International House of Journalists Resort in Golden Sands

This hotel is so underrated on booking and on google, and I don’t really understand why.

I was terrified of going with my toddler, because of these reviews, and they are totally unfounded.

The bathroom - was pristine, and I am really particular about bathrooms in hotels. Photo attached to my review. 10 for cleanliness.

Parking space - There are more than enough parking spaces on the premises.

The room - it was cleaned every day, towels changed as well, toilet paper and toiletries were more than enough. There is a mini fridge in the room, with no freezer part in it, but it does an okay-ish job of cooling water bottles. The AC worked perfectly the entire time, which I appreciate a lot.

There are very few (i.e. little to no) mosquitoes around, I would know because I have a blood type which mosquitoes really like, so I don’t really get away without being bitten, anywhere I go.

Reception personnel - are super nice and they do their best to communicate in English. I very much appreciated the fact that right at check-in they were honest about their beach, the hotel’s beach, and said theirs is terrible and very small (true) and we are welcome to use the next door hotel’s beach (Cabacum). We ended up driving downtown anyway to the promenade beach which is way smoother to enter the water, and the sand is smoother as well, also less waves than in other parts at the same moment in time, probably because it’s the most protected (by the two piers to the left and right).

Half-board - I don’t necessarily recommend, for one because “buffet” means you can’t pick your own piece of food but instead get served whatever the servers want (who don’t speak a word of English or any other language), and secondly because it’s not varied, or very little so, some mornings the omelette was raw, with raw yolk flowing freely all around, the menemen they had one morning had completely raw eggs in it, some mornings some of the hot dogs were very obviously left over from yesterday and thrown on top of the bunch (they were grey!).

A lovely and thoughtful touch are the double drapes, the outer drape made of some sort of plastic like material which doesn’t let the heat through, and the inner drape made of some sort of silk-like material which keeps everything cool.

The botanical garden is actually very lovely and so welcome because it keeps everything cooler than in town.

Don’t count on the playground, it’s a relic from the 80’s, but we had no expectations there so all is well.

The hotel pool is nice, water is super clean and there are always enough sun beds and umbrellas to go around. There is a kiddie pool part, which our toddler loved.

The mattresses are okay, but the double bed would have ideally been one single mattress instead of two twin beds pushed together like it was.

However, we made it work, and all in all the room is excellent and no complaints from me.

Very good hotel.
Just perfect!!!

Very nice location in front of black sea, mineral water outdor swimming pool, food was delicious 😋 and personnel very friendly

The garden is just exquisite! The restaurant outside is really pleasant and even though the base is old it is quite clean and pleasant.