Medite Spa Resort & Villas — Hotel in Sandanski

This is a gorgeous hotel: beautiful view from the infinity pool, bar, and restaurant, including a bar in the infinity pool alla White Lotus season 1 (ie you don't have to leave the pool to get a drink--though note this isn't open in the winter); fresh mountain air; hot outdoor jacuzzis and hot outdoor pool where you can jump in to warm up right after the cooler infinity pool, making it perfect to visit even in the winter (we visited in early January, right after New Year's Eve); warm indoor pool and multiple children's pools both indoors and outdoors, plus several children's playgrounds; and stunning, freshly renovated, spacious, and modern 1- and 2-bedroom villas with their own individual hot outdoor jacuzzis. The villas are even dog-friendly, for a small added fee (about £20 per night).

The highlight of our experience was the spa centre. The spa is clean, fully equipped, with a variety of treatment options and rooms: Swedish sauna, herbal sauna, steam room, seasalt bath, Turkish bath, etc and an extensive menu of health and beauty treatment options. We went for a full-body massage and an acupressure treatment by Christian, who was incredibly lovely, skilled, professional, and kind. Anastasia and all the spa reception staff were so kind, helpful, professional, and warmly welcoming. I've never felt so comfortable in a spa and it felt like a luxurious and regenerative experience overall. The whole hotel, including the spa, the pools, and the rooms/villas use mineral waters from the local mountain springs, whose health benefits you can feel just by being here. We loved it and will definitely come back again.

Besides that, the hotel is incredibly conveniently located 10 km from the Greek border and a stone's throw away from some marvelous historical and natural sights, such as the hot volcanic springs and sacred site at Rupite and Baba Vanga's home and church grounds; stunning archaeological sites in the town of Sandanski and Damyanitsa; lots of local vineyards, where you can take tours, taste and buy some gorgeous wines that aren't produced or exported anywhere else in the world, such as the Melnik vineyard (try their Applauz wines); and lots of beautiful hiking trails all across the area. The town of Sandanski is small, charming, with a perfect combination of cheap and good food, bars, shops (including local designers who also don't export elsewhere but who create cool, distinctive, and quality shoes and clothes); and a stunning and big park just a pleasant riverside walk from the town centre.

Food/restaurant: you can pay extra to include breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner, which is really convenient and definitely worth it if you don't want the trouble of going into town to find restaurants etc, which will end up costing pretty much the same or more per day. The food is healthy, tasty, and varied. However, the restaurant is where this hotel needs to make the most improvements and why they've lost a star from me. Here's where they need to up their game: food MUST be labelled and allergens stated, so we know what we're eating; too much meat, not enough alternative options (eg fish, vegetarian and vegan main courses, gluten-free options). There would usually be 1 type of fish at dinner, always breaded and deep fried (ie less healthy and not particularly interesting, even though it was fresh and nice for what it was) and at least 5 heavy meat options. There needs to be at least some gluten-free bread available for all meals, and at least some gluten-free and vegan dessert options (there were literally none--it was all cakes and dairy). And there needs to be better supervision of the food/plates/utensils available so that they don't keep running out. There always tended to be quite a long queue around the coffee/tea machines at breakfast, so something about the arrangement there needs to be rethought.

I would definitely recommend this place and will come back. Gives White Lotus vibes, in the best sense. But definitely reconsider the restaurant service and food, especially if you have allergies or food...

