Le Meridien Lav

Very overpriced and certainly not a five star experience. We stayed for a week in July and were extremely disappointed. I've summarised some key gripes below. It may sound nit-picky, however, for an expensive property marketed as a five star hotel, we were expecting better. Firstly, the photos are arguably misleading. They feature a lot of photos of the Gooshter beach club area, which is lovely. However, this area is tiny relative to the size of the hotel. If you wish to get a spot on one of these sun loungers, you'd better be willing to get up at 7am. The other pool/beach area is furnished with uncomfortable plastic loungers - not a crime but certainly not what you expect from a 5 star hotel. Breakfast was also disappointing. Nothing terrible, but again missing the touches which make it feel 5 star. The space in which to eat breakfast outdoors was very small and despite getting up early we only managed to get a spot on the terrace once in the week. By way of food, there were no fresh juices and no cooked-to-order breakfast menu items. The coffee came from a machine, rather than being freshly made, and a coffee I ordered with alternative milk came lumpy. The rooms were fine, but nothing special. We were in the older wing of the hotel and would certainly recommend a marina room which may be better. The hotel is aging (arguably outdated) and overall a disappointing offering. The location is a significant taxi journey from the centre of Split and taxi scams are rife in the area. A better holiday can be had elsewhere and this hotel is a tired four star at best.

The location isn't great, being well outside of town and with nothing of much interest in the immediate vicinity. It took a 24-minute ride with Bolt costing 29.30€ to get here from the airport at around 22:00 on a Tuesday. The return at noon on Thursday took 27 minutes and cost 26€. The room was decent - spacious, with a large, comfortable bed, places to sit and a separate shower stall and a bathtub. No complaints here. The view was of a lot of boats in the foreground and the Adriatic beyond. Breakfast however was poor, at least for me. There were no potatoes in any form and nothing that would have substituted for them, despite the fact that they had four or five meat dishes. And while they had sauteed mushrooms on offer both days, on one day the dish meant for them was empty and not replenished for the duration of my breakfast. They have an omelette station and I would have happily had some fried eggs, but it turned out that they fry the eggs in butter, so that was not an option (the person staffing the egg station did not suggest oil). The grapes had seeds and the pineapple looked both mornings like it had spent a hot day under the sun. My breakfast on both mornings consisted solely of the cold grilled eggplant, zucchini and peppers with some fruit. The gym, which is far away from the rooms (try three elevator rides and walking through the lobby, right past the reception) is good or even very good (not great) in terms of equipment, and there are many different sorts of saunas/steam baths. Unfortunately, the gym has very limited opening hours. The hotel said they could get me access at any hour, but I didn't put this to the test and would prefer not to have to ask to be allowed to enter. Another major drawback related to the fact that the gym sells memberships externally is the clientele, which appears to consist exclusively of males aged 20 to 35. I didn't see one female or older person using the gym or sauna or steam room, and can imagine they wouldn't want to. For that matter, I don't think anyone else was even a hotel guest. Can't a hotel like the Meridien provide gym facilities exclusively for the use of hotel guests? Apparently not. There was no executive lounge, the excuse being that "we're a resort". If I return to Split, I would not rush to stay here again, but wouldn't rule it out.