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DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Varna - Golden Sands {BGR} (no longer Honors)

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Varna - Golden Sands {BGR} (no longer Honors)

Old Jul 9, 2011, 10:48 am
  #1  
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DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Varna - Golden Sands {BGR} (no longer Honors)

The new Doubletree in Varna has a very low rate of 27 Euro inkl. bfst at the end of the month (e.g. 07/28 - 08/05). I read many reviews on different sites but don't get an impression what to expect at this hotel.

There are many all-inclusive-guests who give bad ratings due to long waiting times at the pool bar or for limited choices at the dinner buffet, which is not important for me.

If somebody already stayed at the Doubletree I'm very much interested in comments about the room quality, the treatment of Golds and Diamonds and the distance to and the quality if the beach.
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Old Jul 9, 2011, 3:20 pm
  #2  
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Originally Posted by hann
The new Doubletree in Varna has a very low rate of 27 Euro inkl. bfst at the end of the month (e.g. 07/28 - 08/05). I read many reviews on different sites but don't get an impression what to expect at this hotel.

There are many all-inclusive-guests who give bad ratings due to long waiting times at the pool bar or for limited choices at the dinner buffet, which is not important for me.

If somebody already stayed at the Doubletree I'm very much interested in comments about the room quality, the treatment of Golds and Diamonds and the distance to and the quality if the beach.

I was there in June. Don't know about gold because I am diamond.

Good value for cheap money if you can get a low rate, e.g. 27 € !!! Then go for it!

Keep your expectations very low and you won't get disappointed. Of course, there is no lounge for HHonors members. Well, there is actually a lounge on the first floor but I had no time to figure out for whom it is.

One I got brilliant service, the other day it was terrible. Hence, you can get anything.

Overall, I would rate it as a nice package tourist hotel where the staff members try their best to accommodate diamond members.

Food:
  • Didn't like the cheapo typ breakfast
  • Don't know about the cost for all-inclusive, they didn't know it at the front desk.... and I didn't bother anymore
  • Room service is the way to go! Low prices (really!) and relatively good quality
  • We also went to the restaurants between the DoubleTree and the beach. They convinced us most. The ones at the beach had higher prices and lower quality

Water/beach:
  • Don't know the beach. Is kind of teenager beach live, like in Lloret de Mar and Mallorca. Not my thing but certainly very good for younger people
  • Didn't use the outdoor pools because was too cold for me and not heated
  • Didn't use the indoor pool because water was not 100 % clean/clear and too many children

There was still construction work when I was there in June. The hotel was until last year run under another brand.

PS: There is a HILTON being constructed, right below the DoubleTree! Expected opening is next year!

PS2: There are some useful comments on Holidaycheck

PS3: One big word of warning: The hotels systems are not connected to HHonors! They work with Horizon and thus, they must manually transmit the date of the guests to HHonors. I did not get any stays credited and the hotel did not react to my several emails. I could finally fax my invoices to HHonors (but I had to explain why the invoices did not come from the DoubleTree but from the Hotel Helios!)
Zurich Flyer is offline  
Old Jul 9, 2011, 11:52 pm
  #3  
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I stayed there last week of June, and below is my TripAdvisor review of the hotel, updated with some HH details.

I booked one room at this hotel back in January when the rates were very low (50% off), and when nobody knew nothing about this hotel. I booked a second one in May (40% off). Great thing - no moeny taken in advance, even if they were AP rates

Arrival and check-in
We arrived by car, and finding the hotel was quite a challenge, as there is no comprehensive driving map on the hotel website. After driving-around Golden Sands for ~20 minutes we arrived at the hotel and we were ready for check-in. The hotel has 2 wings: Helios hotel (4 east-European stars) to the left and Doubletree (5 east-European stars) to the right. As a HH Diamond we were expected by the staff and were given 2 fantastic suites, on 5th and 7th floor. One of them was not ready at time of check-in, but 2 hours later was in order. Last year in Greece they did not seem to know what HH Diamond means, but here I really felt "special", the hotel went out of their way to accomodate us in the best way possible.

