TUI BLUE Budoni in Budoni

Paid for a weeks all inclusive in Sardina a Tui Blue. Room not available on arrival? One small bottle of water per room or buy it. The first all inclusive i have known where you can have wine beer spirits but charge you for a bottle of water. I have medication to take and the Tui rep just sent us on a 30 minute walk to buy water from the supermarket that was shut. Only started the holiday yesterday and really not impressed.

The hotel. Not your usual hotel- it didn’t have floors and floors of levels. The rooms are all on one level around the resort which are in fact chalets. The grounds of the resort are beautiful and maintained very well. The pool is set away from the actual main building. There is a main pool and a smaller one. There was an adequate amount of sun loungers- most had parasols, but there were some that didn’t have any. There were three Bali type double loungers, with deep mattresses – they all had parasols. One point I will make about all the loungers is that there is a lot of black mould on the face shields and the Balinese loungers were covered in black mould (see photo’s). The main bar is situated at the rear of the pool- there is no bar inside the main building or the lobby (where reception is). This is the main bar for the evening entertainment too. There is a van poolside that serves freshly cooked to order food from 12:00-17:00hrs. We ate lunch there every day- the salmon salads were excellent, tasty and good portions. There is a good range of food available including: burgers, chips, chicken Caesar salad, as well as sandwiches and desserts too. The guy on the van (sorry, I don’t know his name) was very friendly and all the food he cooked was to perfection and delicious and piping hot. (see photo’s). The drinks at the bar were quite poor, all the cocktails were ready mixed- I tried a pina colada and it was weak and watery without a piece of pineapple. The gin was ok. No premium brands included in the all-inclusive, the beer was exceptionally weak and only served in half pint glasses- which had a large head on them so you’re only getting a quarter of the drink. We got fed up with going to the bar and queuing, so we ordered two glasses at a time. There is no Peroni or Moretti – which actually surprised us. The beer at the hotel was “Bud”- this was so weak and tasteless -there were no other choices. The bar staff who stood out for us for friendliness, customer service and always a smile was the young boy from Palermo and Cristian- the manager, There is another bar- Al Grano towards the other end of reception (Near to the beach). This is also the only Al la Carte in the resort where you are allocated one visit per week. We ate there and the food was tasty and good portions. We had the Caprese salad to start, Pizza and Lasagne- great tiramisu -all authentic as you would expect from an Italian island. The manager there large lady with glasses was excellent, service – everything, checking in on us to make sure our food was good. And it was. The buffet restaurant was very disappointing, not from the point of choice but the “Hot food” was always cold. I was absolutely disgusted with the pizza they had on offer- considering this is Italy you shouldn’t get a bad one- but believe me they were (see photo’s). The Al Grano restaurant evidenced they could make a fantastic pizza, I wonder why the standard was not the same in the buffet. When it opene

We stay at hotel for 5 days, with 2 children, we have dirty and smal room, we didn’t even have there place to put our baggage. We have all inclusive and also have to pay for more bottles of water for kids. We travel the world but this was worst than in countries were people have nothing to eat. Unwilling staff, the beach was just rocks where garbage stank.