We carefully selected this hotel to celebrate the last five days of our honeymoon in Israel. A hotel receptionist by the name of Zvi was excellent from the outset making us feel like valuable guests. He made our reservation and checked us in two weeks later for our five night stay. He deserves a promotion.
We had not anticipated the hotel being 100% full during our stay. Unfortunately this led to several problems. The pool area was constantly overcrowded. We noticed that sun beds in prime spots were, however, empty for several hours. Fellow hotel guests would leave their personal effects and towels on the beds seemingly expecting that they had a right to the sun bed all day. When we broached this with staff working by the pool we were told on two separate occasions that this was a common problem. We suggested that to avoid any unpleasantness with guests fighting over sun beds the hotel could place signs around the pool informing hotel guests that if their personal effects were left for longer than twenty minutes unattended they would be removed by staff: the staff we spoke to seemed to think this was a good idea. We asked them if they could remove personal effects but they replied in the negative. They did however confirm that we were perfectly entitled to remove personal items and utilise sun beds that had not been used for a while. One of the hotel's staff, Inbal, was one such person. She became slightly heated and unprofessional when we discussed this with her, however, so we asked to clarify the hotel's position with someone more senior. One of the managers, Oscar, told us the following: "This is Israel. When in Rome do as the Romans do: when in Israel act like the Israelis. You can remove their things and use the beds. Don't worry about it". Yesterday we carefully monitored a sun bed and upon realising that it had been vacant for more than an hour, we placed the sun towels and empty trash to one side and used the bed. An hour later when the owners of said items returned we politely informed them that we had placed the things on their bed to one side and asked a staff member to remove them and there was no problem at all - they moved to another bed.
Today we had a very different and wholly unpleasant experience. Exactly the same thing happened as yesterday. We noticed that a sun bed in a prime position had been vacant for more than one hour so we removed a baseball cap, some sunscreen and the used towels from it. Over an hour later a couple came back and flung fresh towels on the bed ordering us to leave it. We explained the situation calmly informing them what we had been told by the hotel's management. The gentleman threw himself on the bed between the two of us which was highly irresponsible given the current health pandemic. Security did absolutely to stop this episode. He started shouting along with his wife who accused us of stealing her money. She was outraged and threatened to call the Police and her lawyer. A manager who I did not recognise by the name of Moshe Kanias was witnessed all of this but did nothing. He stood by and quickly took the side of the majority. He asked people to stop shouting but shouted himself. The situation rapidly escalated and became extremely hostile. Other people in the vicinity began shouting at my husband and I. I do not speak much Hebrew but my husband later explained that they were being insulting and used homophobic slurs. We do not hold the hotel responsible for the appalling behaviour of its guests. What is totally unacceptable, however, is the way in which this matter was dealt with. The manager sided with the gang of people who were becoming angrier and more hostile by the minute. He asked us to leave the sun bed and stopped us from speaking to Inbal to confirm that she had informed us the day before that we could move people's personal effects. He repeatedly told us that no staff member would ever tell us we could move towels etc from someone's bed, implying we were lying. This was unacceptable so we felt compelled to check out of the hotel a day early as we could no longer bear the unpleasantness and negativity at this hotel.
On a separate note, very few people respected the clear no smoking signs. On our first day a gentleman on the adjacent sun bed was smoking marijuana next to his pregnant wife. We did not say anything. Today, a gentleman next to me smoked two cigarettes without my saying anything even though he was sitting right next to a no smoking sign. I asked Inbal whether people were allowed to smoke in the area in which we were sitting. She replied no and when I asked whether I should challenge him she said: "Welcome to Israel. Use some chutzpah!" When the guest in question returned from the pool and lit up a third cigarette I politely asked him to go to the smoking area. He told me he'd stayed at the hotel for five days and did exactly what he liked: if I didn't like it he advised me to move. I informed him I would fetch security who came over and very reluctantly asked him to stop smoking. He of course was one of the individuals who quickly became involved and hurled homophobic abuse at us.
We quickly packed and were checked out by Zvi who was clearly embarrassed and apologised profusely for what had happened.
One more thing: on two separate days our towels were removed from their hooks and were not replaced with fresh ones. We had to call down to request new towels. I have never experienced this in a hotel, let alone a five star one. I would not have mentioned this ordinarily but given our unfortunate experience at this hotel, in the interests of full disclosure, I have done so.
