NOVUM By the Sea — Hotel in Mangalia

Disastrous price/quality ratio (we paid over 200 EUR per night for 2 persons). Avoid at all costs.||||Check-in:||-You don't get access to the room before 16:00 while the rooms are obviously ready much earlier.||-This also means you can't eat lunch in the hotel on the day of arrival.||-Even though I fully paid the stay months in advance, at check-in they kept claiming it wasn't paid yet. Eventually the manager came to check and confirmed I did indeed already pay at time of booking.||Even with the already disastrous price/quality ratio, I almost paid double !||||Room:||Upon arrival in the room we noticed that there was a smell of sewer which never went away. Most likely cause is that the kitchen sink has no siphon.||In general the room is built using very cheap materials and very poorly finished: closets are not straight/stable etc, there are dirt spots in different places, .... And this is while the hotel is still new, imagine in a couple of years !||The cleanliness is very mediocre. The microwave looks disgusting inside.||After the room has been cleaned, often they forgot to replace the towels and similar things.||The terras is miniscule, and all place is taken by the outdoor a/c unit. No chairs or table.||There is a nightstand at only 1 side of the bed.||The water pressure is very low and the temperature is very unstable, making showering all but comfortable. Talking about the shower, it has no door or curtain so invariably the whole bathroom is wet after showering. The humidity suction system in the bathroom is not very efficient, the mirror is full of steam even after 1 minute of showering.||The phone in the room does not work. You have to call reception with your own phone.||There's a Nespresso machine in the room, and on arrival you get 2 coffee pads, if you want more during your stay they bill you 8 LEI per pad !||There's a big mosquito problem here and the anti mosquito nets at the windows are not installed well, so we had to buy our own anti mosquito machine (nothing is foreseen by the hotel).||||Swimming pool and beach:||Beautiful but very little shadow space, and very little available space in general unless you go put your towel at 4 AM.||The prices at the only bar at the swimming pool (or anywhere near in general) are outrageous: 24 lei for a small bottle of water !||||"All in":||Only breakfast and lunch are included, nothing else, not even water in the room.||||Location:||No shops closeby.||The hotel is located on what looks like an industrial site full of hotels who share the same swimming pool etc.||Next to the hotel there's a construction site causing noise.||||Restaurant:||To access the buffet, you have to stand in an airport-like queue and pass by all of the buffet even if you just want a coffee for example. So getting a coffee can easily take 20 minutes. What a relaxing holiday !||Why not just let people go take what they want from the buffet instead of forcing them into a queue ???||Food quality is very average.||||Personnel:||I feel sorry for the personnel of good will for having to work in these circumstances as a result of management decisions/incompetence/greed. Most of the personnel are very friendly although quite a number of them also...

We spent here 3 nights during the week as a family and we had a really great time. The beach is small but really nicely organized, with an eye for detail, and some cool elements such as hammocks, beach pillows, etc. People divide between the two pools and the beach so at the end it is not very crowded if you compare it with the normal beaches in peak season in Romania. The water was clear and there are some stones indeed, however manageable. Here the management should invest in the low season and take them out. There are a lot of activities for children, including animation, a vast kids club in the evening and two pools, one with a water landscape and slides and one with a shallow beach kind of entry. I really appreciated, that they had children animators during the day on the beach and at the pool, the littles ones were thrilled and we could sip a coffee. The food was delicious in the halfboard part and in the evening there was a good vibe in the Leto restaurant, as there was live music every evening. The room design was fancy and the room spotless clean. I really liked the smooth air conditioning and the mirror above the beds. However here I would like to signalize a major issue (no stars in minus for that): there is a kind of stone/marble on the floor which feels REALLY cold, like an ice knife. You cannot walk without having your slippers on. For me it resulted in lower back pains, as I have a preexisting condition but maybe other people are less sensitive about it. However, some floor islands with wood or carpets or whatever design solution would be a must in my opinion. A big thank you to the staff, always kind and friendly, from cleaning ladies to waiters or receptionists. Their smile lit up the place. The place is pricey, no doubt about it, but all in all, we had a good time!

We...

Don’t go to Novum by the Sea. I do not recommend. Dirty, poor quality in everything.||I do not recommend.|Don't go there.||Here's why :||- at approximately 18:00 there is no hot water (when everyone comes to the room to take a shower, obviously). ||- it is a hotel for families but the wifi doesn't work in the restaurant just when the kids want to stay with an iPad, incredibly poorly managed restaurant||- there is a lot of noise in the rooms (you can hear it from the entrance and from two floors away even.). It's an extremely thin door, with 3 cm between the door and the floor, and it closes only when it is slammed, as a result, the doors in the hotel are slammed from morning until late at night). Soundproofing is non-existent.||- the light in the living room is below head level (I am 1.82). It's a risk for anyone sitting here to take a light bulb in their head and break their head when the light is on. Big safety risk.||- the evening meal is a complete disaster, they changed the wine in the glasses without telling us (with another wine)... it took 45 minutes to bring our drinks. Food comes when they want and in what order they want. Some children eat faster, others after 30 minutes. The same with adults. Appetizers come in turn as and when they want, as well as the main course..||- the parking lot - "park where you can" says the lady at the reception. I found it only at the entrance, extremely far away. The building has underground parking and they know that we are coming, because they have the reservation. Zero logic. Zero.||- dirty rooms - the child had white socks, in half an hour they were black;||I could continue but I don't think it makes sense.|If you don't want to get angry, stay at home or go...