Sol Tropikal Durres

This hotel was nice however it's not quite hitting the mark. The food was cold most of the time and very repetitive. For all inclusive things we're limited. The local beer was not nice and if you wanted any thing else you had to pay. The snack bar was poor and the bar by the pool area, smelt and was dirty. The beach club pool was nicer but the sun-bed covers were dirty and there was sun beds that were broken were piled up In the corner. Step out of the hotel and the area was dirty with rubbish piled up everywhere. The stray dogs every where are heart breaking.

The hotel itself is nice , rooms are very clean and functional with a lovely pool and located on a private beach. Having said this the service is very poor, staff are very unfriendly and waiting on staff are very slow and rude. We ate in the Italian restaurant one lunchtime and we were ignored for about 20 minutes, when I approached a member of staff she was rude and said one minute and then did not come back for 15 minutes and only came back when another table pointed to us and said we were waiting to order. Drinks didn’t arrive until after food and only after asking again. On the last day ordered chips at lunchtime(we were B&B not AI) and they were stone cold, when I complained they didn’t care and I really had to push for them to rectify the issue. If they work on their customer service it could be a really nice place to stay.

We’ve just spent a week at Sol Durrës and unfortunately it was a very mixed experience. There are positives: our room was good and the hotel was generally very clean. The pool area is also nice and the hotel has plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the service and organisation really let it down. At almost every meal we had to search for something — tables, glasses, bowls or cutlery — and the food was often barely warm. There were also quite a lot of flies around the buffet. Around the pool, staff sometimes seemed more interested in chatting and choosing music than serving guests. Some evenings they ran out of drink tokens, only for us to be asked the next morning to return tokens they hadn’t even had available. At 10am one morning there were no proper pool towels, so I was given small, worn and frayed towels and told to come back later. The all-inclusive offering is also confusing. Two pools are advertised, but one costs extra. The Italian restaurant is advertised but isn't included, while some guests apparently receive vouchers for a free meal there. The entertainment information wasn't explained properly either. I only discovered the full activity schedule on a screen after five days. One other concern was that all four members of our family developed a rash at different points after swimming in the pool. I can't say what caused it, but it was certainly worrying when it happened to everyone. Overall, the hotel itself is nice and clean, but the food, service and organisation need a lot of improvement. An all-inclusive holiday should be easy and relaxing — unfortunately, too often here it felt like we were having to figure things out ourselves.

Pros: Perfectly clean and lovely bedrooms. The family room was a great size and design. The housekeeping staff are the heroes of this hotel. Also, the A/C is very good in the bedrooms, and the WiFi is very good throught the resort, even on the beach. The main pool and beach are also great attractions. Most staff are pleasant. Cons: The food is either cold or barely warm. It is truly a miracle this isn't killing people. The food and drink offerings are genuinely poor (picture cheap meats like frankfurters in every conceivable format from hot dogs to salads, dried out fish, hard chicken, greyed meats), and often mislabelled in English. If you have food intolerances/allergies- definitely avoid. [Notable exceptions to the sub-par food offerings were the omlette bar which we only saw open on Sunday, and the paella which was cooked fresh in front of us on Thursday. Both were very good and the only hot food we ate all week.] At breakfast in particular, basics like bowls/glasses/coffee cups, spoons, knives and bread often run out and aren't replenished quickly. You may also have to queue for a table. Queues for coffee are also utterly ridiculous. The second pool and italian restaurant are not included in hotel packages, which was disappointing given how repetitive the main buffet is. There is dreadful dance music blaring at the pool for most of the day. It's impossible to enjoy your own music/podcasts, even with sound excluding earbuds. The hotel seems to primarily cater for Albanian and French speaking clients- most staff don't speak English. We tried to make sense of the entertainment options and failed - posters were either out of date or entertainment was only in French. I still don’t know the age ranges for the kids club - again, the information isn't clear so we gave up on it. The hotel grounds are well maintained but the environs to the hotel are grim, to say the least. There is also a total faff to get drinks with tokens at the pool but nowhere else (the pool bar then run out of tokens when cups are returned at the end of the day, making the system pointless - especially given that everyone has bracelets denoting their board basis anyway); similar nonsense for towels for the pool, and ragged towels for the beach. Don't even try to exchange beach towels for pool towels if you switch location during the day - that is totally out of the question. Twice at 10am when the pool was opening, they were out of pool towels entirely so we were offered ragged beach towels. Once there were no clean towels at all available between 10 and 11am - which is totally unacceptable course. All bars seem to regularly run out of ice too. Drying racks are needed on balconies. More seating is required for the entertainment; even the mini disco can't seat a few families around the dance area. If you have a phobia of bees/wasps or stray dogs, I'd also avoid. It's impossible to eat outside. Staff watch on mildly amused as swarms descend on diners. As an aside, I'd query how genuine more generous reviews for this hotel are, given that it is the first/only contribution of many of the positive reviewers. And to be clear, we stayed the first week of September so it wasn't peak season, nor was the hotel at full capacity. In short, we braved it out for the kids, but I was researching early flights home by day 2 of 7. For far less money, I could have hired cleaners to do a deep clean of my house and eaten a week of takeaway in far more comfort at home - it would have been a better use of funds and annual leave. Luckily, we had a rental car so used the hotel as a base to explore the wider region, even going as far as Ksamil for a day trip to their clear waters. 2 days here is more than enough.

Kevin, the best Barkeeper did a great job!