Waldorf Palace Hotel

Six days before our July trip, the hotel cancelled the two rooms I’d booked back in January for €945. My card has a standard daily limit, so they couldn’t take the deposit. They emailed me saying I had to respond within two hours. I didn’t react in time, and they cancelled without even calling. I’d asked them just the day before whether the booking was still OK, so they knew I still considered it valid. When I called the next day, I had no real choice but to accept the same conditions for €1280, which was €335 more, a 35% increase.

A clean, pleasant hotel with a good breakfast, bar and pool. I was there for work in spring, when the days were warming up and the nights were getting warm too. Local rules, I think, meant the AC couldn’t be used. With no fan to move the air around, sleeping was quite difficult, even with the windows open. It was made worse by the hotel emptying glass bottles into the outside dumpster several times overnight.

I had a serious accident in the whirlpool because of the hotel’s safety measures. A large, roughly 20x20cm opening around the pump sucked in my lower back and held me there for five minutes. Other people by the pool tried to help and brought me ice, but nobody from the Hotel came over. My lower back was badly swollen and completely blue over an area of about 20x20cm, with internal bleeding. The Hotel didn’t apologize. They said they didn’t care what happened and told me to go to the authorities. The manager and staff were extremely arrogant and disrespectful with customers. I don’t think they follow international safety measures, and I felt my family’s and my own health and well-being were at risk. Thank God it happened to me and not a child, pregnant woman, or older person. Please don’t book here or spend a cent. Booking platforms should blacklist and ban this Hotel. The manager and owner are the ugliest, worst-mannered people. Don’t waste your money if you care about your safety or anyone else’s.

Breakfast was the bright spot, with plenty of sweet and savoury options and lots of coffee. The pool area was adequate, though don’t expect to swim lengths. Some people said the pools were small, but they were about what I expected. I’d pick the first-floor pool beside breakfast, since the ground-floor one will end up in the hotel’s shade. The hotel was OK, but felt overpriced compared with places I’ve stayed around the world. It’s advertised as a four-star hotel and certainly charges four-star prices, an extra £315, almost 370 euros. Our triple room and bathroom were a decent size, with a reasonably new four-setting shower. The wall safe was old-style and key-operated. They didn’t offer me a key at check-in, and the staff were a bit surly, so I couldn’t be bothered to ask. After unpacking, we explored the area and found the hotel’s advertising a little misleading. It isn’t beachfront, though it’s still very close. The beach loungers in the pictures don’t belong to the hotel, and using them costs extra. If I came back, I’d stay at one of the many actual beachfront hotels and check that it had access to its own beach club. For convenience, we ate at the hotel restaurant on our first night. Menus were only in Italian, French and German. I know a little Italian, and Mia Moglie knows more, since her Italian parents worked in hospitality. The waiter gave us a basic English translation. I didn’t like that there were no prices on the menu. At checkout we saw a charge for four waters, even though we ordered and received just one. There were about four choices each for Prima and Secondi. We ordered two Prima and one Secondi. The meals came very quickly, as if they weren’t made to order, and were adequate. We ate out the second night. At check-in, nobody told us whether dinner reservations were needed, and our room number wasn’t marked active on the staff list. Our arrival seemed to throw them, and we felt like an inconvenience. Some staff were stand-offish, though most were pleasant, especially Antonio, the evening barman, and the woman and young man at the breakfast cafe station.