Hotel Ipomea Club

Such a great experience for the whole family (3 adults, 2 kids) . We had just come out of incredibly busy 2 years and were all looking forward to some truly memorable time enjoying swimming, sunshine, relaxing by the pool, good food and service at Hotel Ipomea Club. Bingo, expectations fully met ! Staff at the Hotel have been truly amazing making us feel welcome and taken care of at all times. Special praise to Hotel Director Annalisa and Maitre Giancarlo and his team for the professional service and for the really great laughter. The Hotel premises are in very good conditions perhaps a bit updating to the pool could give it the perfect touch but all in all very clean and looked after indeed. Thank you!

It is a terrible place to stay and ruined our experience of Calabria. You have to pay upfront for your stay: that should be a warning, that you'll have difficulty cancelling when you have experienced the rooms or breakfast, etc. The whole place needs updating. The rooms are not those of a 4 star hotel. The young 18 year old who showed us to our room told me I had got the wrong suite, even though the receptionist had given us that information. Brief information only, we were not given details of where the breakfast room was or shown how to get to the beach, which wasn't obvious. The aircon didn't work in either of our rooms. On complaining, to cut a long story short, we were told it was working. On our insistence, the following day, after an extremely sweltering sleepless night, (not helped by a diesel engine of some sort starting up beneath our window at 4 am and continuing to disturb us for about an hour) the airvents were cleared of a lot of accumulated debris. There was a slight improvement. This probably had contributed to the strange smell each room had. Our room was not made up on the first day and the receptionist offered for it to be done the next morning. At the cost of the room, we were not prepared to have a lack of paid for service and asked for it to be done whilst we went out for dinner. To be fair the manager/deputy manager? did come to apologise, but made the excuse that it had been a difficult day, which actually wasn't our business; as guests, we expect service not excuses. At the 'help yourself' breakfast a waiter on guard prevented from selecting croissants, cake, cheese, ham, etc. This was extremely irritating. I had to remove the tongs from him, (which had been hidden under the the cold cuts unit), to select what meat and cheese I wanted, not what he chose to give me. The fruit juice was sunny delight! There was every type of fake milk but no proper cow's milk for tea, only warm UHT. Food at lunchtime was poor: vegetables described as 'crispy' in my pasta very much not so and the slivers of octopus(?) like slices of school eraser. The platter of fresh fruit consisted of tasteless watermelon and completely unripe melon and peaches. The pool was not well-maintained with mosaic tiles missing and green growth on the walls. The sunloungers of very poor quality plastic, did not feel very sturdy, and in fact creaked on use. Also music playing from a laptop attached to speakers meant it was not a relaxing place to read. The young lifeguard seemed pre-occupied with other things and am not sure if he would be aware of any problem in the pool. He used a petrol blower to blow petals from pool area while everyone was still enjoying the pool and afternoon sun. Being very windy already, it was a pointless exercise since all the dead petals blew around anyway and all he achieved was a noisy, smelly disturbance for the hotel guests. The pool loos had no locks and no soap. The barman was good and we enjoyed the cocktails, but not the noisy 'entertainment' which had to be endured with them - karaoke one night, a noisy theme-music to the films quiz for a second and a singer with taped accompaniment actually in the bar, so was too loud to have a conversation and enjoy a peaceful digestif or coffee. The view from our balcony was admittedly amazing as we could see Stromboli and experience the sunsets. The balcony would have benefitted from some softer seating, such as a couple of sunloungers. The chairs provided meant we couldn't sit for long in comfort. There were also loads of inhabited House Martin nests, which is actually fine, as the birds were a joy to see swooping about as the sun set, but regular cleaning up of their droppings was lacking.The landscaping actually made the place look quite pleasant until you looked more closely at everything else and took into account that the staff didn't really care about the quality of service or food provided. Overall, this was not a great experience and we left very disappointed.

Reminiscing on our stay at Hotel Ipomea Club, I must say, we were very delighted. The rooms themselves were clean and regularly taken care of by cleaning ladies. The hotel offers an amazing swimming pool completed with a smaller pool for toddlers. There is a bar present with drinks, snacks and ice cream which is at reach by the pool. The beach is secluded and well taken care of - take your water shoes though, the sea ground is made of sand mixed with rocks and also cliffs. Breakfast was rich and delicious, lunch and dinner as well. The restaurant personnel was kind, just like the receptionists and cleaning ladies. The cherry on top was the entertainment. Taken care of by animators from Eurecastyle Animazione, the stay was very much enjoyable. During the day, they held water gym and different games, in the evening group dances, karaoke and more. The animators were truly nice and we will definitely remember them and this holiday for a long time.

Everything's really dated, they should renovate the rooms and the swimming pool and take better care of the beach. The beach is really small and they not clean it properly every day. It is also hard to enter the sea since there are rocks everywhere. The hotel's restaurant on the beach serves nothing interesting nor typical and they want you to pay ahead and use a prepaid card which we didn't like.