Apartamentos Princesa Playa - Marbella, Spain 

We had booked with Bookings.com (which in turn had booked through Priceline.co.uk more than 45 days in advance since the hotel had a no cancellation charge policy till within 15 days of the stay, and boy, am I glad that I had booked in advance. The hotel was pretty much sold out, or available at double the rates that we paid, when I checked a week before our trip. The hotel's location is absolutely brilliant, just across the road (its a pedestrian road, so the hotel is almost on the sea). Lovely beaches just outside the hotel. Lots of restaurants that stay open till past midnight, and also a supermarket that's open till 2 am. The hotel also has a car park adjacent to it which costs Euro 12 per day if you take a parking card from the hotel. We were upgraded to a 1 bedroom apartment, so even though we did not have a sea facing room, the space was really useful with our 3 year old son needing all the space to run around. The apartment is really well equipped with a toaster, microwave, refrigerator, and all crockery and cutlery. The only thing that we found missing was dishwashing liquid and a sponge. We had to go the supermarket and buy a 1 litre dishwash bottle for a 3 night stay since the supermarket did not sell any smaller packs! The hotel staff was very helpful. I wanted to print out route maps to go to Alhambra and Ronda and downloaded them off Google maps which the hotel printed out without any hesitation. Also, there is free Wifi access in the hotel lobby which is very useful. The pool location on the terrace is great with awesome views of the sea. Highly recommend the Indian restaurant next to the hotel, Really authentic Indian food (we had dinner after midnight once and the place was still packed). The one thing that any traveller to this hotel should be careful about if you are driving there is to get proper driving directions. Spain is one of the worst countries to drive around for tourists with terrible signage, and we got completely lost with the driving directions provided by the hotel. Thankfully we met up with a local person who literally drove us to the hotel (else we would definitely have spent more than an hour hunting for the hotel). Basically follow signs to "Centro". The hotel is on the right just after the Tourist Information and Mango. Will definitely stay in the hotel again if I visit Marbella. Brilliant value for money!