Hotel Vila Kalcuni Sarande

Nice pool quiet family room

The private beach was nice but the area around the sunbeds could have been cleaner

I was given room 408 (double deluxe with sea view). The room was really palatial with a huge terrace balcony and a fabulous unobstructed view of the sea and swimming pool. It was really quiet and the wifi worked quite well (considering my friends in room 304 facing the same direction could not receive a wifi signal for practically the duration of their stay). The hotel is a few hundred metres walk from the ferry port (we arrived from Corfu). The hotel is just a short walk into the main « party » area of the strip and there are several mainly fast food restaurants just a few steps away from the hotel itself, plus a supermarket to buy your bottled water (you must not drink the tap water and the hotel does not provide bottled water in the room, even though there is an empty mini fridge). The hotel provides free beach towels and free sun beds at the small public beach directly in front of the hotel - the beach is pebbles with a steep drop into the sea so you need water shoes to get into the sea. The beach cafes are really great to have close by.

There is a short but very steep cobbled slope to access the hotel (or steep steps), which is difficult when dragging heavy luggage from the ferry. The breakfast was really poor. Considering it’s a small hotel they could easily cook eggs to order rather than having a tray of piled up, cold, rubber fried eggs swimming in water. The other choice of breakfast food was also disappointing and you had to pay extra if you didn’t take the filter coffee.

The exterior of the building is really stunning, both day and night. We were assigned room 304 which was supposedly a deluxe double with sea view (it was definitely not deluxe!) and had a lovely sea view, though the pillars obstructed a lot of the view. The location of the hotel is excellent as it’s walking distance to the port, shops, restaurants so you don’t need a car. It is located directly on a small, intimate public pebbled beach (you need water shoes) and for guests the hotel provides free beach towels and sun loungers. The swimming pool looks lovely but we didn’t use it.

There is a big discrepancy between the size of the rooms/ facilities of the various deluxe double, with seafront views (our friend in 408 had a fantastic, palatial spacious room/balcony/view/bathroom in comparison to ours - and she was in it on her own and we were two people - even though we both paid the same price !) The room facilities in 304 were extremely poor for a 4-star hotel: - the wifi was non-existent for most of our stay - the balcony was minuscule - the TV was tiny and had no streaming channels, nor English channels - there was an odd assortment of coat hangers (flimsy metal coat hangers and plastic ones) - one toilet roll and no toilet roll holder ! We had to ask for a spare toilet roll ! - there were no complimentary bottles of water, not even on the first day after a long, hot journey - there were no tea/coffee-making facilities in the room - there was one pair of slippers for two guests - the buffet breakfast was of extremely poor quality and choice - the bathroom was tiny and the « toiletries » consisted of 4 mini bottles of shampoo and nothing else! - there is a very short but steep, cobbled slope to reach the hotel - the Manager was non-existent for the duration of our stay for an issue we wanted to discuss.

Good location, very clean, good breakfast.

Bedroom was very basic, only one power socket, no iron and also they charged around 6% commission to pay by card despite choosing the pay now option on booking dot com.