Review of Solana Hotel & Spa 4*

I’m going to start with the positives — the staff are amazing, friendly, knowledgable and helpful. The drinks are competitively priced and the location is good. Now the rest… It started at check in when I was offered an upgrade on my room. We had already booked the second highest level of room (junior suite) but didn’t feel the need to upgrade to an apartment because there was just the two of us. BUT, I have hotels. Com status from travelling so much that I should automatically get upgraded when available. 4 conversations and 24 hours later we were finally moved. How they have the cheek to call our original room any kind of ‘suite’ is beyond me. First floor, overlooking the Main Street with a balcony door that didn’t close properly. The shower handle came off in my hand. Hair dryer was broken and dangerous and the bathroom hadn’t been upgraded in decades. They, very reluctantly, moved us the following day after I tried and failed to get a refund to move to a different hotel. If I was the manager of that hotel and I had a customer as unhappy as I was, I would have been happy to get rid of them. Anyway. We were moved to the very lowest of the possible Upgrade. Please compare my picture to the one of the luxury apartment in the hotel’s listing. Worlds apart. For the inconvenience we were given a voucher for the ‘restaurant’. It should really be called a canteen. Sloppy service, inedible food, rude staff and I had to pay for the water we ordered to go with our ‘complimentary’ meal. The noise is incredible. The housekeepers start throwing furniture around at 8am and don’t stop all day. The whole building echoes and there is no consideration or keeping quiet to let people enjoy their holiday. You can hear every noise from every room around you, there is zero sound insulation. We used our discount voucher to eat in the Tosca restaurant. By this point, I was sick of hearing myself complain so I just ate what was put in front of me. It was awful. I had sous vide steak. The great thing about sous vide is that you can cook steak at a low temperature for a long time and it comes out succulent and perfect. I have no idea what they did to this thing but it was like a very salty sole of a shoe. Bl**dy awful. I couldn’t be bothered complaining any more and decided to just eat the vegetables which were basically raw. Wine was nice and very reasonably priced though. Everywhere you look in the building is a sign either trying to sell you something, upgrade something or giving you rules on what you can’t do. It’s not exactly conducive to a relaxing holiday. It feels like the owners are penny-pinching and, although the staff are willing to help, they are restricted by rules. The customer is definitely not the priority in this hotel, it’s the owner’s bank balance. Definitely won’t be back. Wouldn’t recommend.