"On June 9, 2026, my partner sustained extensive bed bug bites due to a severe infestation in our room (229). Live bed bugs were observed in the bed, and a detailed inspection, documented with photographs, revealed that the rattan headboard was severely infested with bugs and larvae eggs. For this to have occurred the bugs must have been established in the headboard long before our arrival.
When my partner went to the reception at around 8.45am to inform the reception manager of the bed bugs and her bites there was absolutely zero urgency. The member of staff did not seem at all shocked by the incident and initially denied the existence of the bugs. My partner requested we move to another room and was told there would not be another one available until 3pm. She asked reception when the Jet2 rep would be available and was told 10am. At this point we were offered no help, no advice, no care or attention. We demanded that we receive an inspection report from a fumigator - something which we have never received to date and have been fobbed off by management for the entire duration of the stay.
At 10am when the Jet2 rep arrived she was visibly and verbally expressed her disgust and we provided evidence at that point of the bed bugs that were living in the headboard behind the bed. The rep told us that the hotel should wash and dry our clothes, however we had been told by the reception manager that they would not do that for us. After jet2 then spoke to management they reluctantly agreed and told us they would in fact wash and dry our clothes. Given the severity of the situation we attempted to move hotels. We were told this wasn't possible due to our luggage being potentially infested (relevant for later in the review). Reluctantly we agreed to the proposed solution which was as follows; our clothing would be taken from us and washed and dried by the hotel. We would be given a new room later that day. The luggage remained in that room for the entire time whilst we hurriedly cleared all of our clothes into double plastic bags to be handed over to the laundry service. I posted in the Happy Place Elba Sara Facebook group and within 2 hours of my post with photographic evidence I was banned from the group and hotel management spent 30 minutes trying to tell me how "they aren't affiliated with the group but they had received backlash from the post and that I shouldn't have posted".
After chasing the hotel staff that day for updates we were allocated a new room (room 335). We were told to transfer the luggage from 229 to 335 ourselves and then someone would call us to deliver the clothes. For the rest of the holiday we operated from those bin bags - too scared to store the clothes in the wardrobe in case of a repetition. Something which may prove to be very sensible based on my findings later in the holiday. The new room had a different headboard design - instead of rattan it was covered in a plastic leather covering. We have since come to realise that the hotel new that these headboards are the issue as every other case of bed bugs in the hotel had the same design of headboard. Upon entering the room it should be noted that the room had a very strong odour of fumigation chemicals which again this proves to be relevant later in the holiday.
Six days into the holiday, I discovered five adjacent rooms that were also infested with bed bugs located on the ground floor next to the children's pool. I found the patio doors to these open and entered to evidence my findings. These rooms had been stripped of their headboards, and the mattresses were upturned. I reported this to the Jet2 rep who was apparently unaware of the situation.
On day eight of our holiday, I was returning to the room (335) and noticed that the room adjacent (which was interconnected through an internal door) was adjar and smelt strongly of fumigation chemicals. I entered the room because my fears around this hotel and their lack of competence were revealed. The room had been stripped, just like the 5 rooms adjacent to the pool. The headboard which was rattan was removed and the underside covers on the divan bed frames were ripped off and put into bin bags. The fumigators/hotel had placed a standard laundry towel at the base of the interconnected door in a completely futile attempt to isolate the rooms. I immediately went to speak to management and complain about the situation. Their response "we follow our experts" - I told them that it's a very simple Google search which reveals that interconnected rooms need to be treated as a single room and that putting a towel at the base of the interconnected door was dangerous and stupid. I again reported this to the rep
In total, I independently identified and received verbal confirmation from hotel management regarding infestations in eight rooms on just one side of the hotel.
Initially, the hotel attempted to dismiss the original infestation issue, taking four hours to provide a manager to address the situation. We requested to be moved to a different hotel, a request met with resistance from Jet2 on the grounds of potential luggage infestation. However, our luggage was subsequently moved to the new room without being fumigated. We requested a formal report to confirm the presence of bed bugs and followed up with multiple requests. To date, we have not received a third-party report
On day nine of the holiday, I discussed with management the fact that our bags had not been fumigated and that our decontaminated clothes could be re-exposed when we came to pack to go home. This is especially true given that the bags spent around 48 hours in the infested room. After extensive arguments, they agreed to fumigate our cases on the morning of departure at 4 AM. They instructed us to bring the cases to reception the night before. I delivered them to reception at around 9pm and handed them over. After I left reception and headed back towards my room (335) to pack, I observed management wheeling the cases in the direction of the infested room (229). I waited until they passed and to my shock when I entered room 229 I found it fumigated and our luggage sitting within this "live infested" space. There were dead bed bugs everywhere all over the floor, the room absolutely stank of chemicals and the headboard was even worse than we had realised with multiple patches of bed bug eggs and infestations on the one headboard. All the wooden architrave around the wardrobe had been removed and the bed and mattresses up turned. The mattress showed evidence of "blood spotting" and staining and there were bags of contaminated items in the bathroom. The cases were placed in the entrance way of this room.