I am giving 4 stars for the food and happy and polite people. We were a family of 5 and had an overnight stay in this Hotel 6-7.01.24. We had a very big spacious apartment with two bedrooms and one extra sofa. The room was super clean and new. We used SPA straight away after our arrival and during this SPA visit I was thinking of giving one star to this Hotel but after the dinner and the breakfast (included in the room rate) I completely changed my mind. I have seen other reviews where people are complaining about dirty SPA, poor mineral water, bad food, old rooms …..and so on. What we have found as a fact in this Hotel:: We had an absolutely new and clean room - probably not so fancy and with a little dark and outdated design and very narrow shower cabin (which I don't like) BUT the very important - mattress was super comfy - not super soft and not super stiff, huge size - and we all love this! The restaurant - is an absolutely separate story - I am Naturopath and Nutritionist in my main profession and I love to cook and home - I know the taste of really good food. During dinner time, right from the door I was faced with a huge selection of very tasty and good quality salads (I love Bulgarian salads with tomatoes and feta and olives). After this a huge selection of baked local vegetables incl. red Bulgarian papers, zucchini, very tasty potatoes and many others. As a main dish they provided a huge selection of different meat and fish and on the sweet table I was so happy to find baked pumpkin with honey and nuts (of course kids enjoyed their cakes:). Plus a very different selection and bread and super tasty local bannitza! The restaurant was not crowded and I believe it’s not an easy way for each hotel to keep this level of food today. Breakfast simply shocked all of us because we found more than 10 options and freshly squeezed juices and different combinations !!!! in Winter time!!! Absolutely unbelievable!!! Even healthy smoothies were presented with kiwi! The vibe at the restaurant is also very special - not busy with lots of round good quality tables and chairs for 5-6 people, with personal lights, with good views. This Hotel definitely has a lot of stairs - not accessible for people with disabilities unfortunately, but I believe cannot be counted as a negative fact because it is a question to the Architect who did this project. The staff in this hotel is so friendly and polite - I simply can not complain to them :)! But in general we always meet very friendly and good people in the radius of one -two hours from Sofia …those are real good people I believe. Things to improve: The SPA center should be cleaned in a much better way - which I think is difficult to organize with a huge lack of workers in any part of Bulgaria. But still, the SPA Hotel must have a much much better cleaning and organization. During our visit - floors were wet and dirty. Saunas with a heavy smell. No rules for sauna users - all people in sauna were sitting wet right on the benches with no towels - sweating right on the wooden benches - so disgusting! Benches in the resting room wrapped with cloth and mattress - to have this benches is the biggest mistake in any SPA - because they are always wet from the previous user and disgusting from others' sweat - they should be replaced with anatomical warm stone beds for hygiene purposes. In addition, there are no rules about food in SPA - we have met people eating pizza right in the swimming pool (this was delivered by the way to them) - oh my god…..All showers were dirty. The taps in the showers can not set up warm water - only cold or nearly boiling water - be careful.

PS: My child forgot her jacket and they found it and had sent it to us - thank you a lot!!! Disclaimer: I do not have any relations with this Hotel and this review is...

The hotel is nice, yes, but for the price I was expecting a bit more perhaps. I also had the problems that some of the other reviews mentioned: the shower water was switching between hot and cold by itself (without touching the valves) which was very inconvenient, but I guess the problem was due to peak time usage. If you shower early or late in the day, you might not have the problem.

The other problem I had was that the thermostat was not working correctly. It was constantly very hot in the room. You could set the target temperature to ~13 degrees if you like, but that seemed to only increase the temperature of the room, instead of lower it.

It's not a complaint of mine, but the SPA was a bit small. You could only fit 4-5 people in the saunas and steam rooms. If you go at ~3-5 in the afternoon, you might have to wait a bit to enter the sauna, especially on the weekends.

I think the breakfast was the best meal they offer. It was really nice and they even had freshly pressed juices, which is something I see very rarely in hotel breakfasts. The dinner was nice, but on both Friday and Saturday it the selection was entirely the same, which was kind of a bummer.

We also decided to have lunch in the hotel restaurant instead of going to Sandanski. There is both a regular menu and a lunch menu. The lunch menu was of decent size but there wasn't much variation. There wasn't a main dish that was vegetarian, for instance (4 mains all had meat). I also think it was a bit overpriced. 4.50 for tarator and 6.50 for potato cream soup feels a bit much (the tarator didn't even have walnuts or dill!)

I was pleased with the fact that the staff were wearing masks. However, they didn't ask any of the guests to wear masks when serving themselves food. Given the fact that the place where the food trays were placed was small, you end up with a lot of people in a small area, not wearing masks (we were the only ones in the restaurant wearing masks while putting food on our plates) which left a bad impression, given that the daily cases were up to ~3000 per day. I also heard from friends that this was not the case in other hotels with self-serve dinner (they had to wear masks)

Overall, the hotel is nice. I think it is much better to go in the late spring and summer since the outdoor pools are the star of the show. I think many small things went wrong for me which is why I am giving it a low rating. They are fixable and might not even affect most of the other guests. However, we were feeling like we could have chosen a better place for our weekend getaway. Perhaps if the price was 25% lower this would have been a 4 or 5 star review, but I've been to much much better SPA places for the same price.

P.S. go to the ECO path starting at the back of the hotel, it was really...