Hotel Samokov

The rooms are tired with paint chipping on the woodwork, The room doors sometimes have a gap around them where the wood has warped. The walls are thin and you can hear your neighbours. The beds and mattresses are old. The room toilets don’t have extractor fans so it can get a bit smelly for short periods. The tap water isn’t fit for drinking. Some of the food can sometimes be luke warm. There is no water fountain in the hotel. Why 5* well… It’s super super convenient and takes much stress out of getting onto the mountain each day. It’s right next to the Gondola – Ski back to the hotel! It has a 25m, big wide heated swimming pool, (loads of health spa treatments, sauna, steam, jacuzzi etc.) A 10 pin bowling alley. A panorama restaurant. Flambéed crepes of many flavours for £1.20 every day in the lobby from 4-5pm There’s a microwave if you must have your food piping hot. The daily choice of food was impressive. Every day I had a 4-course dinner – a soup starter, a comprehensive salad course, a main and a desert, all buffet style but very friendly and attentive staff. There’s a supermarket next door for cheap bottled water, snacks and other supplies. Some people were asking about ATMs, there’s one right outside the supermarket next door that doesn’t make a local transaction charge. Use the right type of card and you’ll pay only the Mastercard exchange rate and no other fees) The bar staff are great – a range of cocktails for £3, large Stella £2.20 and so on A huge ski depot at the ground level with lots of staff and excellent ski school. (also well priced if you book direct). No need to get a ski locker or lug kit around the resort from other hire places. Two really notable features: 1. The staff are all really attentive and friendly and a credit to the hotel 2. The whole place is IMPECCABLY clean. There’s no dust in the corners, the bathrooms are spotless, the room staff are incredibly thorough. Even at 3am when leaving for the airport there were cleaning staff hard at work. The building is old and in need of a refurb BUT for us, it’s just a place to sleep and eat between socialising or skiing – we haven’t travelled to Borovets for a posh hotel we travelled to ski. The hotel therefore ticks all the boxes. You aren’t paying for a posh hotel – it’s great value for money. If you paid and expected to go to a beautiful posh hotel and found it like the Samokov and were disappointed but were offered a few hundred £££ refund – you would say absolutely. Well, we just did that process in reverse – we knew from reviews it would be a tad tired and just took the discount in advance! There was a diarrhoea and vomiting bug doing the rounds in the resort. Some people were blaming the hotel food. We had no issues and ate for the whole week in the hotel. Far more likely that people are contracting it from the faecal-oral route – the toilets and was facilities on the mountain are appalling and it’s difficult to wash hands before eating. Either that or people are eating in one of the many bars and outdoor BBQs – I think they’re likely to be far less hygienic than this spotless hotel. If you're a person who would hire a Fiat Panda based on price, and when you picked it up were disappointed it wasn't a Golf cabriolet then this isn't the hotel for you. It's a Fiat Panda of a hotel - and a very good one at that. Thank You the Samakov