Hotel Gołębiewski Karpacz — Hotel in Karpacz

Golebiewski in Karpacz is nationalistic, you get an order confirmation in Polish, after paying the deposit with a credit card on Friday, they urge you to cancel your order because you haven't paid the deposit. Other communication, even if you communicate in English, is in Polish from their side. I had to call there and advise them to change the IT staff and system developers who can't match the payment with the reservation system. When we arrived, I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the garages. But the hotel does not guarantee or reserve parking even for those who book the best rooms, and I am not saying that parking is paid for hotel guests as well. Fortunately, we found a parking space. The receptionist spoke to me in Polish, she didn't even greet me, she didn't ask me how we were traveling, the first thing she wanted to do was pay in advance. When I said that we are not thieves (maybe the 95% of Poles staying there are), that I would like to pay her everything at the end (let her block some amount, but not pay everything in advance). She replied that it is like that everywhere in Poland. Yes, I felt it from the moment of ordering that this is not a hotel of international parameters and certainly not of quality. I told her that this is my first and certainly my last visit, because I will never stay in a hotel where someone considers me a thief who runs away without paying. She obviously didn't care. I paid, no help from the staff with the luggage, she just shoved me some double sheet of paper in Polish, I told her I'm not Polish and I speak Czech or English. She told me to translate it using the translator on my mobile. The apartment was spacious, equipped with old furniture, when the sofa was stitched with glass stones instead of buttons. It was impossible to sit on it and watch TV in the evening.. One bathroom in which the shower holder was broken, the shower rose in the bath had fallen out, the light on the vanity mirror did not work, the faucets were covered with limescale inside because the lever gave turn very hard and not smooth. Cracked tiles on the wall ..... Just a complete set neglected. From about 14:00 to 19:45, the air conditioning units cooled the temperature from 28.6 to 26.4°C, therefore the undersized, large, spacious terrace could not be used, because there was no table, sunbeds or chairs on it. So, Max for standing and looking at the roundabout in front of the hotel or at the flapping flags on the masts. And there was no dryer for swimwear on the terrace either. The first day they didn't even clean our room. One of the minibar fridges didn't work, the other did, but both were empty. We bought a drink in town and put it in one of the fridges. What I have to mention is the water world, a number of water attractions are more for smaller children, the main slide was broken and not working, one pear type slide and then a paddling pool, a 25m swimming pool, a wave pool and several pools with really warm water for retirees, small children don't last long there. The outdoor pool is an even older structure, concrete painted bottom, paint peeling in places, but otherwise clean. The children's indoor playroom was also interesting. Bouncers in fairly good condition, lots of beanbags for parents, big blocks, houses, balloons, etc. Once there they projected a cartoon in Polish on the screen. Especially in the time before dinner, even the huge capacity of the game room was no longer enough. I can't say that I really didn't like the food, all buffet-style, miniature glasses for drinking - so pouring into small pet bottles or large coffee mugs was used there. At breakfast, the thrifty usually took the buttered buns outside so that they did not have to pay full pension for the children. Small children everywhere, the food is as noisy as in a busy beer hall. No one observes decent clothes for dinner. The hotel acts as a large-scale feeder and storage area for children by the pool or in the playroom. Don't look for comfort, peace and enthusiasm. Rather disillusionment. As I wrote, no one will get me there. I definitely recommend...

