Tenuta Centoporte

Like - The breakfast buffet is amazing and the quality of the food served at the dinner is also really good. - The Garden is nice and the swimming pool arena too - Friendliness of the staff - Free parking - 5min drive away from Otranto Disliked - Our A/C was noisy while running but also while switched off (they moved us to another room as it was defect while running but it seems that there was nothing to do with noise when switch off) - The water of the swimming pool was freezing cold (we stayed early October)

I actually checked out the hotel over 2 weeks ago as I wanted to give myself time to reflect on my stay as giving a hotel 1 star is extremely damming. And this is a family owned hotel and I would always want them to succeed over a multi national owned chain. I often read reviews and people say that things were generally OK but there was a problem with this or that and that can often be towels. Well now it is my turn, from the moment you arrive in reception to check in they say you have to sign a document that confirms that if your pool towels aren't returned each day they charge you €50, they explained people often steal them. I was expecting Egypt’s best cotton towels but I have posted a picture they are regular, couple of seasons old pool towels. We were then told we had to present a towel card to get a towel, which I personal hate and associate with all inclusive hotels that have 2,000 guest in Turkey. I am not knocking that as we did it for several years when the kids were younger but this was at a different price point and so expected a different service. So after all of that we dropped the bags off in the rooms and headed straight down to the pool. There were 3 sets of beds (6 beds in total) scattered around an extremely spacious pool area that weren’t being used. I went to the bar area and said we were a family of 5 and would like to sit together and I was told it was against the regulations to move the sunbeds. I asked to speak to the manager who didn’t show but after approximately 20 minutes 2 people turned up and added 2 additional beds so we ended up with 4. The beds they supplied had a mattress half the thickness of the others and were extremely uncomfortable. Lastly after a swim I went to change my towel at reception as I absolute hate sitting in damp towels and I was told it was only one towel per guest per day due to the environment. As this point I was frustrated and asked to speak to the manager who actually turned out to be the owner. And this is why I took time to decide what to write, he was a charming gentleman who owned the hotel with his brother who was one of the guys who moved the sunbeds earlier. We sat and spoke for 20 minutes and he explained (remembering his English is better than my Italian) that he doesn’t like the sunbeds moved as it doesn’t look architecturally nice and that he has been to many 5 star hotels around the world where towel cards are acceptable, which I disagree with. He also explained that it was one towel per guest per day for the environment. To be honest I am conscious of the environment in all aspects of life and the carrot method works better than the stick. I would also observe that the bathrooms in each room don’t have glass in the window, they have mesh. So the external hot air is continually getting into the rooms which caused the air conditioning to work even harder to cool the room, which can’t be good for the environment. They also put plastic cups wrapped in plastic in the bathro