GRIFID Hotel Vistamar — Hotel in Varna

Review for end of June, begin of July 2022, 7 nights stay, suite room;

Shiny hotel, great open spaces inside. Would rate it above average as design, feel. Hotel is NOT directly on the beach, in order to get there you need to cross a public, mainly pedestrian paved road and walk 50-100 meters before entering the sea. Majority of the tourist were German, so expect staff to be more prone to German speaking. Staff was amazing. Most of the All Inclusive were time driven: pool bar: 09:00 - 22:30 ice cream bar: 10:00 - 17:00 coffee shop / cake shop - 10:00 - 17:00 (only drinkable coffee is here) beach bar: 09:00 - 17:00

Beach / sea. Entrance in the sea was not that soft. In 2-3 meters from shore already adults chest was covered by water. In 2021 you needed to go in further meters to have your chest covered by seawater while standing up. This means is not that kid friendly.

Probably won't return here, but hotel had some advantages.

THE BAD: "a la carte" restaurants require previous booking (do it on your first day) but food was below average compared to restaurants I frequently use in my hometown. Slow service, not that tasty. -safe in the room, exists but is subject to extra fee/day. Hotel has no wall/fence border or visible security guard and is surrounded by 3 public streets so in theory everyone from outside could walk in; parking nearby is small. You get directions on where to look further (other hotels). Overall parking fee is an artificial thing, monopoly in the whole beach administrative unit; a steal for the money, 20 Leva / 10 EUR / day; lack of fan exhaust in the bathroom. Also no exterior window in bathroom; super noisy door from Staff Room (5th floor). Every morning the door started to get closed/slammed at 07:15 every 2-3 minutes. This was wake up signal. Also in the afternoon, intense usage (read as loud slamming) started at 15:20 - 15:30. requested room change due to noise. Discussed with the manager; she was polite and understanding, declined indicating hotel was full; 4 other nights most rooms nearby mine (same room types) were empty. No further action from the manager/staff. :( -Lights on terraces/balconies turn on around 21:00 and turn off automatically at around midnight. You cannot turn them off, so some light enters in the room. Ultra all inclusive: bad coffee everywhere; There are some automatic expresso machines, but the taste was awful. These were bottleneck points during breakfast / lunch as it took a lot of time for the machine to prepare 1 coffee. food was ok, quite diverse; Above average but nothing spectacular. For a resort being on the seaside fish meals could be greatly improved. In 8 days I've been able to take 1 time grilled salmon, 1 time oven cooked sturgeon, 2-3 time shark fillet and each day was just "white fish" oven cooked. beverages were basic, no brand drink, all were advised as "imported" - meaning no Bulgarian produced. Beer on tap only, some sparkling wine, one tap wine. tomato sauce for pasta was badly cooked, tasted like cheap ketchup. Never had I tasted a tomato sauce so low level. Even cheapest ready to eat sauces are world class compared to this ones. Several times pasta was overcooked (probably due to infra-red lamps) keeping serving bowl hot.

THE GOOD: diverse entertainment (Latino night, music quiz contest, clown show, 70-80's music live). access to nearby Grifid Bolero facilities (pools, aquatic park for kids and adults) curtains really completely darken the room. ac from my room was part of building ac, low noise. cleaning: increased attention everywhere: room, hallways, lobby, stairs to beach; pillow change service, based on softness. At 21:00 at night requested another softer pillow and received it in 25 minutes. kids animation was 2-3 times better at nearby Bolero hotel, part of the same Grifid chain. More animation personnel,...

We stayed at the vistamar hotel for 1 week with our child. Any guest coming to the hotel should consider the following:

Rooms: spacious to fit a family of 3, enough luggage room and decent balcony. A very big minus is the glass wall of the bathroom. Whenever anyone would go to the toilet at night the whole room would light up and wake up the others.

Food: varied, good, italian and local a la carte restaurants were great however i would personally avoid the french one. Snack bar open between breakfast and dinner is good, coffee shop ok, minus for the local barista who seemed to struggle to understand english and was generally very slow in service.

Drinks: low quality at the beach, ok quality at the pool, good quality at reception.

Staff: The international staff was absolutely excellent giving us smiles and best services every day. The local staff however was really bad, constantly making mistakes to our orders, and showing a lack of interest in general. One person in particular bothered us, the lady from the reception bar (40s+), she didn’t want to show us where the restaurant is, didn’t want to speak or help, but chased us when we wanted to put some water in the baby bottle saying this is not allowed.

Cleanliness: above decent, kudos to the gentleman who was giving a surprise every day with the towel arrangements

Location: great, i would honestly say it is the best possible location, go north and it gets too quiet, go south it is unbelievably loud and crowdy. Sweet spot for this hotel

Beach: very good, but beware there is no reservation of sunbeds, walk away more than 30-40 min and they give it to someone else and take your stuff to the reception - which is fair, but the bad part is the allow strangers on the beach, with towels. They will stand in front of you and the scenery every single day.

Guests: it is a mostly german, french hotel, however we have seen some unacceptable behaviour. Children peeing by the side of the pool, peeing on the beach and evening taking a dump between sunbeds (which the parents saw and just asked the kid to cover).

Overall it is a good hotel with good service. Nothing out of the ordinary, if i were in charge i would replace all the local staff with filipino/Indonesian who will always show more respect to the clients. I would pay a closer attention to what kids are using as a toilet and probably pay the staff just a but better so that they don’t beg for tips for...

I have just one word PERFECT! We had an issue with the shower door the water from the shower was pouring under it, floding the bathroom. I went at the reception asking for a fix.. I have to say big minus for that, the girl at the reception was very "tired" to say at least..she called a cleaning man to clean the water and then came a tehnician to "fix" the problem, that said to put towels on the floor and call everytime a cleaning men ( wich buy the way yo have a policy to not do that writen on the bathroom wall) it was very rude. The next day I went a second time to the reception there were other girls, much more willing to fix the problem and more nice. In the afternoon it came another tehnician and solved the probleme easily. Our suprise was the next day with the note under the door to come and talk about changing the room. I was shocked about the note and I refused it because the problem was fixed. For this I give my hat down and make a bow for your optim service and good intentions. The food was devine for every taste and very easy to choose from. Big plus to the people serving us it was a pleasure to see every day a smile a good word , so much good vibe. Kudos and * stars to the people greeting us every sigle day and every meal time and even the cleaning people❤️❤️. Some of them greeting in romanian and asking about where are we from, very cute!! From the filipine to indonesian and all the countries you have there from, even the bulgarian ones we recieved just smiles and good vibes! Thank you and congratulations! Thank you for the every day cleaning and fresh towels, all the cosines in our rooms especially the mattresses ( please if you can tell me what brand and type they are it will be magical to have them at home) 😁 The evening entertaining was so awesome for the kids and for us grownups to!! The drinks from the bars were awesome, and thanks to the guys from the beach bar that were patient enough for listening to my six year old boy when he asked for 1Apple juice. It took him 4 days to make the courage to ask them. The dinner a la carte!! WOW! Melting deliciousness! 🤤🤤🤤 In final we really loved our stay, this is how it should be a vacation. You have an awesome team, keep it like that, we are soure that we will visit you next year! From Cluj-Napoca, Romania, big thank you to all of...