Trendy Lara Hotel

I had booked 3 family suites and 1 standard room. The 3 family rooms I first received didn’t match the description/pictures shown on hotels.com & the AC’s didn’t cool for all 3 “FAMILY SUITES”. As per hotel management, as long as there is air coming out of the AC, it is working. After a long waste of my nights sleep and a long discussion with the hotels receptionist as well as hotel.com’s online chat service I was able to get assurance that it will be solved in the morning. However, when I approached the receptionist in the morning breaking my sleep early due to the boiling circumstances and rooms not in sleeping condition; the receptionist said that you can talk to the guest relations lady. The lady then said that I’ll try my best but our hotel is fully booked and we cannot do anything other than try and fix your AC’s. I didn’t like the sound of that as the technicians had visited our rooms 3 times already and managed to do nothing while they said it’s working now! I went back and talked to the online hotels.com chat who at first would not proceed as apparently the previous agent had left my complaint as solved which was incorrect! I managed to convince the new agent that if the complaint was solved I would know and to proceed with my complaint to the next level. The agent did so and told me to proceed to guest services. I went to the same lady who was very friendly (don’t remember her name) and managed to first change one of my rooms and then later all to a garden suite.

I’d like to say that the hotel was clean, modern and no problems with the sun beds. The problem that we had with our room was the musty smell which was constant. It seemed to be coming from the drains. We complained and were moved to a room on the lower floor but it was the same. In the end we bought air fresheners! This seemed a common problem on reviews. The main let down with this hotel is the food. On all travel agency sites it says it’s all inclusive with 6-7 restaurants .. be warned it isn’t!! You are tricked into this until you get there! We have stayed at many all inclusive hotels and never experienced this. Basically, the only all inclusive restaurant is the buffet. The other six are al la carte and they charge €7pp to book. The quality of some of the food in the buffet is very poor. Chicken casserole or stews are like rubber and very dry, food is very Turkish and a selection for children is non existent. Breakfast was the worst with ham and cheese or omelettes. You won’t seem bacon , maybe egg with tomato and onion which looks like an orange mush. So whilst you may be able to stomach a few of the buffets, by the first week you will be sick of it. This charge wasn’t around last year. We found out it’s new for 2018 as large groups were taking the whole restaurant. So they haven’t told the tour operators! Won’t go again!!