Mar Hotel Alimuri - Sorrento, Italy 

We stayed 3 nights at this hotel as part of a driving tour through Italy and Sicily. The hotel was easy to drive to, there are lots of road signs through Meta and we parked our car in the hotel's secured car park for free. The hotel location is very good, with a small beach and lovely views over the sea and frequent buses into Sorrento. We booked a room with a balcony and seaview and it was lovely hearing the waves and getting the cool sea breeze at night. The air conditioning in the room wasn't very effective. We had a problem in that there was no hot water and it took far too long to sort out. In the end we were given the key to another room, which we found to be smaller than the one we'd paid for, with a smaller bathroom, no bath and tiny balcony. So, rather than moving we used the shower in the other room until the hot water was restored , which we found had been done when we arrived back the following evening. We ate dinner at the hotel on the evening of our arrival and the restaurant staff were friendly and efficient. There was a fixed type menu with a couple of choices, the dinner was OK, nothing special, although it was quite good value. We had breakfast each morning and that was fairly basic. The hotel has a really nice pool and we enjoyed using that and sitting round the pool drinking a nice bottle of wine from the bar. However, there isn't any shade to be had. There were a couple of umbrella stands, but no umbrellas. We asked the beach staff if we could bring an umbrella up (it is just a few steps up to the pool from the hotel's private beach), but they wouldn't let us! We used the good local bus and train services to go into Sorrento and to visit Pompeii and Positano. The bus to Sorrento stops just up the road outside the hotel. We got the bus from outside Sorrento train station into Positano and the last ferry boat back to Sorrento at 7pm, which was great for seeing the views on the way down to Positano and then seeing the coastline on the way back. We found 'The Foreigner's Club' in Sorrento, which although serves basic type food, has a lovely terrace with wonderful views. Its nice for lunch and great for evening cocktails. There is also an excellent tourist office in The Foreigner's Club, we got lots of information from the staff. Overall, the hotel's location was the best thing for us as we did not want to drive our car into the centre of Sorrento. We also appreciated the proximity to the coastline, the sea views and we liked the swimmng pool. A little more service-orientated attitude from the staff would really improve this hotel, although we do feel it is well priced.

Just got back after a long weekend stay with 2 other girlfriends. We firstly were unimpressed with the taxi driver who charged us 120 euros to take us to this hotel - and then asked for a tip! Arrived in the grand looking lobby - but the recpetion staff looked miserable and not at all welcoming. The hotel itself was smart and in a good location on the beach - most hotels around here do not have beach frontage. There was a really great man who got us each a bed and towels each day. The breakfast was REALLY disappointing - with all those fresh oranges grown locally - we could not believe there was only plastic juice available and the cake/crossiants were stale. There was a great friendly head waiter in the restaurant called Beppe? (I think) - he was the hotels asset...really helpful - THANKS Beppe! There was an even nicer ...younger barman (Favio) he brightend up our trip! Very good local restaurant that we went to and was clearly used by the locals. The health farm was a bit diappointing - not very good at manicures - although I had a hot stone massage which was very relaxing.