Hotel Residence Garden Suites Umag Plava Laguna in Umag

We stayed in the Garden Suites, which share all facilities with Hotel Umag. The rooms and the Garden Suites area are nice, but the overall facilities of the main hotel, both indoors and outdoors, felt outdated and no longer up to modern standards.

Important for families: From mid-September onwards, there are no children’s activities and the entire kids’ pool area is closed. This was not communicated beforehand. The other pools were so cold that they were practically unusable.

At the lobby bar, when ordering two coffees, the waiter initially said that they could only be paid in cash. Later, reception confirmed that charging to the room was possible. When we asked the waiter again, he denied having said otherwise. This inconsistency was unprofessional and confusing for guests.

Regarding the late check-out, despite being a Meliá Gold Member, no extension was offered at first. After lengthy discussion, we were granted 10:30. However, our room keys stopped working shortly after 10:00, forcing us to go back to reception multiple times with a small child to have them reactivated.

What made this worse: there was no apology, no attention, and no gesture for these inconveniences. Staff were generally not overly friendly or attentive, with only a few notable exceptions. We would especially like to mention Zlatko from reception, the red-haired lady at the breakfast/dining reception, and the lady preparing omelettes – all of whom were genuinely kind and helpful.

From September, the hotel seems to focus primarily on coach groups and elderly guests, and the family offering is very limited.

While the location is good and the Garden Suites themselves are pleasant, the shared facilities with Hotel Umag failed to deliver in key areas such as service quality, communication, and family-friendliness outside of peak season. For our stay we rate it 2 out of 5 stars.