"Location:
The location is 20 minutes outside of Brindisi Airport. However the resort itself is relatively isolated while there is a village about 1.5km away the markets are severely limited. To make matters worse the onsite Bazzar is even more limited and in all my years of travel it is by far the worst.
Shop tips.
Ensure you rent a car. Head into some of the bigger towns like Carovigino. Or put Familia market in your sat nav. Its about a 10-15 min drive from the hotel and stock up on essentials.
Food Quality and options:
Unfortunately again one of the worst experiences I've had was here. The food options are very limited and portion controlled. The hotel goes through its routine. If you are looking for choice in a buffet type experience you won't find it here. Another issue is that the menu is only in Italian, using translate apps to help understand what is what was a challenge. However it primarily broken down to pasta with sauce. Grilled meat then pasta with some seafood. After day 4 of this it became boring and a challenge to keep kids engaged with the food. On the plus side they do have access to fountain drinks, beer and wine options however the fountain drinks frequently did appear to run out or appear watered down.
Staff friendliness:
This is a big one. The hotel markets itself as an international hotel. Yet the only language for the vast majority of staff is Italian. Even using translate apps/smart glasses etc the staff in general came across as rude and that we were an inconvenience. I found this to be isolated to the staff as people in general even though they could not speak English generally made an effort to help out. However there were clear activities happening or being updated throughout entertainment etc but as it was only in Italian, we had no idea what was going on or what was planned. This really made us feel as though we were outsiders. The general overall feeling is that this place is for Italians and that they don't want tourists there. The way it is set up seems to heavily imply this. While some might say what do you expect? Again coming back to the international nature of how the hotel was advertised this was not expected.
Facilities:
First off the rooms were good. Beds were comfy and enough for a family of 5.
The pool is large and a great asset however the bottom clearly needs to be redone as the paint continues to flake away.
There is a washing machine onsite in the ladies bathroom downstairs at the back of the pool. It is on its last legs there is a second washing machine out of order. You have to go through some faffing around to get tokens from reception which then mark it against your room. Also as the washing machine is in the women's bathroom. If you're a man you are out of luck and can't use the machine. We found this a completely outdated approach.
In general we found the hotel was in general good condition but needs some upkeep.
The private beach is a huge asset for the hotel and is definitely worth the visit. You can book in a lunch to be packed and provided to you the day before, however the lunch itself was not worth it and consisted off pizza bread with no cheese. Some strange mayo sandwich and a little fruit. Do yourself a favour go to the shop or bring some croissants from breakfast you'll be better for it. Also bear in mind while they have drinks here these are by far the most watered down out of all of them, so if your looking for something fizzy, be aware.
The playground the kids loved. Some good slides and swings and general playground items and spaces out well. We spent some good time there.
Tips on the pool:
Early in the morning sun loungers are plentiful. Everyone leaves the pool at mid day and takes their stuff to go for lunch. If you get an early lunch you can get a sun lounger easily for the rest of the day. Note the lifeguards will go around and remove people's towels, bags etc from sun loungers after lunch as they assume you are trying to claim the sun loungers for the day. Even if you are in the pool. As the Lifeguards leave the pool unattended for the duration of lunch.
The Italians themselves start to filter back to the pool from 3pm onwards, so you can get some good time with very few people in the pool between 12:30 and 2pm. When you get towards 4 and 5pm this is peak pool usage and is very hard to get a sun lounger.
Pool bar. While the drink of choice people go for espresso and there are some crazy queues for coffee. If you find yourself wanting a glass of wine for instance, they may not be able to accommodate on more than one occasion when going to the pool bar to ask for wine, we were told they could not find a bottle opener. That itself should be a concern for any bar. Again also due to the lack of English from the staff it made ordering a cocktail or anything else with the exception of beer a problem.
Pizza comes out at 4pm and is heavily portion controlled as its one person serving a slice at a time creating queues for up to 30 minutes. In my opinion its not worth it as its only margarita pizza. However if you do want to get the pizza do yourself a favour and start queuing at 3:50 - 3:55 to minimise time spent in the queue.
Noise:
Can you sleep through rave music? I hope so. The amphitheatre while great also generates a huge amount of noise and music ranging in the morning earliest 12:30am to the latest we heard 3am. Again not having any Italian we had no idea what was going on an example being there was clearly a white party or where people should wear white communicated but we had no idea. In saying that however the atmosphere seemed lovely and great if you are looking for a good night out and want to party. If however you wanted an early night, the hotel rooms are not sound proofed enough to stop the music coming through.
Overall:
The hotel and resort itself is a let down. It has so much potential. It really could be a great place, however some odd choices of how they do things, general staff rudeness and lack of any international elements makes it hard to recommend this for someone who does not have Italian as a language. If you have Italian, this would probably be closer to a 3 star hotel than a 4. However from an international point of view I'm struggling to understand what I paid for. The MVP of our trip was the car as it allowed us to explore the area around us from Egnasia to Arabello, and finding small beaches and areas along the way. The hotel functioned more as a base rather than somewhere to unwind and relax, which was a shame as you always want a healthy balance of both.
I find it super hard to recommend this place and I am genuinely unsure if I would book again."
