Hotel Première Pool & Resort in Marina di Varcaturo

The only thing good I can say about it is the cleaning staff, because everything from the reception to the quality of the room doors is awful; you can hear everything and honestly I couldn't sleep all night, and nobody seems to be checking that other guests aren't making excessive noise. Not only could I not fall asleep until after 11:00 PM, but then I was woken up at 1:30 AM until 3:30 AM and then again at 6:50 AM. I called reception several times and they only came once. I arrived on Sunday and just wanted to use the wellness center, but it was closed not only on Sunday but also on Monday. I came here to relax and I'm leaving more stressed than when I arrived. Thanks for nothing.

We stayed here for five days, and unfortunately the experience was far from what we expected. The biggest issue by far was the location. We were shocked when we arrived to discover just how remote the hotel actually is. A taxi from Naples Centrale cost around €100, and despite the hotel claiming to be “in Naples,” it takes over two hours on public transport to reach the city.

The location was so inconvenient that we ended up booking an Airbnb for one night just to avoid wasting more than four hours a day commuting back and forth. Even after the long journey on public transport, the nearest train station is still about an hour’s walk from the hotel—along a main road with no footpath, making it essentially unsafe and impossible.

The staff were kind and did their best to help, offering shuttle cars between 8am and 3pm, which we appreciated. But outside those hours, we were completely stranded. One night, we ended up at a dark, isolated train station with no taxis available anywhere. There were several strange men standing around staring at us, and we genuinely felt unsafe—we even considered calling the police because we didn’t know what else we could do. After nearly an hour, a taxi finally arrived, arranged by the lovely hotel staff, to pick us up from a petrol station in the middle of nowhere.

The food at the hotel was another major disappointment. The menus aren’t posted online because they “change daily,” but honestly it feels like they’re hidden because the quality is so poor. On our first night, with no restaurants or shops within walking distance, we decided to try the hotel’s “restaurant.” For the starter, we were served what looked like processed ham and cheese rolled together into a ball. It was unappetizing and confusing, and set the tone for the rest of the meal. My partner ended up with just a plate of chips, and my spaghetti with eggplant was so bad that we ended up laughing and ordering a takeaway pizza instead. It’s honestly shocking that this hotel is rated four stars.

To top it all off, even the TV in our room didn’t work.

We came hoping for a relaxing, stress-free holiday, but instead spent most of our time anxious and exhausted. Ironically, the best night of our trip was the night we stayed in an Airbnb. The staff were friendly and tried their best, so none of this is on them—the real issue is the location and the overall setup of the hotel.

As you can see the hotel looks nice from the outside. The story is quite different when you get inside the hotel or when you look what’s surrounding it. It’s located on the beach, which must be nice during summer. But we stayed there for one night in May and it was an awful experience. There were barely any people around, only the ones living there. We had a few encounters with them and it’s safe to say they looked dangerous and were not very welcoming. They even had wires on their fences and what was behind the fence didn’t look welcoming either. There was even a dead and half eaten cat right in front of the hotel. For the whole stay no one cared to pick it up and remove it. And from the looks of it, it was there for quite some time before we got there. The actual city was a 20 minutes walk away from the hotel. We walked to the city during the night and it was not a pleasant experience as well, since the whole neighborhood seemed really dangerous. We encountered some people on the way who we avoided by a long shot. The place was really dirty and even shoes were lying on side of the streets. The pizza in the city was one of the best I ever tried (of course, since it was Nepali pizza). The rooms looked clean but actually weren’t. We had hair everywhere in the bathroom and the sheets were definitely not clean. The whole room was so white it just felt off. There were also no real blankets. You could hear all the weird noises through the walls and since we had our room on the ground floor we felt unsafe during the night, considering the neighborhood. The breakfast was nice, but they served it in this place that looked like a tent. There was absolutely no air and it got really hot even at 8am.