The Room
We got room 701, one of the 2 suites on each floor, both with a sea-view. It is a corner suite with an entree, small bathroom, huge living room with bar area, and large bedroom with desk area and en-suite master bathroom. Both the bedroom and living room have a door towards a very large balcony, with great view of the entire resort.
Living room has an expandable sofa and 3 armchairs, enough for a large group to gather round for drinks, games or just chit-chat . TV is a 50" plasma with enough channels to keep children and adults happy.
Bedroom is very big, with king bed, separate desk area and 37" plasma TV. Linens are new and refreshed every 3 days or on-demand. We had 4 very comfortable pillows. The bed is a bit soft per my taste, but opinions may differ.
Master bathroom is not very large but has a corner bath-tub, definitely a plus. Amenities were the usual Neutrogena, but not refreshed every day. Towels were not new, but good quality and changed daily.
The overall quality of the furniture and appliances is good to very good, but not excellent. For a sea-side resort it is great, but it should not be compared with regular business-hotels.
We had free internet as Diamonds and received first a password for the WiFi. The signal was very poor and then we received 2 LAN cables (one for each room). No password was asked throughout the stay and we did not pay for it at the end. It could be a loophole, but I guess anybody comeing with a cable from home would get free internet in the room

The hotel
We stayed for 7 days and since we did not have very good weather we experienced every area of the hotel.
- the outside pools are very nice and provide a wide area of attractions. There is a whirlpool, a small pool for babies, a mid-sized pool and a large pool with 2 water-chutes. The lounge chairs in front of the DT were made from wood frame and fabric, while the ones in front of the Helios hotel (the large pool) were made out of plastic.
- the inside pool is large and guarded by 1-2 lifeguards at all times. It is great for small babies as it is heated at all times. Downsides - very high Chlorine concentration and very slippery floors in the adjacent toilet.
- the parking lot is shared by the 2 hotels and is full of private cars, though always easy to find a parking space.
- fitness room is quite small (~30sqm), but very modern equipment. At most we saw 3 people using the 6-7 fitness equipments there.
- we did not try the Spa, but it looked very well.
- Nearby they will build a Hilton hotel and one can easily see the construction site. They do not perform any work during summer-time, so the noise and dust issues reported earlier by other guests will not have any impact during mid- and peak-season.
- there is an exchange booth at Reception, with very poor rates. Best idea is either to take money from ATM or change at the several bank branches. Closest one to hotel is Unicredit (just in front of the DT while looking at the sea), and most convenient is at the hotel's beach (OTP Bank).

The Beach
If you are planning to spend your holiday at the beach, this is probably not the best location. The resort is situated along the Black Sea, and hotels are uphill. The Doubletree is probably one of the farthest hotels from the beach, but to be fair it only takes 5 minutes for an adult to get there. Going back it's going to be ~15 minutes. if you have children or babies, you can easily double that.
The hotel has a private beach in the resort, oddly situated at the opposite side of the resort, not in front of the hotel. There is a 14+1 seats mini-bus which makes regular trips to the beach, but we only used it one day. It left on-time from the hotel and only by luck we got in, there were other people in the lobby who did not have any left room. The hotel should give more thought to this next year.
The private beach is contracted from a local company and is very nice. Plenty of lounge-chairs (or so we thought), a beach-bar with decent prices and also free drinks for the all-inclusive clients. For all-inclusive guests the lounge-chairs were free, for the rest they were 10 BGN for 2 lounge chairs and 1 umbrella.
The sea-shore at this beach though was poor, as it was full of large rocks. The tides were strong and you had to either stay on the shore or well into the water in order not to get hit to the legs by 1-3kg large rocks . The beach 200m away (in front of the big casino hotel) was much better.

The Restaurant and Food
We did not have an all-inclusive package and we think we made the right decision. Breakfast had a lot of menu options, but the quality was definitely not 5 stars. I stayed in many other Hilton and Doubletree hotels, this hotel needs to improve its quality. The egg-station was OK but operated by people who work very slow; in addition, I can make better-looking and better-tasting fried eggs at home... The juices had nothing to do with natural, and were not even good-quality Tetra-Pak like in other places. The cheese, salami and vegetables station were OK, but incomparable to a 5* Doubletree (see Kos in Greece or Istanbul - Turkey). We always ate well, but can't say I enjoyed breakfast too much.
We tried to have dinner several nights at the hotel, but there were too few items on the menu, and all standard international dishes, nothing from the local cuisine, which is really good. Prices are good though, 3 people had decent dinner for 50 BGN. Much better food and service at the local restaurants on the way to the beach.

