Residence Cerere in Paestum

Bed and pillows uncomfortable. Bathroom -shower leaked, drain was very slow, toilet had rust stains, fan noise was high pitched and annoying.

I’m not usually one to leave reviews but I felt incredibly compelled to leave one for Hotel Cerere. We booked a package holiday with an airline and once we arrived, we were greeted by hotel staff who had friendly smiles. One lady checked us in and requested I send my hotel voucher across, absolutely no issue. She then showed us to our room and gave us a wifi code. The wifi was shocking, but being on holiday we didn’t care too much for it. We tried to turn the air-con on and eventually figured it out (all doors/windows have to be closed, it says this in the manual left in the room) but the air-con didn’t actually cool the room down, just the area by the door and it still only blew air out at 24°C, even though we changed it to 20°C as that’s the lowest it said it would go. When a 4-star hotel promises air-con, you’d hope it would work. We went to the pool outside the main hotel which was nice and came up to just below my shoulders (I’m 5ft 9inches). The next morning, we went downstairs for breakfast, the waiting staff were nice and there was a good selection of pastries, cheese, bread and an omelette station (this is the same everyday). The beach is about a 10 minute walk away, and although there is a shuttle we weren’t informed of times or how to use this service. We explored the other pool which is near the residence, and we definitely preferred this one, completely down to personal preference, but it was deeper (my 6ft3 partner couldn’t touch the bottom) and we could properly swim in this pool, it also had a diving board. Our room also got cleaned everyday by the cleaning staff who were absolutely lovely, I cannot fault them. This is unfortunately where the positives end. The communication from the front desk staff was not great, the food you could order from the pool bar was not good, and we felt judged every time we walked through the lobby like we didn’t belong there. When it came to checking out, we got to the front desk expecting to pay for the drinks from the mini-fridge and the tourist tax, however we got told to pay nearly €1600. As said previously, we had booked a package holiday and had already paid for the room through our holiday team. The front desk staff didn’t seem to understand this even though I had sent them the voucher that they had asked for! Eventually another staff member got called in to deal with the situation and it was eventually sorted but it was not how we wanted to end our holiday.