My partner and I confronted management, who merely reiterated that it was "procedure." This directly contravenes all recommended advice. We requested a report to confirm the room was free of infestation, which they could not provide. I informed hotel management that the cases needed to be stored elsewhere, but they refused. The hotel staff were rude, dismissive, and obstructive, stating that we had already been addressed by managers (none of whom had provided any actual answers). As a result, I personally removed the cases and stored them outside for the night. The level of stupidity and disregard for safety demonstrated by management was then compounded by rude and incompetent staff who offered no solution to the problem.
Based on my observations of the half of the building where we were accommodated, each floor contains 33 rooms. I have confirmed with the hotel that eight rooms have experienced infestations within the last few weeks. This indicates that 5% of the rooms on one side of the hotel building are infested, based on my confirmed findings. This figure is unacceptable. According to publicly available information, such a widespread issue typically necessitates a full hotel fumigation and renovation to eradicate the problem. It is important to note that I personally discovered these eight cases and pressed management for confirmation. I am concerned about how many additional infested rooms I was not made aware of. . The hotel is operating unsafely and endangering guests for the sake of profit. The conduct of the hotel management and Jet2's lack of accountability during our stay exacerbated an already extremely stressful situation. The hotel management claimed the issue was "nature" related. I countered that rats in a kitchen or cockroaches in a kitchen are also "nature," but they would likely agree such conditions are unacceptable. They merely shrugged in response.
In general the hotel rooms were unclean - the floors were grimey and any time you walked barefoot your feet turned black. There were ants everywhere in the rooms including the bathroom. The sheets and towels were also not regularly changed and no toilet brush was provided in the bathroom.
In February 2026 there is a Trip Advisor review which states they had experience with bed bugs. There is still a significant outbreak at the hotel and you knowlingly sold package holidays when there is clear Health and Safety failings at the hotel. The attitude of the management is one of denial and their incompetence is something I would not expect of 1 star hotel. My partner and I have stayed at locations around the World from Costa Rica to India and the U.S.A. and never in my 39 years have I experienced such negligence and stupidity as well as lack of care.
Food - hit or miss. The hotel continually let's itself down one minute producing food of high quality and the next poor quality. There's general issues like understaffing during busy periods and a lack of planning from the restaurant staff. You regularly only get one drink from the waiting staff in the restaurant and I think this is a tactic used by the hotel to save money and get a higher throughput because the dining room is too small for the number of guests at the hotel. The snack bar is a sad state of affairs which suffers from a lack of attention regularly running out of food and the food going cold. It's also really basic things that were evident in the main restaurant like lack of tongs, lack of plates. Breakfast is the same every day and the hot food is pretty average quality. The egg station/omelette station is always busy but the griddle they cook on is clearly not very hot because the omlettes were often served runny. This is again a result of the fact there is a single egg station/omlette station operating for the numbers of guests.
Cleanliness - EVERYWHERE you look there is evidence of a lack of cleaning. In the corridors the windows are filthy. The floors in the rooms are dirty. The cleaners do not replace the linen and towels regularly enough. The whole place needs a good deep clean
Upkeep and maintenance - the hotel is a tired relic from the late 1990s when I presume it was built. It's got a landline phone in the bathroom for example. The maintenance is "bare minimum" and this shows everywhere around the hotel. For example the roof of the pool snack bar has been damaged and it has been like that for some time but it's just been left. There are cracked tiles around the pool. The pool itself has at some point been lined with a thick rubber liner (probably because the tiles were in a poor state) but it seems like they got del boy and Rodney to install it as it's rumpling so when you walk in the pool there's ridges on the pool base. There's multiple broken windows in the corridors. There's paint flaking in lots of areas."
