Amare
Beach

Marbella keeps most of its glamour a few kilometres west in the marina, but Amare Beach makes a strong case for staying in town. It is the beach club of an adults only hotel that sits directly on the seafront promenade, a short walk from the old quarter, and it trades the yacht spectacle of the harbour for something calmer and more design led. Wooden decks, sunbeds with a waiter never far away, a light modern kitchen and a resident DJ, all with a firm rule that keeps anyone under sixteen off the sand. That age line is the thing to understand first, because it sets the whole tone.

That judgement carries through our Costa del Sol club directory: this coast divides cleanly into loud party clubs and easy restaurant beaches, and the ones worth naming pick a single lane. Amare takes the polished, adults only, city beach lane, where the plate and the playlist outrank the spectacle.

The scene at Amare is adults only in the literal and the atmospheric sense. With no children on the decks the noise level drops, the pool stays calm, and the day settles into sunbathing, swimming and a slow drift of cocktails as the DJ plays. It is sociable and stylish without tipping into the sunbed dancing chaos of the party clubs, a middle setting that suits couples and groups of friends who want music and a good crowd rather than a foam party. The hotel wraps its whole Amare Music idea around the place, so there are pool parties and live sets layered through the season.

For a food and scene wanderer, the kitchen is the quiet reason to choose Amare. The beach menu is deliberately light and modern, sushi and tuna tartare next to salmorejo and a tropical salad with prawns, the sort of food you actually want in the heat rather than a heavy paella. Push past the beach and the hotel gives you more, a lounge that serves from mid morning to midnight and the Belvue rooftop bar nine floors up, which is open to the public and made for a Marbella sunset with a drink in hand.

Where it falls short is setting and certainty. This is a hotel beach on a busy public promenade in the middle of a resort town, so you trade seclusion for convenience, and the strip behind you is lively rather than serene. The pricing is the other soft spot, since the club does not fix a public sunbed rate and the figure shifts with the calendar and with events, so the forty euro number is a guide and not a promise. And the over sixteen rule, wonderful for some, rules the place out entirely for a family.

The sand in front of Amare is classic central Marbella, a band of darker golden grit backed by the long paved promenade that runs the length of the town, with the Mediterranean here usually calm and gentle for swimming. It is an urban beach, busy and well served, rather than a wild one, and the pleasure is being able to step from the old town straight onto a lounger. For the glossier, marina side of the coast and where it turns quieter, our guide to the most romantic beaches on the Costa del Sol puts Marbella in its wider setting.

Amare is about as easy to reach as a beach club gets. It stands on Avenida Severo Ochoa on the Marbella seafront, a five minute stroll from the old town and its lighthouse, with Malaga airport roughly forty minutes east by road. There is no private beach car park to rely on, so parking is paid and arranged at the hotel reception subject to space, which nudges you toward walking in from the town. Booking the beach is simple to the point of being no booking at all, since sunbeds are first come first served, though the hotel does run a day pass and the rooftop and restaurant take reservations.

Prefer it sorted in advance? Tell us your dates and how many are coming with the form on this page, and we will put the day access and sunbed questions to Amare Marbella, then report what the going rate covers, with nothing to pay.