Potentially good hotel, but double-standard in quality of accommodation operates (Hotel Koral (Varna, Bulgaria))

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Hotel Koral (Varna, Bulgaria)
Date:	27/05/09 (6 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice, modern well-run hotel....in parts.....

Disadvantages: Parts of it are nice and modern all right, but some of the rooms are definitely neither

This a nice, well run hotel in the seaside town of St. Konstantin & Elena, which is about 15 -20 minutes by bus outside Varna. We stayed there for a fortnight on a B&B basis in 2007, having booked a package holiday through Balkan Tours.

The hotel is quite well equipped and has the usual facilities e.g. good sized dining room nice, clean and comfortable communal areas, outdoor swimming pool, children's play area, etc. It is a bit of a walk from the nearest sandy beach - which is perhaps about 15 minutes walk to get to, one way. The closest beach unfortunately isn't very big or impressive but there is a nicer option perhaps 10 minutes walk up the coast pavement (heading left as you look to sea). The whole area is a tourist resort and there are lots of other hotels (some oppressively ginormous), shops, tourist stalls and restaurants nearby.

The standard 3* hotel rooms in the Koral are nicely decorated, clean and well equipped (with good en suite bathroom, balcony, TV and fridge) and are much as you'd find in any 'normal' hotel. The housekeeping staff are really nice and very friendly - the lady who looked after our room often brought little gifts of spare balloons, little toys that other guests had left behind and so for the sprog. I have no hesitation in recommending these rooms for a holiday stay.

We did have an initial problem with the hotel however, and although you could argue that this was the fault of our package company (Balkan Tours) and not the Hotel Koral itself, it is definitely something to be borne in mind if you are booking accommodation here in future: you need to be very sure that you have booked the 'right' kind of room.

Although the hotel is listed as providing three star accommodation on its website - which it undoubtedly does - it also has a number of frankly, pretty appalling rooms on offer, situated 'out the back', and it was one of these rooms that we were originally allocated.

The rooms 'out the back' provide something more like sub-standard 1970s youth hostel accommodation. The room we were first given was completely unacceptable for a family holiday. It was narrow and cramped - too small for a double bed, so there were just two singles pushed up against the walls - and all round shabby, with sagging beds, uneven floors, torn / patched nylon carpet, wire-exposed light fittings and a dreary, grubby-looking bathroom - the kind of place where the décor and tilework were so old that no amount of cleaning would ever make them look allright again. The fixtures and fittings were worn and ancient - some light fittings hanging off the wires and most likely unsafe - and the room was in no way adequate for an alleged 3* family holiday. (Incidentally I have pictures of all this dereliction still saved on my computer if anyone's interested). The room also bore no resemblance whatsoever to the pretty pictures of the available accommodation we'd seen on the Hotel Koral's own and Balkan Tours websites respectively. As we arrived very late at night, it was not possible to secure alternate accommodation immediately. The reception staff even initially insisted that our room was quite normal and that there was no mistake in the booking.

In the morning, I pointed out the obvious discrepancy between the internet-advertised and actual accommodation we'd been given, and in the light of this the hotel manager kindly arranged to transfer us to one of the better rooms. Though we were charged quite a bit extra for this, he gave us a discounted rate and quite frankly we were so desperately appalled by our original room that we happy just to pay to get out of the first place.

This highlights a peculiarity of the Bulgarian hotel trade. Firstly, a double tariff system seems to operate (you can see what looks like a double-entry price sheet on display on the receptionist's counter!); in that foreigners get charged a far higher rate than local customers, and I suspect that the 'discount' we were eventually given incorporated the for-Bulgarians discount. I don't know how Bulgaria joining the EU is going to affect this sort of practice, but we'll see. Secondly - and I don't know how widespread this is, having only ever stayed in one hotel in Bulgaria - even in some tourist hotels there are two types of rooms - really rubbish doss-house ones, like where we were first installed, and then OK, standard ones. The hotel manager told us that the rubbish rooms (not his words, obviously) cost less but people on a budget chose to stay in them just so that they could have access to the 'good facilities' of the hotel.

What a load of nonsense. If you're going to Bulgaria, I'd be careful if I were you, as buying hotel accommodation there is in my limited experience something like purchasing the proverbial pig in a poke. Also, don't book with Balkan Tours - I went to Turkey with them previously, and they are in general, useless.

Summary: If you're sure you haven't booked the 'crash' / budget accommodation, it'll be all right