"I want to make clear from the outset that there were some positive aspects to our stay. When we first arrived at the Floria Beach Hotel, we were very impressed with the appearance and layout of the hotel. Our room was also very nice and was cleaned daily. The pool and beach areas were enjoyable, and the lifeguard was particularly friendly and helpful. The entertainment, when it was provided, was also very good.
Unfortunately, these positives were outweighed by a number of issues which significantly affected our experience.
During our stay, we struggled almost every day to obtain sunbeds around both the pool and beach.
The issue appeared to be caused by guests leaving towels on sunbeds from the previous day, or reserving them before the time permitted by the hotel and then leaving them unoccupied for several hours. On occasions, sunbeds were apparently being reserved and not actually used until around 2pm.
This significantly reduced our ability to enjoy the facilities we had paid for. While we appreciate that this is partly down to the behaviour of individual guests, we felt that the hotel could have done considerably more to enforce its own rules regarding sunbed reservations.
We found the food at the hotel to be fairly generic and lacking in variety.
More seriously, my partner became extremely unwell with a stomach illness and was ill for several days during the holiday. Based on previous personal experience of similar symptoms, we strongly suspect that this may have been related to the food consumed at the hotel.
We obviously cannot definitively establish the cause of the illness, and we are not making an accusation that the hotel was responsible. However, the fact that one of us was unwell for a significant portion of the holiday inevitably had an impact on our enjoyment and is something we feel should be raised as part of this review.
The hotel staff were generally helpful, although we did not feel that the level of friendliness matched the effort we were making to be friendly and engage with staff.
The vast majority of guests appeared to be non-English speaking. We completely appreciate that an international hotel will naturally have guests from a variety of countries and have no issue whatsoever with this.
However, we were surprised by the demographic of the hotel and, from our experience, suspected that a significant proportion of guests were Russian. Given the current international situation and some of the behaviour we experienced from other guests, we unfortunately found ourselves feeling quite isolated and as though we were constantly doing something wrong.
We appreciate that the nationality of other guests is not something the hotel can necessarily control. Our concern is more that there was nothing during the booking process to indicate that the hotel would have such a predominantly non-English-speaking clientele. Had we known this beforehand, our expectations may have been different.
Overall, we were extremely disappointed with several aspects of this holiday.
We want to stress that the hotel itself had many positive features. The building and facilities were good, our room was comfortable and clean, the pool and beach were enjoyable, and some members of staff were very helpful. The only negatives with the room were inconsistent heat in the shower and a shower gel dispenser that didn't work.
What is particularly disappointing is that many of these issues could have been avoided with better organisation and more professional staff. We feel that the hotel could have provided a very good holiday experience, but the way certain aspects were handled resulted in us being left with a very negative impression."
