MPM Sport Hotel in Bansko

From the moment we walked into the room, it felt unwelcoming. Instead of a warm greeting, we were met with a long list of fines for potential damages, as if we came there to break things rather than relax. Our room had multiple issues: the bathroom door and toilet seat were both broken. There was no coffee machine or kettle, even though the website clearly advertised them. I had to ask twice before they finally brought one. Also, there’s no air conditioning, which makes the room uncomfortably hot during the summer. Overall, this is far from a 5-star experience, both in terms of comfort and service. For the price, there are definitely better places to stay in the area.

What follows is a review of our holiday which included issues with the hotel but also wider issues which travellers considering staying here might want to consider even though, of course, the hotel is not responsible for everything in Bulgaria. My wife and I had been told by lots of people that Bulgaria was a hidden gem when it came to skiing holidays as they have the snow, but not the ridiculous prices. This year, we decided to give it a go. We booked through Thomas Cook. Now being part of eSky, an €800 billion revenue travel company, we figured we were in good hands. The prices did look good. Then we arrived and discovered there were reasons for the low prices. They were not really huge problems, but lots of little issues. You might want to modify your expectations. When we arrived at Sofia airport, there was indeed a Sixt car hire desk in the terminal as Sixt had told us following our booking. What there wasn’t, was anyone manning that desk, or most of the other car hire desks. There were also no instructions other than a phone number. Happily, we had our phones at the ready and dialled the number and were promptly told that we needed to get on the shuttle bus to the other terminal. The bus departed, we were told, every 20 minutes. Not a great start, but we were not in any rush, so we just put up with it. On our way out of the terminal, we were surprised to find potholes in the ramp before we were even outside. We steered our luggage around them and carried on. When we reached the other terminal, we found the Sixt desk there fairly quickly, but if we were expecting the staff to be concentrated in one place for efficiency, we soon discovered that efficiency was only for the benefit of Sixt, the body of staff being one sole person. Inevitably, we were not the first in the queue. How can it take so long to check someone’s documents and give them a set of keys? We waited patiently again. When we found our car in the car park, it met the specification. It seemed to have all the dings and scratches we were told it would have. It wasn’t surprising for a car with over 100,000km on the clock. We’ve never been given such an old car by a company like Sixt. The age of the car meant it had no mod-cons, no cruise control and no satnav. But that was ok, we could go old-school. It did have a flashy air pressure warning light on the dash. The only problem with that was that it was warning when we got the car and still warning after we had checked the tyre pressure at two different service stations on route. We were told by Sixt that the route to Bankso would be almost all motorway at 140kmh. Having spent the first hour getting through the city, at very low speeds, we were delighted when the road finally opened up. Whilst the 140kmh was what a lot of traffic was doing, the road signs suggested that was illegal in many places. The speed limit rarely stayed signposted the same for more than a couple of miles and if you believe what Google Maps said the spe