Elena Hotel and Wellness - All Inclusive

Personally I wouldn't say it's horrible, but it's not great either. The food was ok, the service was ok, the room was ok, except for the bathroom, where the drains sometimes gave off a musty smell. Overall, it's a little neglected, and could use some refurbishing. One thing is sure, if you want four star treatment, you should look somewhere else.

This was the first time I went to a hotel without checking reviews before and I will never repeat this mistake. This place completely ruined my family vacation.
This place implements the concept of all inclusive that most Bulgarian hotels offer by doing absolutely everything they can to make the guests' experience as bad as possible. It may look nice in the pictures, but in the photos you can't see the horrible smell of the rooms or the taste of the food.
I can tell you with confidence that a noticeably amount of the food is inedible due to being undercooked, old or low quality (e.g. the eggs have some odd black parts all over them, chicken is pink on the inside, same cheeseballs being served 3 days in a row until they started to look black on the outside, the meats are just baloney cut in different shapes). In the rare event when a decent dish is brought, everybody runs for it ignoring the queue or using the tongs, taking the food with their bare hands. This made each meal feel very stressful.
The drinks were even worse than the food: they barely have any alcohol assortments and all of them are of the lowest quality and smell bad. The non alcoholic options are just as bad: everything has a weird, smoke-like smell, even the water (which is sometimes pink). The cups are of the lowest quality and the staff will act like receiving your drink in a glass cup instead of plastic is a luxury. The bar offer some known brands, but those cost extra and are not included in the all inclusive package.
The staff behaved as rude as possible: they don't make any effort to understand requests at the reception and the bartenders will not make you a custom cocktail even if they have all the ingredients (they only know how to make the 5 listed cocktails which are not good) and they become angry if you can't immediately decide what you want. During lunch and dinner the staff will ignore you if you ask whether they will bring more of a certain dish or if they can clean your table and they also let everyone cut in line at the bar.
The cleaning ladies only change your towels unless you tip them in which case they will also mop the bathroom. Also, if you dirty the towels or sheets too much they will charge you extra at checkout.
The rooms don't seem to be cleaned at all even for newer guests. This is what we found in our rooms when we checked in: dirty tables, stained sheets, a swatted fly on the window, dirty and yellowed curtains, a broken nest and pigeon droppings on the balcony. Also the balconies are barely separated between rooms which is a huge security concern.
The pool may look good in the pictures, but it is too small for the hotel and you have to leave a towel in the morning if you want to have a sunbed for yourself. It does not seem to be cleaned properly because there is plenty of sand on the bottom, but it is treated with so much chlorine that we could smell it from our rooms on the 6th floor. In fact, the entire hotel smells like chlorine during the night because of this.
I don't recommend spending any time at the pool as the activities are not anything interesting either: the staff is very bored and the only activity that was organised during our stay was short games of polo which were only played by large men and it rather looked like some sort of water rugby.
The hotel may or may not provide parking depending on your luck. They have a person that is supposed to keep an order for when the cars arrive/leave and where they should park, but they seemed to be constantly lost whenever we spoke to them.
Please, if you have any respect for yourself, don't torture yourself by booking even a day in this horrible place. There are much better hotels nearby at exactly the same price. This place is literally a scam.

Quite cheap for a 4 star hotel but the quality of service is not the best. I expected more.

The room was spacious and nice, the bathroom very clean as well, but the bedsheets did not feel very dry and clean, but rather damp and yellowish, especially the insides of the pillows... The food was good but they did not have enough variety for a vegetarian for example. There were lots of meat options so I had to stick to salads and a few vegetable soup and cheese pies. Also, the fruits were dry as they always had them cut out, so you could always tell they were not fresh. The orange juice or other juices were disgusting (only water and some color in them, no flavour)!

The worst experience here was with the parking. I read before arriving that parking would be 10 lv per day but when we arrived at the hotel, quite early for the check in, I asked the person working at the parking of the hotel if we can still park the car and leave it at the hotel while we go in the city for a walk and come back at 14:00 for the official check in. He did not speak proper English and ended up asking us to follow his motorbike friend to a nearby parking lot where we would pay the same, only that it is 100m from the hotel. With some doubts, I said ok, but his friend then expected us to remain at this incognito parking lot for the entire week and pay 50lv/ 5 days when I only asked about a temporary parking until our "official check in" for 2-3h.. We awkwardly explained we don't want to keep the car parked this far away from the hotel the entire week and returned back in front of the hotel to discuss the matter at the reception. The lady here guided me to talk with the parking boy, park the car at the hotel and then come back to pay by card the amount of the entire week at the reception. I went again to discuss to the parking boy about it and my father ended up telling me that in the meantime, the boy asked for a bribe to let us park the car at the hotel! At this point I was so confused and frustrated with the fact that they do not speak proper English to sort this matter out before ruining the start of our vacation with this pointless fuss! At this point, the boy said simply to go and pay at the reception and then come back with a receipt and then he'll allow us to park the car in front of the hotel, even if the lady at the reception said to park first and then pay. When I went inside again, she said THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT SHE SAID BEFORE: to pay first and then park! Then why did you send me outside if I had to pay first??? It was just stupid at this point. I seriously doubt they had good intentions with this fuss!

Not by far 4* hotel, parking is 10lv (€5)/ day even if you are hotel guest also your car will be parked miles away in middle of nowhere without CCTV, food is repetitive and tasteless also the queue is huge over 30 min waiting time. For your food and drink you have to spend 1 hour to get them. Food and drinks quality is extremely low, short staff all day every day, not well trained at all, will barely understand you whatever language you speak.