Overall, we had a great stay here and will come back next years, but will adjust our expectations. It is a nice sea-side hotel, but not 5 stars "Hilton" beach-side hotel. If one books this for the Hilton brand and expectations from Hilton business hotels, they will be deeply disappointed. If one books this hotel as a good 4* chain-hotel on the eastern-European sea-side, he will have a great stay!

Room Tip: Rooms X01 - x26 have sea-view, rest of them have forest view. Regular rooms on 7th floor have smaller balconies, or so it looked from outside.

HH Points:
Invoice is from Helios hotel, and the info in the invoice is veeery confusing, as they break the daily rates into 2 or 3 pax, so you get 2 pages of daily rates for each traveller, absolutely futile if it's just one family... After one week points were not credited, so I emailed Diamond Desk. They replied that they can't find the reservations I had attached, and asked to get the credit card statement. I sent the saved reservations, the scanned invoice and the pdf statement, and withing 2 hours got a very nice present:
- Base points - 7500 points
- Q2 bonus - 7000 points
- Q3 bonus - 7500 points (we checked-out on 01-July)
- Great Getaway bonus - 7500 points
- Diamond Bonus - 3750 points
- BMI miles - 3000

I uploaded some pictures on Tripadvisor, I can share more with anyone interested.
CAlex is offline  
Old Jul 12, 2011, 3:00 pm
  #4  
 
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I have not much to add to CAlex report. I have been there a week before from 17th of June for one week as well. I booked standard room with sea view during January Sale for Eur 50 per night. As HH Diamond I have been upgraded to suite room 401. Very nice room - similar to the 701 described by CAlex.
There was just one annoying thing for me during the stay. I could not buy the drink (charging my room account). Well I manage to do that only in the bar which is next to the reception (but sometimes even people working in this place were not able to charge the room). As for the bar by the pool they did not wanted to give me the drink even if I would pay by cash - only all inclusive were served there.

Points were Not posted automatically but quick e-mail to Diamond desk with reservation number and copy of invoice fixed that

PS. The weather was very good
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Old Jan 9, 2012, 3:44 am
  #5  
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Rooms in the low season (i.e. in May and in October) were last year (during the January sale) available for 20 per night. The prices went up to around 100 this year (e.g. for 13 April)
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Old Mar 16, 2012, 1:57 am
  #6  
 
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Are there any recent reports on this property? I am looking for a nice beach/cultural getaway for one week in august somewhere in Bulgaria or Odessa.

Are there any information on the expected opening date of the Hilton Varna?

Thank you!
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Old Jul 4, 2012, 5:32 am
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Double Tree Varna (Bulgaria)

I did a search, but didn't come up with any results. We are planning a trip to Varna Bulgaria and I was wondering how the Diamond recognition is in this hotel. TA seems to come up with some very mixed results in general. Any experiences from you guys? Thanks!
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Old Jul 4, 2012, 5:39 am
  #8  
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I heard from management in Vienna that this property isn't exactly the bee's knees! Having said that I'd imagine they won't get many DIA and they will look after you very well. Particularly if you email before hand.
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Old Aug 18, 2012, 5:25 am
  #9  
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I am now staying at the Doubletree, second year in a row. Unfortunately, this is going to be the last visit

Room - no more suite upgrade, we ended up in 402, nice King size with an armchair that turns easily into a bed for the 4-yr old. Accommodation is OK; not matching to some other eastern-European hotels in same chain, but OK for few days.

Food was the most horrible thing ever. Last year they had better food than now, and I still remember we thought it was not OK. This year it got worse. You could say there was some variety, but the looks and taste and ingredients of each dish were horrible:

Breakfast:
- white cheese - I know white cheese and this was the cheapest saltiest thing you can get from the supermarket, disgrace to a country that makes good cheese
- butter - are you kidding me? That is not butter, it is packed in a salami-shape and it is margarine with butter flavor, the cheapest kind. You can also use margarine, which my mom only uses for cooking
- scrambled eggs. You are supposed to mix the eggs so it at least resembles scrambled eggs. Undercooked too.
- omelette & pancake station. Same cook from last year, the guy was teleported from a 1950s army cantine. He drowned everything into oil, took forever to make anything, and never bothered to ask kitchen staff to cut omelette ingredients in smaller pieces. Unfortunately, he was making the only edible stuff in the joint
- juices - I did not expect fresh orange juice and other stuff, but not the cheapest drinks from a supermarket. They probably cost the hotel 1$/2liters...
- jam and honey. In a country where fruit jam and honey should be traditional, the DT serves you the worst tasting stuff
-coffee - my wife preferred to pay for a McDonald's coffee after the first attempt.

