Hotel "Erma" — Hotel in Varna

I literally don’t understand how people rate this place as “excellent” or even “great”. It has so many great reviews but I am scared for everyone who left these. Where is your self respect?! Let’s start with the pictures. When you see the pictures online, they let you believe you will be receiving a gorgeous deal/service. In reality it is NOT at all, not even close. The hotel is very dark (meaning little to no lights). The lobby and corridors look like those in the horror movies. I won’t even speak about the murder hotel elevator. The slowest, darkest and scratched out elevator. It looks like 5 people were caught inside and they scratched it with their nails in hopes of getting out. The pool was not cleaned in probably ages, it had green residue and dead insects in it and all over it. The rooms, although nicely decorated and clean, are not soundproof AT ALL. You can literally hear every time someone closes their balcony door. We were “lucky” enough to hear oriental music all through the night, baby screams and doors shutting. Horror experience. Hearing a baby screaming like it’s being skinned alive at 3 in the morning is not a pleasant surprise. We also found the biggest bug in the bathroom, weird red looking stains near the garbage bin and mold in the bathroom. The biggest downfall of it all, was the fact that the hotel REFUSED to give us even a partial refund after only spending one night there. We were supposed to spend 5 days (4 nights), but we found out of a friend’s passing and after discovering the bug, stains and mold in the morning, we decided to ask them nicely about a refund. Any kind of refund. They said no, even though we asked at 10 in the morning and the check in for others was at 12, so they had plenty of time to clean after us and we couldn’t have caused any inconvenience. In the parking lot, although free, which is always nice, we were asked by the guy working there to park mirror to mirror to another car even though we said no, considering the person with the car next to us , his response when we said “but the other person won’t be able to get in the car” was “who says?”. BEWARE, if you have problems with walking a lot or climbing a lot of stairs, this is not the place for you. Food wise, I must say, the reviews sold this place to us because so many people complimented the breakfast. It is such a terrible thing to call this a “breakfast”. It’s a tragedy to call it “excellent”. It’s a monstrosity to even call it “good”. The breakfast is served from 7AM to 10AM. I reckon the people working there come to work and start cooking at about 3AM because everything IS ABSOLUTELY STALE AND COLD by the time you get it. Eggs, bacon, sausages and pancakes were at most average. AT MOST. All of the cookies/cakes were stale. The vegetables and fruits were oxidized because they probably cut them 4 days in advance. The “feta”cheese was absolutely and particularly terrible. It tasted watered down if that makes sense. You took a bite out of it and it had no salt, no milk taste. Just watered down and some sour taste. The coffee, croissants and apple juice were good. To sum up, the breakfast “buffet” if I really bring myself to call it that, consists of 3 tables. One for the pastries and cakes, one for vegetables and fruits and one for the egg station, where you also find the cheese and meat. Also, if you’re looking for facilities, don’t expect them from this place. Heck, even if you’re not looking for them, think about your comfort IF IT RAINS, which is exactly what happened to us. So here we are, stuck in a terrible “hotel”, pouring rain outside, no shops open, no facilities and nowhere to go. On top of that, I must mention IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY and I didn’t want to leave and waste our money because we are both students and haven’t been anywhere in like 6 years because of law and veterinary schools. Please, please, please, from the bottom of my heart, find something else. Even if you spend a little more,...

I'll start by telling the good things: the pools were clean, there is a great selection of different foods in the morning buffet, and the hotel is placed closed to the beach.

BUT! If you're wish is to have a hotel were you can have a good and silent night of sleep, then you should not pick Hotel Erma! The walls between the rooms are so thin, that the people on the other side don't even have to yell to make you hear what they are saying. Just by talking you will still be able to hear loud and clearly what your neighbors next door are saying. And since Hotel Erma is placed in Golden Sands, which is a an area with a lot of partying, you might be unlucky to have a room next to some people are that are coming home late at night. And we can then guarantee you, that you will wake up! -- Going to the reception to make the employees do something about the noice, will not help you. The employees in the reception are really not friendly or serviceminded, and have an attitude saying that they really do not care for you. As we could not sleep, we wished for another room. But we just got the message, that the hotel was fully booked. And moving to another room would not solve the problem, as the walls were just as thin in alle rooms.

One employee send us to the manager's office. But he did not help either. Not even a compensation, which would have helped just as little, since we payed for a room where we at least expected to be able to sleep in.

At the hotel, you can only pay with cash and not card.

If you plan to use to pool placed on 4th floor, the man who has the responsibility for the pool, but his own towels on all the sunbeds to make it look like the sunbeds are booked. He also tells you that these sunbeds over there are "booked for Finland" and there sunbeds over there are "booked for Stavanger". But these are just empty words. If he feels like you are a good customer who will buy beer or cocktail at the pool bar, then he will say "Finland is late today, you can have their sunbeds" and then he remove the towels he has placed there. We can tell you this is true, since we saw how he just moved around on towels, and also because we had a room were we could look directly down at the sunbeds, and the exact same towels were there the whole week we were there, and the towels were laying there all night.

We do not...

We traveled as a group of more than 20 people, looking forward to a relaxing holiday. Unfortunately, our stay at this hotel in Golden Sands, Bulgaria, turned out to be the worst travel experience we’ve ever had.||||Rooms & Cleanliness:||Upon arrival, we found our room dirty, including visible feces on the toilet seat. Throughout the stay, rooms were poorly cleaned, there were ants inside, glass shards on the terrace, and a foul smell from the drains. The shower curtain was filthy, and hygiene standards were simply unacceptable.||||Staff & Service:||The hotel staff were consistently rude and even aggressive at times, particularly at the pool bars and restaurant. We were told to leave shared areas for simply sitting by the tables outside after breakfast, despite there being no available sunbeds. Guests were also removed from the outdoor area at night for eating food not purchased at the hotel—even though the hotel didn’t serve food in the evening.||||Children and teens were reprimanded for carrying their own water bottles, and weren’t allowed near the pool area with them—even just to hand over a room key.||||Security:||Cash was stolen from rooms, including money clearly left by children/teenagers. Despite reporting this to reception multiple times, we received no response or follow-up.||||Payments & Pricing:||The hotel does not accept card payments anywhere on the property. Guests are forced to pay cash and to use a hotel-linked ATM with terrible exchange rates and high fees. The reception refuses to provide information about more reasonably priced ATMs. ||||Prices at both the hotel and all shops and restaurants in the surrounding area are extremely high.||||Golden Sands as a Destination:||The general attitude in the area was unfriendly and unwelcoming. Everything is overpriced—even ketchup at McDonald’s costs extra. There are few attractions beyond low-quality bars and souvenir shops. It’s extremely expensive to leave the area by taxi. Overall, the atmosphere is purely exploitative toward tourists.||||Summary:||This was by far the most unpleasant holiday we’ve ever had. We expected a simple, budget-friendly stay, but instead got poor hygiene, theft, and...