Serenity Cottage in Anna Maria

This is a fabulous property in a great location on AMI, with a huge pool and great facilities - although it all comes at a hefty price tag for which you'd be justifed in expecting everything to be perfect.

Unfortunately the rental agent was close to useless, and almost impossible to contact - they rely on an automated SMS reply service which they don't appear to know how to use, meaning we recieved multiple repeated messages which contained inaccurate information, and really struggled to get them to respond to the issues we had. We'd stayed at this property a couple of years ago soon after it came onto the market, and it seems since then that very little maintainance or replacement or worn out items has been done - there are less pool loungers, their padded covers have disappeared, the ice machine in the outside kitchen was missing, various lights did not work, towels rails in the bathoom were falling off the vanity unit, crockery and utensils were in short supply and worst of all the door to the property simply doesn't lock!! When we finally got the maintainance guy round he said it had been like that for more than a year but not to worry as "it's a nice neighbourhood" ! The info on Booking.com for this property is also sloppily inaccurate - the agent appears to have done a "cut and paste" job lifted from a hotel listing - this is a stand alone apartment, so it (of course...) doesn't have horse riding, a Fitness Centre, a sea view, an ATM on site, a Tour desk and it is on AMI, not "situated 600 metres from Anna Maria Island". Having looked after our stay there seem to be similar comments about this property on other online booking sites too, so it's not just us thinking this.

The property was very nice. Beautiful facilities. Loved the canal and kayaks and how close it was to the beach. It should be noted that it is a large mini fridge, not a full sized fridge with freezer.

The management company (Anna Maria Beach Island Rentals) was not responsive and terrible. Had issues with the pool filter and heater (not working) and hot tub (not hot) that were not addressed. Also tiny freezer (top of mini fridge) was unusable so no freezer space and/or ice.