Relais San Martino Salento — Hotel in Taviano

We stayed here as a family with my older parents and upon arrival the check in was very slow which wasn’t ideal. With a baby and a three year old we were keen just to get to our room. Parking is tricky as it’s all on-street and the road can be busy.||We said we would pay our invoices up front but the hotel had a more expensive price for our stay than we had been quoted so we had to dig through emails to get the correct cost and wait for them to call reservations. The man at check-in was however thoroughly apologetic and sorted this.||We were also given a different room to the imagery we had seen. There was no private outside space which we thought we were getting and really wanted for our little one who wakes early as we didn’t want to disturb people by being at the pool. We were told the hotel was fully booked and that was that.||We then asked for a kettle and an iron to be told that such things were ‘not hotel facilities’. With an 8 month old baby requiring warm milk, this was a problem. We had to drive to a supermarket ourselves and buy our own kettle and iron. Never in all my years of travelling have I heard such nonsense. Surely you’d just go and buy one for your guests? My husband even spotted a kettle behind the bar despite being told they had none!||The bathroom was stocked with toiletries but there was no shower gel, just four bottles of bath foam and no bath which was strange.||The pool, despite looking great, is quite small for the hotel size and only two umbrellas with loads of children staying wasn’t great.||Taviano isn’t touristy at all and is a little run down in parts, it doesn’t have much at lunchtime, we couldn’t actually find a restaurant that was open but nearby Gallipoli was great and the surrounding area has plenty to do!||We ate at the hotel one night and found it quite expensive for what it was.||We did have a good stay overall, lovely big room and it was spotlessly clean.||However would we stay here again? Probably not. The staff were friendly but the hotel lacking, the owners need to stay at a proper boutique hotel to understand the level of service and...

We are just back from a week at the hotel. The hotel itself is lovely the rooms are extremely comfortable and so are the beds. The big issue is the housekeeping. We asked on 3 occasions for clean towels and eventually got clean ones on the last day. The tea/sugar was never replaced despite asking 4 times in the end we gave up and just went and bought our own. There was no coffee in the room just the 3 teabags and 3 sachets of sugar. We also asked for the bathroom toiletries to be replaced this was never done. Bear in mind we were there for a week.|Then on checking out they were going to charge us €16 to replace the bed linen on one occasion during the week!!! Never ever in all my travels have I been charged for changing the bed linen. I refused to pay stating that nothing had been replenished and the towels and sheets only once.||The pool towels we got on day 1 were never replaced either. There are only 6 umbrellas and by 10 am these are gone. There is nobody looking after the pool area, some guests came and took over a number of beds with all there personal items and left for long periods of time on a number of days despite being 1 couple and 1 child.||The breakfast is very limited often items such as yogurt or pastries are gone by 9:30 there is absolutely no variety in the breakfast. For an area with such beautiful fruit there was only slices of very hard melon, whole apples and Kiwis nothing local. No hot food except fried or scrambled eggs if you can catch any of the staff who avoid making eye contact so you have to get up and go looking for them for any hot drinks. The juice is straight out of a carton with no fresh juice at all.||The parking on the road is very hard to get as the road is always full and watch out as some of the areas opposite garage’s is not allowed some are marked but some have worn out . Resulting in a €30 fine!! If you park there||Overall the hotel is lovely it could be amazing but Housekeeping breakfast and staff need...

When we arrived, we received a different type of room. When we asked to get the room we booked, the hotel said that unfortunately they were fully booked and the room was not available anymore. The room they gave us was facing the street (which at the weekend was very noisy because of the cars and the people coming home late) also the only window which was facing the street had no curtains. Because of that we insisted to receive the room we had booked but still we did not get it.||Apparently the room we received was of a higher category. However, we assume that the people who had actually booked this room type were not satisfied with the room because of the issues mentioned above so the hotel gave them our room, which is why it was not available anymore when we arrived. After some long discussions, they justified it to be an “upgrade” so that we would accept the room, but honestly, which fully booked hotel would give you an upgrade for free and for no obvious reason? ||The hotel promised to give us an answer to how they intended to solve our problem (lack of privacy of the room because of the missing curtains and unacceptable solution to keep the blinds closed at all time). Until our check-out we did not get an answer, nor a refund. ||We had to keep the outer wooden window blinds closed the whole time, which made the room dark. ||The hotel uses the excuse to be “eco friendly” when it comes to changing sheets and towels, to charge you extra fees. The towels are only changed every third night and if you want to have them changed earlier you will have to pay for that. If you require extra pool towels they also charge you extra fees. ||The pool area is lacking umbrellas. For approximately 12 sunbeds there are only 2 umbrellas. ||All in all we were disappointed by the service. We would not stay...