Гранд хотел Банско — Hotel in Bansko

The hotel is good and the service meets the expectations for a 4 Star hotel. My overall experience was definately positive, but I might want to try another hotel for my next visit in Bansko.

Pros: The SPA area is good with a big jacuzzi area, and several sauna / steam / Turkish baths. Fitness center has most of the equipment required for a decent workout. Food was not bad and there was some variety in the meals. Approximately 50% of the food were deserts, so if you're a sugar addict, you'll definitely love this place. The staff was taking good care of the place and some (but not all) of them were polite and friendly. Good overall value for money.

Cons: The floor plan is complex and you need some help from the staff to find the place you're looking for (room, restaurant, fitness etc). You may also get lost occasionally, but the staff will help you. Elevator's floor numbering wmis wrong - the Parter is floor 3 at the elevator, floor 1 corresponds to -2; and rooms 3XX are mapped to floor 5 and 6 in the elevator numbering. This can be confusing initiatially, but the legend inside the elevator can help. Tryinf to enter the elevator while the door is closing can be hurtful. The door does stop closing eventually, but not as soon as you would expect it to. Definitely not a good idea to try to stop the elevator with your body. The outdoor swimming pool is on the other side of the street. It can be inconvenient to walk to the traffic lights to cross the street wearing flip flops and a bathing suite to use the outdoor swimming pool. The hotel is at the crossroads of the two main streets to enter the town, so cars are driving fast as a result. This is the outdoor swimming pool. Indoors, there is a big jacuzzi area, which is kind of like a swimming pool. All pools are used for chilling out in the water and not for swimming. You may be able to swim in the outdoor pool if there aren't too many people. In the room floor, there's a weird step in the middle of the corridor. You can bump into it or fall down if you're not paying attention. Balconies are shared with the adjacent room meaning giving your neighbor easy access and a good view inside your room. You have to keep your door closed and your curtains closed if you don't know the people in the next room. The electric radiator in the bathroom has no temperature relay and can burn down your clothes if left on for too long. Unlocking the safe didn't work for me. Some alcoholic beverages were included, but no coke product. For example, if you want to drink jinn with tonic, you have to pay for the tonic. Using the SPA area is free, but any SPA procedures are billed separately.

In summary, good place and great value for money, but not much beyond parity with the competition. The building seems to have been expanded and rearchitected for more rooms at some point in time causing some confusing elements in the design, but the overall...

Where do I start? On first glance you think you've hit a winner when you walk through the door for the first time and sadly that's where the joy ends.

First up was the room. Admittedly we did purchase the tickets through a coupon site, but the room was so tiny and claustrophobic. The shower was decent but the toilet was in front of the sink, barely enough room for my knees. At night time, there's a massive - what can be only described as a flood light, directly outside the window, making it appear to be light all night long (with the curtains closed).

The restaurant looks amazing on first glance, but then you sit down on a dated table with dated decor. We decided to get a drink before digging into the "wonderful" buffet. I ordered a vodka and orange - they tried giving me the cheapest brand in the world and told me they don't have orange. I need to go to the drinks machine for that. Wow. Anyway, I go to the drinks machine and something comes out what looks like water. The bar guy said the orange had run out. I asked if it will be filled anytime soon and the answer was "in a few hours".

The food looked amazing, the issue is when you come to eat it. It's freezing cold and you could tell it wasn't made anytime soon. We was there 4 days and everyday was exactly the same. I barely ate anything that was cooked. I'm not a cake eater, but as I didn't eat much I thought I'd try some. The cakes were delicious.

After dinner on the first night we decided to take the girl to the kids play area. As you can see from the pics, wires and sockets everywhere and the hockey sliding game was broken and had live wires hanging out of it (see pics). This is a toddlers playing area. No staff anywhere to be seen. I did the best I could to close it and place a chair behind it so that kids couldn't reach it. We told a staff member at around 6pm. I checked it again at 9pm and it was still the same. Disgraceful.

The bar, same as the restaurant (no orange). All the tables were poker tables from the casino next door!! I wanted to watch the Man U game at 230pm kick off on their massive 80 inch TV - unfortunately it was playing Baby TV for 4 days and they couldn't change it 😂

One of the days I thought I'd go for a swim. But there's no swimming pool. It's like a huge hot bath with bubbles. Great if you want a jucuzzi, not so good if you want to swim. I believe they have a swimming pool out but what use is that when it's 10 degrees outside??

I'm the end I was almost in party mode when I came time to leave. Complete and utter...

The hotel appears to be very luxurious, but in reality the experience is not.

Comfort -although the room looked spacious and luxurious (leather bins in the bathroom), there were things that needed repair, e.g. the tv remote needed batteries, the flush mechanism in the toilet didn't work properly, etc. These things should be checked after every guest. Also, we were unlucky to get an apartment without a balcony, which shouldn't be a problem if there were facilities in the room to dry the wet swimsuits and bathrobes, but there were none. Believe me, it was a challenge hanging swimsuits at the window handles.

Hygiene- this is my biggest issue with the stay. We spent 4 nights at the hotel and our room wasn't cleaned even once! When on the third day we noticed it wasn't cleaned, we left the door sign "please, clean the room". When we came back in the afternoon, we noticed that the bins were emptied and there was a spare toilet roll. Nothing else was cleaned. On the fourth day, we thought we were lucky when a maid knocked on the door and asked if we needed anything. I asked her to clean the bathroom and change the towels. The response was "I can't change the towels because we don't have any spare left and we only empty the bins and leave spare toilet paper". I was gobsmacked! This definitely is not a 4 star hotel service.

Food- food was abundant and mostly tasty, however, it didn't always feel fresh. Also, the food that needs to be cooled (salads, deserts) was left at room temperature and the food that needs to be heated wasn't hot enough. A couple of times I came upon coffee cups that weren't washed properly, so I reverted to sterofoam ones.

Spa centre - very spacious, plenty of saunas, steam baths, places to relax. The pools, however, were a bit small for the size of the hotel and felt overcrowed at times. No towels.

Outdoor pool - this is situated across a busy road which is not ideal when you have kids. The adult pool is 1.80m deep at the shallow end and the water is freezing. There was not enough place for all the guests and I noticed quite a few people in the afternoon who couldn't find a place. Towels are available at request, however, they run out of fresh ones by early afternoon (I don't know why towels seem to be an issue at this hotel).

I am also a non smoker, so smoking around the swimming pool (it is an enclosed space) and in the lounge bar bothered me.

I haven't used any of the other facilities so I can't...