Belisaire Hotel – Hammamet – Tunisia

We stayed at the Belisaire Hotel (Iberostar) in Hammamet for 2 weeks in October 2009. The hotel reception looks very nice when you arrive in the middle of the night, but as there’s no porter you end up taking your bags to the room yourselves. Myself and my hubby travelled with his brother & his & we had a room with interconnecting doors. The room was very clean & a maid came in every day to replace towels & sweep up etc. so no complaints there.

The dining room looks like a canteen from Butlins and the food is from a self-service buffet. Most times it was actually very tasty & we all found something to eat, but I have had better in other hotels in Tunisia. We were on a half board package holiday & it would’ve been nice for someone to tell us the bottle of water we had with our meal was extra rather than chase us out of the restauraunt waving their arms & yelling that we owed them two dinar!! It was very embarrassing.

The only other problem we had with the dining room were the ignorant diners from other countries that think they can push in & elbow you out of the way! This seemed to be the case throughout the whole hotel though, whether you were queing to change money or just waiting for drinks at the bar. There were even some holidaymakers who tried to pinch other people’s towels, which they then took back to get the deposit refund for them! Luckily a bunch of Brits managed to draw attention to it & stop them.

We normally go to hotels that are “adults only” but due to it being a last minute holiday we had to stay here. I would rather not have children running round me all day but I could put up with it. There were children who raced around the reception seating areas all evening screeching at the top of their lungs with no parents around.

We booked to go on the quad bikes from the hotel but don’t bother - we demanded all our money back. Riding along with dead animals either side of the trail is not my idea of a nice drive & it’s even worse when they leave you stranded for 45 minutes because they forget to send a car to pick you up!

However, our rep (Becki) was great and she couldn’t do enough for you. She even sorted out the hotel photographer who said we had to buy a minimum of 6 photos! You can buy as many or as few as you want but he just tries it on and gets nasty when you pull him up on it.

Oh and beware of the noddy train! It costs 3 dinar one way, 5 dinar return but we caught them charging some older people 15 dinar each! They also will drive round the same area for two hours till the train is full! not funny at all when it’s cold.

I hope you have a good time if you go but we wouldn’t return to this hotel.