Golden Horn Hotel

The price is OK, but the pool area feels dated and should be renovated.

The room service was very bad, and the hotel was very dirty.

We went in July 2019 and really liked it. It’s a quiet, green, picturesque town, and the hotel itself was quiet too, with no animation. Diana Hotel was across the road, where loud music played from morning until late evening, for children during the day and adults at night, but thankfully we didn’t hear it. The staff were friendly and easy to talk to, and whenever we asked where to go, people smiled and gladly gave us directions. The hotel was very well maintained and seemed new. They cleaned the room every day, including a full clean and fresh towels and sheets. Our room had everything we needed, even extra pillows and blankets. The all-inclusive food was fairly varied for a 3-star hotel, and everything tasted very good. The walk down to the beach takes about 10 minutes, and you have to use an underground passage to cross under the road. There’s also a bus to the farther beach. The hotel is 2 km from the monastery. The Black Sea gets deeper gradually, and the golden sand is incredibly hot. The coastline is wide and long. Bulgaria’s climate felt moderate, neither too hot nor too cold. On the beach, it started getting hot around 10:00, but clouds would gather and it would rain, cooling things down. That happened several times a day. We’d love to come back.

By our fifth day, I’d raised my rating to 3 because a few things had improved. They switched on the streetlights and lobby lights, though it was already dark everywhere at 9:50 PM. Dinner had more salads, with more variety, and meat was being served on its own, breaded or stewed with peppers. We also finally had breaded fish. I was there in September, at the end of the season. This is more a place for retirees, with little for children or young people. The hotel is in a remote spot, about 1 km from the sea, then you still walk to whichever beach you want. The way back is uphill. A bus goes there twice a day and returns twice, taking you to the outskirts by the yacht club. It’s an option for a bed and meals, but the food was just enough to keep from going hungry. The buffet was the most modest I’ve seen. All-inclusive food was available only from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. There was little fruit, mostly sliced, and hardly any meat. It came mixed with a side dish, so people picked what they liked and left the rest. In three days we had chicken, meatballs, and small sausages. Dessert was either absent or limited to one plate, plus sliced small pears, watermelon, and plums. Two people handled the food, bar, and clearing tables, so things kept running out. You had to tell the staff and wait for more. The tablecloths were dirty and almost all the tables were chipped. I got lucky with my room. It was spacious and looked out over the forest, so it didn’t get hot and I didn’t use the air conditioning. It had a small TV, fridge, table, mirror, armchair, a few bedside tables, and a wardrobe. The bathroom had a curtain but no shelves. There was no shower gel, just a small washcloth and a shampoo sachet. The walls were so thin that water running or a toilet flushing next door sounded right beside me. There’s no real grounds, just a parking lot and road entrance in front, plus a tiny pool off to the side with about four plastic loungers and one wooden one. I didn’t see any umbrellas. At night, we had to use a flashlight to get to the hotel. The sidewalk by the road is narrow, unlit, and has uneven, broken tiles.