HOTIDAY Apartments Desenzano

The restaurant was nice, and its outdoor terrace was magnificent. The place has lots of space, with comfortable rooms and a large terrace. It’s a wonderful spot for a vacation, clean and quiet, with room to relax and enjoy comfort, romance, and entertainment. I’d come again!

We stayed at Hotiday Desenzano in April 2026. It manages apartments for Club del Sol. The experience was very frustrating. Booking.com’s photos and description strongly suggested lake-view rooms in a pleasant resort setting. Instead, we were assigned an apartment on the third floor, across the road and up a steep hill, at the far end of a long corridor. There’s no elevator. I’m pregnant and had specifically requested a ground-floor room when booking, but reception said none was available, despite the property looking almost empty. The apartment had a strong, unpleasant smell from the kitchen sink that lingered no matter how much I tried to clean it. Its “air conditioning” is a centralized system, and if other guests don’t choose cooling, your unit barely cools. The technician who checked it confirmed this. There were no mosquito nets on any windows, including the bathroom, so with the midges and small flies around the lake, we couldn’t open the windows after a shower or for fresh air. The only toiletries were an almost empty bottle of hand soap in the kitchen. There was a kettle but no tea or coffee pods for the coffee machine. I also saw the plastic closets in the outdoor hallway where towels and sheets were kept. They were completely open to rain, dust, insects, and whatever else passes by. The linens we got smelled strongly of vinegar, which made sense given how they were stored. I have pictures of the closets. Parking was far down the hill from the apartments, adding to the inconvenience. The best part was the technician, who came the next morning after I called reception. He was extremely kind and professional, listened to every complaint, acknowledged the sink smell, and explained the AC problem. He quickly arranged for us to see and move to a lakeside apartment. The new one was clean and quiet, with no bad smells. He even drove me there and let us leave our luggage in the old room until my husband came back to help move everything. I really appreciated that. Still, packing and moving while pregnant took more than half a day. That was the exact day I’d planned to relax at the resort while my husband and son went to Gardaland. It was extremely disappointing. Breakfast cost €18 per person and wasn’t anything special. It was the same basic quality we’d had at other hotels on the trip that charged half as much. This place shouldn’t advertise as a “Boutique Resort.” It feels and operates more like a basic 2-star apartment complex. The first room assignment, maintenance problems, and linen storage all fall well short of boutique standards. If we’d been given a good lakeside room from the start and the first apartment had been properly prepared, our stay could have been very different. The marketing is very misleading! I can only recommend it with strong caveats: don’t book with Hotiday, book with Club del Sol, insist on a lakeside room, inspect everything as soon as you arrive, and expect a no-frills stay rather than the relaxing boutique getaway the marketing suggests.

I expected the apartments to be closer to the lake.