Hotel In Excelsis — Hotel in Grad Novalja

A rather strange concept... Actually, the hotel In Excelsis has such a high potential as it offers almost everything you could wish for. Very friendly staff, plenty of parking, a great pool/spa area, super view, good breakfast (besides the bad coffee) and fair room prices. The house is very new, technically modern and very clean. For this kind of a new hotel, it seems odd that the walls are so wafer-thin (sounds travel the hotel). Also they do not offer EV-charging in 2022. But it is nice and the surrounding is quiet and far enough away from the party mile. Unfortunately, of all things, the strange 'prepaid concept' does not correspond in any way to a 4-star hotel and therefore staying here feels very much like staying in a budget hostel. Thus, the stay must be paid in advance upon arrival and no drink bookings are possible to the room bill. But we anyway can only advise not to try the cocktails, they are extremely watered down, we couldn't taste any alcohol at all. You get best cocktails for half the price in every other place around. Also the minibar is only available 'on request'?!? By this concept, the hotel unfortunately misses out on very easy sales. Who thinks about a quick drink or snack at the pool if you first need to get your money from the room? This is the first hotel in the world (we only book minimum 2-star) we have experienced with this concept. Whether it is caused due to the 'party center' Novalja and bad experiences are the reason, I can not say. All in all, we can recommend the hotel as an upscale standard for young party people who are still learning to control their finances. However, the extremely overpriced and watery cocktails do not fit with this. The hotel can not be considered in the 4-star category at all. I can only explain the predominantly so good ratings in such a way that either some guests hardly know the standards of any comparable hotels, or the prices were far cheaper at the opening, or the current service concept was introduced only recently. The housekeeping is half-hearted and does not even change/clean used glasses. Recommendation therefore as always: Leave tip for the housekeeping accordingly only after satisfaction. So as a logically effect, this was our first hotel without any tip for housekeeping.

We wanted to rate the hotel's restaurant as well, but as a result of the bad experience, we haven't tried it at all.

So the hotel got as requested: the initial bill paid, not any more. Double the amount had been spent to the many nice beach bars around, which we might have missed if the hotel would have run a...

Unfortunately the hotel left a bit of a mediocre feeling. Let's start with the positives. Hotel is in a nice and quiet location with beautiful views. Breakfast is good with various items to choose. Staff is very polite although 80% don't speak Croatian but we don't mind that. Rooms are very minimalistic and white. I would say barren. The mattress is extremely soft which is an interesting decision for a hotel. Minibar is empty and you need to call the reception to use it?!?! Minibar fridge barely works. We put some water in the evening and it didn't really cool it. Also there is no kettle or a small coffee machine in the room. For a 4-star hotel this is truly unacceptable. And then there was an issue with the room cleaning. First day we went out for the entire day. When we returned, our room was cleaned but they didn't replenish the toiletries. When we called the reception they quickly reacted and brought them in the room. On the second day we returned to the room around 4PM and our room still wasn't cleaned which of course meant we had to call the reception again. They came quickly and cleaned it up. But the question is do we really need to call reception daily? We stayed in various hotels all across the world (from cheap to luxury) and this is the only hotel where we had to interact with the reception so often. Then there was a question of payment. We paid for the room upon arrival. No problem but we found it strange as we expected to use bar and restaurant services. Shortly we realised why. They don't have "bill to room" service which means you need to have cash or card constantly with you. An unusual practice. Why would we need to take our card to the pool? Unnecessary inconvenience. And lastly, we had complimentary massages within the package. On the arrival day we immediately asked should we book them in advance. They said no and explained we can call an hour before we wanted to have the massages and it will be arranged. OK, it's their policy. However on the 2nd day they called us to say that they prebooked us massages the next day at time which absolutely didn't suit us. They explained that they didn't expect so many people to book the massages. How can that be? They know how many rooms are booked, how many rooms within those have some packages so they can expect to be booked. We did rearrange our plans so we can get the massage and it was really good. Compliments to Mary for doing a fantastic job. However it feels like they are running in a soft opening mode and not fully opened. There is room for an improvement in all fields. It was a...

Thé view from the room that we were given looked nothing like the view on booking.com. The pictures are attached of what we bought and what we were given.||I went down to explain we’d been given the wrong room but the man on reception said it was the right room and it was my fault that I got that room. I should have messaged them to say I wanted the room advertised on booking.com (which is what I paid for)||This is wholly unacceptable, first it’s a complete misrepresentation of what you’re paying for, and second, then to be told it’s your fault should never happen.||After the unnecessary argument over the room, we were moved to another room which had the view but still did not match the pictures of the room we booked on the website. I didn’t bother to mention this because of the stress of the situation.||The hotel could be very good as the rooms are nice, the breakfast was tasty and there are good views available (also bad ones).||In my opinion they should have different rates for the rooms with a good view and the rooms that overlook the car park, the main road and other houses.||Other points which need to be addressed are:-||i) For a premium hotel (cheapest room around 200 euros a night) they have a cheap mentality of filling pots with ketchup (example attached), and both the indoor and outdoor pools were very cold. Maybe this is acceptable in summer, but a freezing cold jacuzzi isn’t. |ii) The biosauna was out of service.|iii) The zen room needs some work, it’s closer to zenless.||The most important reason why the score is so low is the way we were made to feel on arrival, it ruined our stay there. We felt stressed at first and then generally uncomfortable for the rest of the stay (3 nights)||At the moment, this hotel is far from...