Terme Zrece - Hotel Vital

At 200 euros a night, a room with breakfast just doesn’t feel worth it. The food quality at breakfast was disappointing, and every coffee machine made coffee so burnt it was undrinkable. For the same price, I’d choose Sotelia, which I found offered three times the value and avoided the obvious hospitality and cost-cutting issues here.

The mountain area is beautiful, especially if you’re into hiking or skiing, and the staff were lovely throughout our visit. A few didn’t speak English, but they still did their best to communicate and help. Irena was a delight, and we felt really pampered during our romantic dinner. I thought the meal was very nice and fair for what we paid in Slovenia. Some complaints about the food seem to expect a £300 Michelin-starred nine-course dinner, which felt unrealistic to me. My partner and I were comfortable and happy at Hotel Vital. We’d been given a spa treat, with an hour in a private jacuzzi, champagne, scented candles, relaxing music, and towels folded into swans. We each had a massage afterward, then went back to our room, which had its own sauna in the bathroom.

The staff’s unfriendly manner really brought down the stay, and there were no apologies for the problems we encountered. The cleaning was unreliable too: a dirty cloth was left on our room table on the first day, and the balcony windows were open when we returned the next afternoon, leaving the room cold. The hotel looked dated for a four-star property, and the pull-out couch was a poor second bed. Meals were limited and bland, with few options for dietary needs or gluten intolerance. The salads had too much vinegar dressing, and there wasn’t much fresh fruit. We stayed in the last week of December, and I expected better service.

Never again. I spent four days at vile therme zreče with a group of friends, but we were put in separate apartments far from each other. We weren’t told many of the rules at check-in. On the first night we gathered in one apartment, and at 11 pm the night watchman came in and ordered us to leave, threatening to call the police if we didn’t. Apparently the resort rule was that everyone had to be asleep by 10 pm. We left straight away, and he followed us back to our room. He then stood outside for a while, shining his torch at our door. When I went out to ask what was wrong, he told me we had to go to bed and sleep. The next evening, a waitress asked for drink orders at dinner. We aren’t Slovenian and speak English, but she refused to speak to us in English, saying only Slovenian was accepted there. We somehow ordered a beer, but when it came time to pay she said cards weren’t accepted. The room security made the rest of the stay stressful. Our friends found their door wide open when they woke up one morning, as if someone had opened it during the night. Later that day I took a nap, and when I woke up, my room had been opened too. Nothing seemed to be missing. I didn’t think it was the cleaner, since the room had already been cleaned that morning. The following afternoon, after we’d been at the therme, I came back and found the bedroom light on. I’d left the bathroom light on when I went out, but it wasn’t on anymore, so it seemed someone had been in the room again. I ended up worried day and night, feeling unsafe even inside my apartment.