Aminess Vival Grand Azur Hotel in Orebic

We stayed at this hotel for three weeks in September! Other than the location and cleanliness we thought that the stay didn't match our expectations. We paid for full board, and were very shocked to find that on our arrival we had to pay for water "5 Euros a small bottle" from the hotel, as only during the meals at set times you could get limited drinks, so we had to go to the shops in Orebic to buy the water. The hotel mini bars are not free either, and are highly priced. Another common occurrence within the hotel was that there were regular power outages through the night, and one particular day after a heavy storm the water had turned a brown rusty colour, and we had to confirm with reception that it was safe. The food canteen seemed to have set meals that were not really updated regular, and the canteen could get very loud and overpopulated at times. My room in particular was just above the hotel kitchen and delivery area, and at times in the morning and evening got very noisy. We did enquire to be moved to a room with a balcony view, and were informed by reception that we stood no chance of that happening. I would say only one fifth of the actual hotel had a balcony facing the ocean. Sunbeds around the pool area were free, but for some reason weren't free when you wanted to sit on the beach. Although a very picturesque place, there seemed to be a problem with certain parts of the beach's going along Orebic, as there was a strong smell of sewage leaking from the drains coming out of the concrete walls on the beach. Another key note is to be majorly aware of your surroundings, as there will be some attempted muggings, so being street wise comes into play. Again a very expensive tourist driven place, especially visiting Dubrovnik, which I thought was hugely overrated and overpopulated with constant cruise ship tourists. If you wanted to have day trip excursions arranged by the hotel, then this could be very expensive' especially boat trips. I would suggest separate ferry bookings. The Tui and Jet2 holiday reps were no where to be seen on this trip, so we couldn't be updated at all. We were swimming in the sea on a regular basis, and the water was very cold at that particular time, and was definitely not warm to what online reviews were making it out to be. Overall my experience is that I have seen it and can tick it off my list, for me personally there were more negatives than positives on this holiday, and wouldn't go back. I felt that in a lot of places many didn't really speak good English, and were more fluent in other languages. If you hire a car, and wish to park at the hotel it is 5 euros per day when we were there. Some air con units within the rooms could get very loud, and leak quite often. Overall quite noisy and too enclosed.

An ok hotel but all in all left disappointed by a few things over the course of the week. Firstly, this is not a fully all inclusive hotel. The timings of the food hall opening can be improved. Breakfast and lunch are fine but lunch finishes at 2pm and then dinner doesn’t start until 7pm. Once you’re in the food hall the choice of food is good especially the salad choices. If you wanted to eat in between these hours you could go down to the beach bar however this comes at a cost, and a pricy one at that. I bought 3 bottles of small water for €11, enough to put anyone off. Everything at the beach bar is expensive, however a 2 minute walk away is a nice little beach bar looking over the sea as seen in the photo. The other main concern for me was the lack of irons in rooms, now I understand this would come at a huge expense to do, however having a room with some irons and ironing boards freely available to guests would solve this. As quite frankly the ‘24 hour’ laundry service ( that costs) doesn’t exist. We dropped off 6 shirts for ironing at 6pm Tuesday, we chased up Thursday morning to be told they were unsure and to check back in later. We came back at 430pm to be told our shirts hadn’t even moved from when they were dropped off. One of the concierge staff then thought it was an ideal time to joke about buying more clothes, not good timing. So in the end our clothes weren’t ironed and we picked them up there and then. They have a nice evening bar( extra cost) however this is only manned by one staff member and on a couple of occasions we waited 20 mins for the staff member to come back but must have still been busy elsewhere so we left. Not the staff members fault, just a staffing issue. All in all left slightly disappointed by the hotel but the rooms were good and well maintained, there was a slight air con issue for 2 nights however it was stormy weather so I didn’t read too much into that. Orebić itself is lovely with a good choice of Restuarants and we would highly recommend visiting Korcula, a hidden gem island a 10 minute journey by boat.