Kristal Hotel - All inclusive in Golden Sands

We stayed at this hotel, and overall, we enjoyed our vacation, but that was more thanks to the resort itself rather than the hotel. The sea was quite far away, the food didn’t suit everyone in my family, and the air conditioner and fridge in our room didn’t work. The reception girls were nice and polite, always helping as much as they could. The pool was good, but I didn’t like that smoking was allowed right by the water where my kids were swimming. One evening, I noticed a situation where my favorite always-smiling, cheerful bartenders looked very sad (Mr. Spirdonov, please don’t upset these wonderful girls). The cocktails at the bar were tasty, though the selection wasn’t very big. The animation team was good, my kids really enjoyed it, but we missed having an evening disco for adults. So, for one stay, the hotel was okay, but next time we wouldn’t choose it again.

Travel from Varna airport to the hotel takes about 1h15m. We were at the hotel in August 2021. Kristal is typical 4* Bulgarian hotel, rooms are cleaned every day but furnished without taking care to do job properly, especially in bathroom (loose handles, a broken tile, loose tap etc.) but it is a problem of every touristic hotels. The hotel staff is polite and do everything to clean after some difficult guests. Pools are quite clean but the are too little sunbeds vs number of guests so at 9 am all sunbeds are reserved by “towels” (hotel should equipped pool area with more sunbeds). Animation program is the same in every hotel in Bulgaria (volleyball, table tennis, darts, water gymnastic and standard activities for children). Food is very good and everyone can find something tasty. Drinks like juice, tea and coffee are poor quality (especially coffee). All inclusive is without whiskey (gin, rum, brendy, vodka, beer and R/W wine). In our room air conditioning was quite noisy (it was a problem for me during night) and worked inefficient probably because it is a centralized A/C. Walk to a tiny free zone of beach takes 15 minutes (1,4km because there is no straight way between the hotel and the beach, check on google maps!). This part of beach was really crowded. A sunbed or an umbrella costs 6 lv/day. To summarise: the hotel is not perfect but quality vs price is acceptable in my case. If I arrive to Bulgaria next time I will choose a 4* hotel in Sunny Beach region (more free zones on beach, shorter distance hotel-beach, more shallow coast (100m off the coast water depth is about 2m), shorter distance airport-hotel.