Hôtel Atalante - Relais Thalasso & Spa

The greeting at reception was good, friendly, efficient, helpful and informative. The scrambled eggs for breakfast were good, considering they had been pre-cooked. Rating 8/10. The shower in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom was a good size and worked well. Lovely peaceful location with good walks and bicycle rides by the sea and through the vines.

Unfortunately quite a lot: No greeting when we arrived for dinner on the first evening. We had to wait and were ignored even though the staff saw us waiting by the desk. A brief "one moment please" would have sufficed. Zero rating. No pepper mills on the table (always a sign of a good restaurant). When the pepper mill did arrive it was combined with a salt mill. The pepper grinder did not work properly and delivered mainly large chunks of pepper. The breakfast was not good enough for a hotel of this standing - the orange juice was Tropicana and not freshly squeezed. When we asked for "toast" it arrived un-toasted; we sent it back and it arrived again, only partly toasted. We gave up at this stage! There were two choices of breakfast cups but the "larger" tea/coffee cups were too small (in a country know for its oversized breakfast cups) The hotel has no pool and the picture of the outdoor pool is misleading. The outdoor pool is connected with the spa which is quite a long walk away (approximately 500 metres) and then only accessed through the spa. There was no hot/cold shower by the outdoor (spa) pool (a hotel of this quality should have the choice of a hot or cold shower by the pool). The temperature of the outdoor pool could have been slightly warmer. The indoor pool connected to the spa is "dreary" and the shower facilities old fashioned and not working properly. The bedroom was quite small and the bathroom was small considering the price range of this hotel. There was very little space by the small basin to place personal cosmetics or to hang anything. There was no tray in the shower to place the soap or shampoo. There was no milk in the room to go with the tea (not even packaged milk). The hotel is badly designed with the reception, bar and dining at one end and a long walk for (some) guests to and from the guest rooms.

We arrived at 4pm and were told our room wasn’t ready .. I asked if we could have late check out and receptionist said no ! We were staying for one night and paying £430 so I felt very unfair as they were late giving us our room. Then no explanation of facilities or what we could do whilst waiting an hour. I booked a massage for the morning which was terrible .. the therapist had no idea at all. No apology and after a long chat gave me a 10 per cent discount which I felt didn’t reflect the poor service. Hey ho won’t be back. Plus the food was up and down .. one main was delicious one was bland ..

Dinner was superb and good value. The bathrooms are very nicely designed. Staff were friendly.

The buildings are frankly ugly and in bad need of paint and maintenance. Very scruffy and was a bad initial reaction. Not charming at all. The interior, on the other hand, is very nice (very 'Cape Cod'). Long / endless corridors!