We tried one dinner and was enough. Except pork sirloin and rice, everything else was too fat, undercooked or overcooked. Ice-cream was good.

Facilities:
- outdoor pools have incredibly cold water for mid-august, almost nobody could use them.
- 3 out of 4 pools we REALLY dirty. You only have to clean them once a day, and when you run a sea-side resort, keeping clean pools should be part of core business
- indoor pool had warm water, but just as filled with chlorine as last year. Given the alternative of outside pools, it was the lesser evil.
- Beach. Last year the hotel rented a beach in same resort town of Golden Sands, now it is 3.1km from the hotel, well outside the town. If you do not have your own car, you depend on hotel shuttle, which is an 8+1 seater, and runs every 30 minutes. If you have your own car (like we did) it is easier, just pay an extra 3lv/day for parking. The beach though is much nicer and less crowded than the one last year.

I know this is typically an all-inclusive place, but I would not image somebody paying good money for their family holiday and stay here For us it was a place close-by booked in January at 50% rates, but next year will think again, and maybe use same money to head again to Kos in Greece or to Turkey, where service is so much better.

BTW, no work started on the Hilton, reception told me they will start in October.
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Old Dec 30, 2013, 8:44 pm
  #10  
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Does anyone know why I can only find 2 nights of inventory available for the whole of 2014 in this hotel?

It is still a Doubletree I think, still on hilton.com, but there are no rooms until September
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Old Dec 31, 2013, 5:59 am
  #11  
 
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Did manage to find a stay there from August 22 - 27 but the rates are high (€150).

Hordes of marauding Russians perhaps?
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Old Aug 16, 2018, 8:42 am
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Has anyone stayed here recently? We managed to get a booking this weekend for 53 euro a night which I thought was good for August. Do Diamond members get treated well here?
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Old Aug 19, 2018, 7:12 am
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So, as no one has posted about a stay since 2013, I thought id share my experiences this weekend at the Double tree Golden sands, Varna

We stayed as 2 adults and 2 children booked in the cheapest category double room. We were delighted to be upgraded to a suite which was very spacey and had a large balcony overlooking both pools (One from the Helios and one from the doubletree). The bed and bathroom were of a good quality, much as you would expect from such a hotel. The pool was much quieter than the pool next door (which it seemed you could also use) and there were enough sunbeds for everyone. For the price we paid (54 euro), this all sounds like a great deal.

There were a number of issues which anyone who has frequented Hilton hotels will instantly notice. Check-in is strictly enforced at 2pm with seemingly no exceptions. Therefore at 2-3pm the desk is overrun with people and despite a HHonors sign, it was unmanned. At check-in there was no acknowledgement of status (later found out that they have 2 systems and only the manger has access to the Hilton one), and only a generic printout of the AI benefits given to us, even though we were B&B. Also, we were given a physical key to the room which didnt work and when we went to reception we were told that they couldnt give us a card key as they had run out. The duplicate key didnt work well either, but we managed with help from the cleaning lady.

The room, while spacey, had a terrible sofa, which looked like a rottweiler had attacked it as it was so badly damaged. I really cant believe the hotel could present this as a sofa. However, as I mentioned the rest of the room was fine. Breakfast was also terrible, with little choice and everything of a low quality. Old cucumbers and tomatoes, hot dog sausages and runny egg, really not worth getting up for.

I went with zero expectations so the fact that we got upgraded, it did exceed my expectations. That being said, the hotel caters almost entirely for AI package guests from Europe and is almost unrecognisable as a Hilton hotel. As the price compared to other hotels was good, I don't feel like I got a bad deal. But if you go, don't expect a 5 star hotel or 5 star service or youll be disappointed.
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Old Oct 2, 2018, 12:27 pm
  #14  
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Originally Posted by englisha
I went with zero expectations so the fact that we got upgraded, it did exceed my expectations. That being said, the hotel caters almost entirely for AI package guests from Europe and is almost unrecognisable as a Hilton hotel. As the price compared to other hotels was good, I don't feel like I got a bad deal. But if you go, don't expect a 5 star hotel or 5 star service or youll be disappointed.
Thank you. This is really helpful.
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Old Oct 3, 2018, 1:19 pm
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But seriously, if you're in this part of the world, just go and stay in the actual city of Varna. One of my favorites.
SanDiego1K likes this.
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