Aqualux Hotel and Spa

We had an amazing stay at the Aqualux Hotel and Spa in Bardolino. It is clean, the staff are very polite and efficient and just made sure all our needs were met. The pools are all great and the room was lovely and clean. And the spa and treatments were great. All in all, I can’t fault it. I would definitely recommend it.

Stayed here for nine nights with my family and parents the only negative is that you can’t check in from 3 o’clock and we arrived at 11 o’clock in the morning and as it was hot we just sat around Paul area waiting for my check-in. All staff from reception restaurant pool and maids were very friendly and helpful the hotel grounds were well kept with plenty of sunbeds and umbrellas for everybody there was a large area of swimming pools so you never felt overcrowded. We were on a half-board option for breakfast and evening meal in the evenings we didn’t drink any alcohol but just had water without meals at no point was we advised that we had to pay for the water and after nine nights I’ve just bottled water at checkout we were given a bill for over €200 which was a little bit of a shock spend this amount of money on water. Bardolino the area where the hotel is is an amazing lovely town we can easily get boats to other surrounding lake Garda towns or a bus to Verona the area is very picturesque I would certainly recommend a visit here I would certainly like to return again

We stayed here for an extended weekend. First off, the positives: - the spa is absolutely incredible. If you come only for the spa then you won't be disappointed. So many pools, different treatment rooms and a really quiet spa area. You really feel relaxed and get to unwind. You get luxury bath robes to wear anywhere you want, a really useful "pool bag" which is really big and allows you to easily take everything you need down to the pool. Quick tip for anyone staying (as it took us at least 24 hours to figure it out): ALL of the pool features (waterfalls, jets, jacuzzi, lazy river) come with a red button to turn them on, but some of them are quite hidden so you have to look for them! - the staff are all extremely friendly, and the vast majority also speak English and German (the area is clearly very popular with German tourists) - the location is brilliant: it's around a 10 minute walk into Bardolino centre, and from there you can hop on a ferry to anywhere on Lake Garda really. - the interior courtyard is extremely well designed, so it packs a huge amount into a small space without it feeling small at all. You can be eating breakfast just a few metres away from the pool area but you're surrounded by water features and greenery so it feels like you're a world away. The walk to breakfast is beautiful with flowing waterfalls and lush greenery. - the hotel generally feels quite modern, with a few exceptions (see further down) The negatives - the room that we stayed in had stains on the ceiling from a previous leak and smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke. We raised this at the desk and requested a room change but we were only offered a "deep clean" by the cleaning team, which made no difference at all. I know smoking is a lot more normalised in Italy so I don't know if we weren't offered a room change because all of the rooms are similar, or because there weren't any other rooms available. It's obviously not a huge deal but I think if that's usual then they need to split the rooms into non-smoking/smoking rooms. - outside of the actual spa area, there are more families than you would probably expect from a "Spa Hotel" and this can ruin your experience at times in places like the pools, where you can be trying to relax on the jacuzzi beds only for 2 kids to start a water fight next to you! - the prices are a bit steep compared to the local town of Bardolino, which itself has tourist-level prices. Wine is one example, where you will pay €1-2 more per glass than you will at a wine bar or restaurant in Bardolino and you'll also get less wine in the actual glass than you will in town. - the immediate location of the hotel isn't great, which isn't really much of an issue unless you've got an outward looking balcony. That being said, the hotel have very cleverly planted trees and plants on some sides of the hotel so you still get a good level of privacy on these sides even if you're in an outward facing room. - More of a personal issue, but the staff had managed to get the bill wrong for our room and it meant that they had undercharged us by €200 and were trying to say they owed me €95 instead of us owing €105 which was what I knew was the correct amount. I had to spend about half an hour in total explaining to them why it was wrong and how it should be calculated properly. Obviously I could have just accepted the incorrect bill and it would have cost them €200 but I wanted to do the right thing, and then when it was finally settled I didn't even get as much as a thank you for highlighting their error. I felt good customer service in that scenario would have been to divide it down the middle and say there was nothing to pay on either side as a thank you for my honesty and time out of my holiday sorting their mistake. Overall the hotel was good and we had an enjoyable time, but it's starting to look a bit tired in places (many umbrellas were broken, for example) and it just fell that slight bit short of being the sort of place you would want to come back to again and again, but nonetheless would definitely be a place that I would happily recommend to friends. Hence why I feel that 4 stars is an absolutely spot on rating for our experience here. Thank you to all of the staff for an enjoyable stay!