SENTIDO Marea — Hotel in Varna

This review will be useful particularly for parents with small children under 5y. We travelled with 4r old. -beach: very close to hotel, you can literally go there in swimsuits directly from the room. The sand is relatively rough (lots of shells parts inside), so don´t expect something like from a commercial. On the other hand, you can gather great number of shells what our kid enjoyed the most. Beach bar (drinks, water, juices etc.), ice cream truck and snack bar directly at the beach. -pools: 3 pools available, children pool (40 cm), classic pool (1.5m), inside pool (1.75m). Clean everyday, very good water and also animation activities for both children as well as adults. Pool bar. -food: very diverse, and lot of option (also vege meals). Lost of fruits, vegetables, but also meat, fish, sea food, desserts, kids food (also for babies).. I didn´t felt it was repetitive and almost every evening there was some "theme" (Italian evening = lots of pasta, etc.). There were options like sit inside, outside, smoking, nonsmoking area, only adults and kids area (higher chairs and lower tables). Kid chairs, plastic cutlery and plates for kids also available (but not cups). -room: spacious and big, we has enough place. TV, AC and free wifi, but the connection was quite bad, so we used our own internet. Nice balcony with dryer for towels and swimsuits. Bathroom with WC and shower, cleaned room everyday, and minibar filled also every day for free (we had ultra all inclusive program). -hotel itself: very very nice design. Loved it. Exactly like on the photos. Wellness available for extra cost (didn´t try but they offered massages, manicure, pedicure, hairdresser and such). Nice big lobby with TV, bar, terrace, books and boarding games for children. Nice place to spend your time when you are waiting for your flight. I even slept there and nobody minded. -animators: at first, I was kind off disappointed by the "playhouse" where my child was supposed to spend time, because it was really basic, with low amounts of (often dirty :( ) toys, but fortunately they offered drawing and making stuff from paper and such. There is small playground outside. Although most of the girls looked like they don´t like the work too much (save exceptions), my child still liked them and especially kid disco in evening hours. -outside area: it´s a resort, so expect only gift shops, money exchange, supermarkets (great for filling your water supplies as in Bulgaria you are recommend to drink bottle water), big amounts of children attractions etc. Not much to do except taking photos. Ferris wheel is in walk distance from the hotel. There is a tourist train "hop on hop off" that goes through entire area for very low prices, so you don´t have to walk in summer heat with a small child. -tours: didn´t take any due to high price, but you can take public transport by bus to Varna and do some sightseeings on your own. Prepare that buses and city itself are not the newest or cleanest ones. But people are nice. TL;DR: nice hotel for families and I wouldn´t mind visit it again. Almost everything...

We had the pleasure to spend absolutely wonderful two weeks at the Sentido Marea hotel in the second half of July. The hotel fully deserves its four stars and guarantees the ultimate holiday experience at a really high level. In various parts of this review I summarize briefly its advantages.

Hotel beach equipped with free beach sets consisting of beach beds, an umbrella and a table. There are so many sets that even in the full season in the middle of the day there are no problems with finding a place. On the beach there are hotel showers, toilets and a changing room. Beach staff brings mattresses for beds and collects cups from drinks and regularly empties trash cans. In addition, the hotel lends a large beach towel to everyone. The beach itself is wide and sandy and guarded by lifeguards. The sea gets deep quite quickly, which will not be an obstacle for swimmers. Directly by the shore it is possible to safely stand in the water and play some water games and interact with children.

Infrastructure and animations. The hotel is equipped with a fairly spacious outdoor swimming pool with beds and umbrellas, also guarded by a lifeguard and equipped with a bar. In addition, the hotel has a separate children's pool with various water attractions in the style of slides, which are very popular. The building also has an indoor swimming pool and a gym. When it comes to animation, the animation team organizes various attractions throughout the day, in the form of games and activities for both adults and children. Daily schedules with the program for the day are posted around the hotel. Every evening there are various cultural events in the form of live concerts, a Bulgarian evening or a magic show. There is also a dance party on the beach, separately for children and adults.

Customer service and care. The hotel makes sure that everyone enjoys their stay and returns home fully relaxed. The staff communicates fluently in English. At any time, you can call the reception regarding any matter and the staff will make every effort to fulfill your request. You can even ask for a replacement pillow for a different type that suits you better. The hotel has its own taxi service (extra paid) so at any time you can get to Varna, the surrounding towns, and even distant Nessebar.

To sum up, if you care about holidays during which you will be able to relax on the beach with a drink in hand and forget about everyday errands, while the only worry being not to overeat and evenly tan in the rays of the intense Bulgarian sun, then there is no better choice than the Sentido Marea hotel in Golden Sands. The stay there is a guarantee of an unforgettable holiday rest, after which you will wait to come back next year, just like us 😊 Highly...

I start this long review saying thank you for our vacation. It's the third year at Sentido and we will come back.

This year ar the arrival the reception staff said it's a problem with the room reservation because of the kids (we did it on their website, called them and paid it before). It wasn't the welcome that we expect. After that they gave us the room with a delay. When we got the booked room, exactly the one we asked for, we finally smiled.

The room was clean, smelling nice, the only negative thing was a spider web on our ceiling and we didn't receive coffe & tea in the room only the first 3 days of our stay.

As we knew, the restaurant was 5/5, very nice staff including the chef, the kids loved him, delicious food. Sadly people let lots of food on the table, 37 kg food/day as I read on the restaurant.

The water at the kids pool is a little cold but in the noon gets a bit warmer.

I liked the changes made from the last year: the new beach bar-it was needed; the book station near the beach it's a good idea but I wish I find more books in english not german or even other languages; the opening hours for ice cream and snacks (also more snacks than before) were changed and it's good because the last year it was a shorter program.

The kids club is nice but some plush toys are dirty, for little children some wood/plastic toys would be easy to clean and play with. Also the animation team is 5/5.

One main elevator did not work in our last day so it was harder to go down from upper floors.

The parking from Grifid was full so we had to go further to another parking and they asked for leva, cash. We always paid the parking at the reception with card so it was an inconvenience. However, this time the driver from the hotel was already there, no need to wait to get to/from our car.

Every night is a new show, I enjoyed the magic one a lot.

At the beach there weren't many reserved sunbeds like last year when people go to the beach at 6 am and let towels on them. One day we asked the beach staff for 2 mattresses and he put them to my child arms, obviously he couldn't carry them but the other staff always brought them to the sunbeds and they were talking nice.

We enjoyed the stay, the service, the staff, the food, the proximity to the beach, the cleaning, the new changes.

Waiting for our next...