Bluesun Hotel Soline — Hotel in Općina Brela

This was our 2nd stay here at the Soline, having had our honeymoon here 11 years ago! Since then we have stayed at several other villages up and down the coast but we now realise Brela is the prettiest of them all. Stunning drive down the coast from the airport.||The rooms are fine, and the view will improve the higher up you are (due to trees), but some will get morning sun/mountains while others will get the sunset view, ask if you want a sunset view room! ||Reception staff are excellent and genuinely helpful, thank you to the team, we were well looked after when a couple of small issues were easily resolved!||The buffet food is good - freshly prepared wholesome food with different choices every day. Sultana makes the best breakfast omelettes! The canteen at dinnertime is very busy though and very casual. Tip- the restaurant is advertised as serving dinner from 1845-2100, by 1915 every table is full. But go early at 1830, they are open, and you will have table of your choice! ||While the staff all work very hard to make sure everyone orders a drink the service can be slow - this is not the fault of the staff - each staff member has 12-15 tables to get drink orders for, and quite a long distance to bring the drinks. On more than half our days we had finished our meal before our drinks were received - I feel there must be a better system for drinks, but I do not know what this would be. Maybe an app to order and pay with a table number? Also there are no draft beers available- I would have preferred a large beer rather than a small bottle. Slow drinks service is reason for 4 out of 5, if 4.5 was an option I would have gone for this.||For a day out to Split the public buses are fine - but be aware there are 273 steps to climb up to the bus stop! After failing to book a taxi to the bus stop myself I enquired at reception and they offered to drive us straight there up the hill so we caught the bus in time, perfect service!||The spa area, has some positives and negatives - again excellent service. Both saunas were a perfect temperature (one 65 degrees and one 95 degrees) and the steam room and whirlpool were good. Maybe as it's coming to the end of season but the indoor whirlpool and cold plunge were out of order, also some areas looking a little tired and ready for refurbishment perhaps (spa area hasn't changed since our previous visit 11 years since!).||Indoor pool great, lovely and warm, continual 6' 8" depth. Plenty of sunbeds always available.||If you hire a car don't worry about parking - just drive up to the front door and leave your keys, the young valet parking lads will park it, and bring it out for you when you need it! 9 euros per night charge for parking. For car hire I highly recommend local company in Makarska called Prestige, cheaper than hotel, free car delivery to hotel, no deposit, cash payment and zero excess. Great friendly service from them.||Main thing going for this hotel as always is the perfect location for peace and relaxation, the most beautiful beaches on the entire coast are right outside with lovely walks along the promenade for miles, beach after beach where you are likely to be the only ones on the beach (in October anyway!). Weather was perfect for me, 22 degrees, I don't like it hot, and I swam in the...

So much potential with some really poor delivery - this review is based on expectations/inclusions/service of a resort charging 320EUR per night (half board).

First of all, the entire inner aspects of the hotel are newly renovated and apart from some odd room design aspects cannot be really faulted. In saying that, the hotel has moved to in-house branding of their toiletries and the overall quality has greatly suffered from their previous French range. Speaking of toiletries, they only offer a shampoo and body wash combination (presumably as a cost saving option) that will leave neither your hair not body feeling refreshed/nourished.

Moving along, most staff have been amazing especially with our toddler, however we found the room service team have left our room on several occasions without full compliment of towels, with used cups unreplaced and with rubbish still next to the bins. We also had the pleasure of being told by the room service that they did not know if we could get the food delivered to the pool restaurant seating area instead of our room and then hung up on - we elected to buy lunch from one of the nearby restaurants and bring it to the area instead.

The hotel has a kids swimming pool as well as a playground right outside so it is very toddler friendly.

Location wise - spectacular, within strolling distance to several beaches, restaurants as well as bakeries and grocery stores and right on the beachside walking trail.

Food wise (half-board room option) we found both breakfast and dinner buffet to be great with slightly rotating options each day. Downside to the hotel is that there is virtually no checks being done by staff on who is eligible for the buffet (we were asked our room number just twice during our stay) and with several access points into the restaurant both internally and externally it makes it almost impossible to control. Obviously this is great for anyone who has not paid for the buffet and even for those people who have realised they can just walk in from the walking trail and eat for free. We have also witnessed people walking into the hotel just to use the pools and sunbeds/umbrellas (spending most of the day there instead of paying for sunbeds and umbrellas at the nearby beaches) - again there is no way for hotel staff to distinguish between guests and people who have wondered in.

Parking is a tad convoluted but we did get our car parked by staff upon arrival at a really...

Not worth it - that’s my one liner for this hotel. We have stayed in all Bluesun hotels on the Makraska riviera. Berulia is still our favorite followed closely by Maestral, which has an amazing architecture and interior. Soline is a “masses” hotel where the reception staff is not even trying to make it pleasant for you (with some exceptions). They just don’t care. This week we had 9 rooms in the hotel, from the simpel ones to the luxurious duplex ones. The more “luxurious” the rooms were the more lived out there were - and no one made any effort to improve it. We arrived on Friday and the curtain was ripped half way, so there was no way to darken the room fully. As I’m writing this (Thursday 6 days later) - no one made any effort effort to correct this even after mentioning this a few times. The room is dirty, stained and you get a feeling you came into someone else’s mess (see fotos). Not once did someone come to apologize or say something about it. It’s the beginning of busy season and the room looks like end of season. It’s a lot of these small things that are just not on par - this hotel misses love and attention to detail from management. Because the staff sure will not think of doing something about it without getting a directive. You see it in simpel things: like aqua gym - where most excersises are above water and not adapted to a pool setting; maybe a stupid example, but it’s a lot of these things. The cleaning carts are left in the hallway each day; we have 9 rooms, some of us got a welcome drink while others didn’t. This had to do with some having loyalty membership but the ones that didn’t weren’t even offered the option. I booked an extra room for my parents through the reception and they “couldn’t give them welcome drinks because we booked through reception”. Are you kidding? We have 9 rooms this week, if you are service focused you welcome loyalty and write out what ever.

Again just not worth it - if you can, skip this hotel and go to one of the other ones. Marina has renovated rooms and is also in the same if not slightly cheaper price class. But still Berulia or Maestral - remain favorite, while the location is similar.

To finish with something positive: the restaurant staff was excellent. They accomodated our group of 9 rooms / 22 people and were super friendly and made us feel at home: Ivan, Anita and Martina from Argentina 🤗 were amazing 👌🏽as was the bar staff that made great...