Hotel Tia Maria

Everything seemed okay until we saw the rooms. There was black mold on the doors, a panel was sticking out of the wall, and the card holder had fallen out. The pictures on the website aren’t from this hotel. It’s embarrassing to use another hotel’s photos because yours doesn’t look good.

The staff were very helpful. Our check-in was meant to be at 14.00, but they let us leave our suitcases in the luggage room and said we could probably get a room earlier, around 12.00. The room was nice, with a very soft, comfortable bed, clean white sheets and towels, and a mini fridge in the cabinet. There are two elevators. The pool was nice and its edge was cleaned daily, though there weren’t enough sun chairs. Safes for valuables cost 3€ a day. Breakfast was good, and you could eat indoors or outside. The coffee tasted instant, but there was a wide choice of juice. Sometimes they served pancakes instead of donuts. The beach and shops are very close, and many tours leave from Arda bus stop, pretty much next to the hotel.

The food at breakfast and dinner was very good, with more variety than at some hotels I’ve stayed in in France, Switzerland or Portugal. The hotel was clean, the young staff were polite and active, and the location was great, right by the city center and close to Nessebar. Those positives are why I’m giving two stars, mainly for the staff and food. We were four people staying for a full week at the beginning of August, and I wish I could rate it higher, but the noise was a big problem. Our room was between two rooms full of kids around 12-16, and we couldn’t sleep before 2am. We told reception, and they spoke to them, but after an hour or two the kids went back to acting as before. The rooms are long corridors with little sound insulation, and the doors don’t help, so noise carries. The fridge was broken for three days and was only replaced the day before we left. They advertise a gym, but it’s just a small basement with old machines. The worst part for us was other guests’ behavior. We saw two or three cases of items like phones being stolen, mess left from the elevator to the pool and corridors, loud music by the pool and in rooms, people swimming in clothes, jumping into the pool and soaking others, and families taking up all the pool space. Towels were left on loungers all day so nobody else could use them. We didn’t use the pool for our entire stay. The hotel has a bad reputation outside Sunny Beach because of this kind of behavior.

The website photos made the hotel look like a palace, maybe even better than the Queen of England’s, so I arrived very excited. Then came the surprise. There was black mold on the mattress and wall, and the first room smelled like my uncle’s basement after a big flood, like a map of Kazakhstan in rainy season. We had to change rooms. The reception ladies spoke very little English, as little as I speak Chinese, and it was a very unpleasant experience. One star, maybe two if they remove the mold with fire.