Barcelo Royal Beach Hotel

We chose the Royal Barcelo for its 5 stars, we knew that Bulgarian rating system is different to other countries but thought they would have extras that differed from their local competition. How wrong we were. We got to the hotel at 1am, got given a sandwich bag which albeit a nice touch, that's where the niceties ended. At 1am we just wanted to freshen up and to get into bed. The shower door would not close, the drains were almost completely blocked and the water was leaking out of the door that wouldn't close. After paddling around, I used the toilet where the flush was jammed on and a continuous stream of water was hitting the bottom of the toilet creating a very loud waterfall. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did when I got into bed, the mattress or bedframe had absolutely zero support, I sunk and almost rolled out of bed. I had to sleep on my wife's side of the bed until I could mention it to reception staff the following morning. We did this first thing in the morning where the receptionist noted down our issues on a piece of paper and we thought we'd give them the benefit of the day and went by the pool. Came back at the end of the day, the toilet had stopped gushing but the bed remained the same, no mattress changed. However bizarrely, whoever came to our room left a toy car on my side of the bed and an old dusty aloe Vera bottle and a luigi keyring on my wife's side. We contacted Jet2 who told us to go visit the guest relations manager. As we did he greeted us with "oh, I thought it was an old couple coming to complain but you're young" (like that should make any difference!). He told us the flusher has been fixed, however it hadn't because it did the same thing again earlier in the day, and the bed frame slats were broke and it had been replaced. We requested a change of room but this was denied. The final straw came on the 2nd night where I was sick after a day of feeling unwell, possibly putting it down to either the stress of the beginning of our holiday, or the recycled food that had been put out for dinner that they also had out for lunch. This, along with the daggers we felt from the unfriendly and hostile staff made it clear we wanted to move hotels, which Jet2 arranged. We were quickly accepted the next morning to a nearby hotel. We went down to reception to check out and asked the receptionist to order us a taxi. The receptionist recognised our leaving date and asked why (even though he would've been told by Jet2 we'd be transferring) he asked us where we were going and told him the name of the hotel and without hesitation and with attitude "are you SURE you want to go THERE?" the answer was either there or home because the Barcelo is THAT bad. Other side notes, bottled water not all inclusive, refilling your own bottles is frowned upon, the pool is ridiculously freezing cold, the sports bar was not open once in the 3 2 days we stayed there and they didn't open the second restaurant either. We did sal

Management and staff just seem as if they don’t want to be there. We arrived late at night and went to our room to find the toilet wasn’t even bolted to the floor, which gave my wife a nice suprise when she sat down on it. We had a Mountain View room and the noise from the adjacent hotel was unbearable and went on until 2am during our first 2 nights. We asked to be moved and the hotel management were just so rude to my wife that we both just wanted to go home. The place is falling to bits ‘Faulty Towers on speed’. The food is bland and cold and we resorted to eating out some meals, not what you expect when you book a 5* AI. Shall not be returning. No daytime entertainment, just music playing for a couple of hours, pool looked lovely but absolutely freezing. Hotel is nowhere near the beach so think they need to rename it. I do have a few suggestions but probably wouldn’t get published. A disgrace to the Barcelo brand!!. One afternoon we were inundated with 100’s of staff as they had a team building day, surely this is something you do in the closed season when there’s no paying guests around. It has a Mall, but none of it was ever open so what’s the point. We only got our room cleaned once and that’s only because we went down to request it. Our advice is stay away.