We have chosen this hotel for a family stay during Easter holidays, the decision was made mostly based on the photos we have seen. But this turned into a huge disappointment when we actually arrived there. The hotel is quite old, judging from out fashioned design of the interior and rooms I estimate 20+ years. It is enormous, about 800 rooms, and during Easter it was completely booked. So approximately 2000 people were staying there at that time. Swimming pool, whirlpool areas are really old, the whirlpool tubs are molded , and the paint is chipped on the stairs when you enter. Showers are just horrible, plastic panels are cracked and broken. Sauna is more or less ok, but people don’t respect the hygiene rules that are common in most of Europe, which is sitting on their towels in sauna, they just sit there in swimming suits, some of them not even on the towel, which isn’t a common thing even in Poland. The whole area of swimming pool is very dark even during the day, the ventilation is really bad and it’s hard to breathe and humidity is very high in the whole area. The darkness however is not only in pool area but in all other areas, including the dining areas, it’s really depressing and we had to find free spots near windows. Food is something individual but it wasn’t good enough for my liking. Every day you get the same more or less, there was a live cooking are which was alright, but the rest like salads , snacks etc I couldn’t even look at it, 90% of it is processed food, coffee is terrible, deserts were horrible. You could buy alcohol but it was overpriced, a bottle of local beer 5 eur. I saw many people going to a nearby shop to get it for 1 eur. And overall this culture of full board for some people in fact means that they will put so much food that they will never manage to consume, so half of the food goes to trash. Some things like cheese were obviously re-used next day as they were already dry. Or for example sliced pineapple was used next day in a shape of a pancake with pineapple. Overall this reminds me of Turkish All inclusive hotel. Rooms were good , no complaints there. But if you are unlucky you might get a room where there is a pillar between 2 beds 😀There was a huge underground parking included in price it was quite convenient. You could get a trolley for your luggage and it was really needed because you might travel like 500m from your car to your room depending on where you were staying. The size of the hotel was enormous as I mentioned so to get from one place to another like for example to a dining area or some place for kids entertainment it was taking some time and you had to use elevators that are working in a strange manner. Build quality of the hotel was also questionable, in many places there were cracks where you could fit your finger. So to conclude this hotel is not worth the money, we paid 300eur per night for 2 adults and 2 kids. For this amount or even less I would recommend to look for something smaller, and more modern in Poland, because we’ve stayed in other hotels and we were astonished how modern and stylish they were so our expectations were really high on this one but unfortunately we were disappointed. As a proof of some things I mentioned I attach...

Overall Rating: Maximum 1 star disaster and not worth the price at all. You will ask: But the hotel has so many amenities for children so that parents can enjoy their time? You're right. If you want to get rid of your children for some time and load up on alcohol yourself it would be the perfect hotel. But that's not us.

We do have a baby and thus also pampers. One thing we really need at the moment is room cleaning/waste disposal and that needs to happen every day. This very basic thing required daily reminders to the reception and a very angry email to the management. Then it almost worked. We got showered in complimentary shower gels ?!?

The restaurant reminded us of very bad canteens. There was no fresh air and seemingly no aircon despite open cooking in the canteen. The air was smelly, hot. The lights were flickering to the point that our calm and quiet baby did not stop crying, but it was in good company as in this restaurant almost all children were crying. It also matches the others checking out with us that complained at least to the staff about the same.

The food selection was strange for a hotel of that size and the quality not good. The polish to usually have a big lunch and a small, cold dinner. So even in the evening the cold selection was huge and there were only three hot dishes to choose from. Unfortunately on all ocassions that we actually used the restaurant it was unenjoyable.

Hygiene in the restaurant also seemed to be an issue as we one evening needed to search for clean plates as the undersides of the plates were covered in a crust of old food and left our fingers dirty and disguting. Unfortunately also the napkins were sometimes decorated with long black hair.

They reuse the cards which is ecological and good, but maybe a bit too much as they often lost their encoding and you couldn't enter the room. When pressing the dedicated "reception" button I twice called a nice lady staying in a different room in the hotel instead of the reception. The room size is adequate. The bed size is comfortable. The mattress is nicely firm. Unfortunately you can hear and even understand everyone from the surrounding rooms as the ventilation system carries the sound while you do not get any aircon or proper ventilation. That made the room barely usable in summer.

Getting a baby bed was easy and for free.

The staff at the reception was very friendly and nice, but unable to solve the afforenentioned problems.

Conclusion: Each and every thing on that list would be excusable and above all easy to fix, but even after a formal complaint email to the management noone even responded to the email. Thay just send the cleaning crew a couple of minutes after the email to give us more "free shower gel", which was not even one of our complaints. It seems like a once great hotel that is being run to the ground by new management. Sorry...