Astor Garden Hotel — Hotel in Varna

Pros: the garden is nice and well kept, the reception and bar area also look good and are spacious. the beds are big and cozy and the rooms, although quite generic are spacious; there is nothing that makes it a 5* hotel when it comes to interior design and decor, like I said, the room and the furnishings are quite generic and mid-quality the hotel is situated in a nice part of the resort and all around the architecture and services are good and more high-end, we didn't go to the hotel's beach but it looked good and well kept. There are nice restaurants and bars around. while staying at the hotel you have access to a lot of pools and luckily they are heated and there are a lot of indoor options so bad weather is not a dealbreaker. The hotel offers free access to a SPA situated outside of the hotel grounds but very close by and it also offers 2 large pools, one of them indoor and the other one outside and also two small shallow pools outside that are heated and can be used when the weather is cold.

Cons: generally, there is no attention to the details that way a 5* hotel should pay attention to - the bathroom had a big mold stain on the ceiling, the outdoor pools had loose tiles and the water was not clean, I'm not sure exactly what was floating throughout the outside pool, might have been parts of leaves and bark from the trees nearby or something else entirely, there wasn't a coat hanger in the room, the minifridge was leaking, there were doors that didn't work properly. we had to ask for the room to be cleaned every day. The first day they came at about 14:00 when the children were napping and we asked at the reception for the cleaning lady to come earlier but they only came in the 9-13 interval if we asked. The shower gel bottle was empty and they didn't change it. Nothing fancy about it- it was a hand-body-hair-everything wash. the food is diverse but pretty bad quality. The low quality ingredients are especially noticeable when it comes to desserts. The restaurant is big but lacks any kind of decor and generally looks and tastes like a dining hall. They do not offer any kind of beverages at dinner, not even water, so everything has to be paid for. The service is extremely slow and even if you order drinks they usually arrive after having finished your dinner. On a plus side, they have live music every evening and the singers are pretty good, some excellent, but I felt bad for them, because they didn't have a stage or an organized area, they were just given a microphone next to the door. on our last day there was a wedding at the ground floor restaurant and our room was situated right above it, so we could hear the guests and the music until late in the night. We hadn't been warned about this or offered an alternative, so the only option was to use white noise. When we complained about it at the reception they basically didn't care, even though we checked in with two small children. I imagine that can be a real problem for all the guests that have rooms on that side of the hotel.

All in all, based on the price, it isn't a bad choice, but this is not a 5* hotel. It is far from it if you've ever experienced real 5* hospitality. We won't...

Overall + parking: Astor Garden Hotel is a nice hotel with the advantage of having an underground parking lot (for free, but it is pretty small, I was lucky enough to get a parking spot in there). It is very close to the beach and it has its own pool. The hotel's design is very attractive. The lobby bar was a great place to relax in the evenings and enjoy a drink.

Pool + beach: The hotel's pool is large enough, you have room for swimming and relaxing in it. The beach of the hotel is also large, but the sea was filled with algaes and it was a bad experience. It was gross going into the water and touching these plants or getting stuck with them on your body. I think there is not so hard to have one employee to take care of this in the morning, since their entrance into the sea stretches no further than 50-60 meters.

"Rude" guests: Fellow guests that came at the pool early in the morning (7-8 AM) just to leave pool towels on the chairs sitting by the pool to keep them busy. The problem is that some of them kept them busy all day just to come at around 4-5 PM for 1 hour only at the pool and other guests could not enjoy the chairs sitting right next to the pool.

Food: Breakfast: consistently good, you have a variety of choices (altough it's pretty much the same every morning, it is great) Lunch: arguably the "least good" meal of the day, not such a great variety and the food quality is not the best. Dinner: there were no two dinners with the same theme. One night we had some chinese theme, another night we had mexican food, etc. Dinner was far better than the lunch and it was impossible not to find something likeable for you.

Employees: Most of them do not seem happy at all and this shows. The girls at the entrance of the restaurant were always nice and smiling. Also the waitress at the lobby bar was friendly.

Check in: We arrived at 11 AM and the check in was from 3 PM. We expected to have to wait and that was no problem. The problem was that... the receptionist told us when we arrived that our room was ready and available but we had to pay a fee of 35 LEVA to be able to receive it earlier. It is the first time in my life when something like this occured. Maybe it is common practice and I am not aware of it.

Other cons: -the light on the balcony cannot be turned off, it may be frustrating for some people (you can just shut the drapes though) -the glasses always had spots and sometimes there was lipstick on them (and they were placed in the clean glasses area) -altough around 40 to 50% (atleast) of the guests/tourists are romanian, there are no inscriptions in the romanian language, the only languages on the inscriptions in the hotel are: bulgarian, english, german and russian; this is not such a problem since most of the romanians...

Hotel design, quality, materials, furniture etc is real 5-star. Could easily be Marriott, Hilton or Sofitel. Service and food maybe not so great, but as this functions mainly as an all inclusive hotel, then for the price paid for a package hotel (as in our case) I really cannot complain. For the same price as a 2-3 star family hotel in The Canary Islands or Majorca, you can get real 5-star, with the same or better food. If you want a-la-carte quality then maybe better choose another hotel - and pay 3 times as much.

Guests mainly from Romania, Bulgaria and in general Eastern Europe, although the odd French, German, Dutch or British guests could also be heard.

Big advantages: nice pool with swimming lane (even if most guests find this concept intellectually challenging) no need to “occupy” sun-beds as 6am. There are plenty and always available! well-equipped gym great rooms with genuine 5-star feel excellent location in a quiet resort away from the hustle of 1million tourists right by the beach - or actually beaches beach bar on one of the hotel beaches different lunch and dinner every day

Minor disadvantages (but will not ruin your holiday): food quality very “buffet style” - not always as tasty as it looks poor quality all-inclusive cocktails not-so-excellent coffee (although available 24h (lobby) and in each f&b outlet (restaurant, lobby, pool bar, beach bar and also in the room (!) some of the staff behave like they are on slave labour. I hope this is not the case 😜 gym open 8am-8pm. So not suitable for pre-breakfast of after-dinner workout 🙁 leaking shower due to construction fault by the shower door - apparently this is the case on most rooms, so be prepared to use half your towels as water dams, not enough toilet paper. They replace it everyday, but with non-hotel cheap economy paper with 5-pieces per roll. So with 3 people only 2 can use the toilet for a number two…

An additional advantage is checking out the supercars of the Bulgarian mafia bosses staying at Villa Chinka next door (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Rolls Royce etc) but be careful as their bodyguards are sometimes quite scary.

All in all for the price paid we got more than we had expected, comparing to previous holidays over the...