla (strengthening of columns and floor slabs in the main block) and Monier (pool and plant room)
- Health and safety: Study and coordination during construction: José Gómez Villarrubia
- Klic services: Basic design, construction project, health and safety study, waste management study, site management and interior design of rooms and common areas
- Team: Juan A. Goñi Uriarte and Ruth Buján Varela
