Baia Delle Zagare - Handwritten Collection in Mattinata

Bugs were the theme of our stay here. That alongside the oft-repeated quote "we are in the nature". Amongst many other unnecessary issues.

Indeed, being in the middle of nature does result in certain wildlife being present, but using that as an excuse to do nothing about it is, in my opinion, unacceptable.

Our room had an active ant nest on the exit to the balcony, and on the roof. The entire balcony was swarmed with ants every day. Complained to reception: "we are in the nature" and gave us some bug spray. The photo attached is a small fraction of what we had to do every single day to merely reduce the ant problem. No dealing with the literal ants nests no, just give the guests some spray and let them deal with it. The room had a nice view, though, when it was not over-run by ants.

Dinner was the other bug-related problem. Swarms of wasps attacking everyone at dinner. Many people, including us, could simply not enjoy our dinner while being surrounded by half a dozen wasps. We ended up foregoing out beautiful view to sit inside to mitigate the problem. We complain to reception: "we are in the nature". No bug-repellent torches, no citronella lamps, none of the other multitude of solutions for it, just let the guests deal with it. There is also only one person taking orders for the entire area, meaning just to take the order can sometimes take upwards of an hour. These issues was not nearly as problematic in the "premium" seating section, which brings me to my next point.

Then we reach the beach, where the hierarchy of the hotel really makes for an unnecessary experience. We were in a penthouse sea-view room. One of the more expensive categories of room available, but as its for some unexplainable reason called "comfort" it places us in the lowest category of room. With this, we get access to only one of the two beaches with sunbeds. We negotiated a front row (which honestly should have been the default minimum expectation) which despite the stones was nice. The absolutely absurd part is that the sunbeds on the other beach for more "premium" guests were precisely the same, but had cushions on top. This may seem petty, but its such a ridiculous thing to exclude from the other beach, and is very representative of the two-tier system clear at the hotel.

We enjoyed our stay despite the hotels best efforts. It is in a beautiful location, but that does not mean that no effort needs to be applied to the hotel part of the stay.