COLONNA GRAND HOTEL CAPO TESTA, a Colonna Luxury Beach Hotel, Santa Teresa Sardegna

(The good) The position is excellent. The surrounding views are beautiful. The complex is well architectured and maintained. There are several swimming pools, very nicely arranged. Everything is very picturesque. The staff is helpful and friendly (with the notable exception of one of the barmen, who clearly is in the wrong business. I cannot tell you his name, because I never caught him wearing a name tag, like his colleagues did.) The room was serviced twice a day, towels systematically changed. The sea, if you find a place without algae, is indescribably beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. (The bad) But all this cannot compensate for major structural and functional shortcomings. The room was small. All the rooms they list on Booking.com are advertised as 21 square meters (sqm). Our room looked so small, we felt compelled to actually measure it. The room proper has 13 (thirteen!) sqm. Two people can barely pass each other between the bed and the walls. The "bathroom" was 1.7m x 1.7m, which amounts to about 2.9 sqm! In that space, they managed to cram a shower stall, a toilet, a bidet, a sink and a phone. The bathroom door cannot open properly, beacuse it hits the bidet. Reaching for the toilet paper when sitting on the toilet requires a certain skill and mobility. And, of course, if you want to take a shower, you better not be claustrophobic. On the 5th floor, if you want to shower when everybody else does (let's say, between 6 and 7pm), you'll have to be patient. The hot water becomnes a trickle of lukewarm water. However, you are "compensated" for this in the morning. Then, you have to let the COLD water flow for several minutes for it to not be HOT anymore. That, I had never seen before. The furnishing, installations and decoration of the room come directly from the '60s. Under the guise of "authenticity", the furniture is barely functional.

The image on Booking.com, which actually persuaded us to pay for a "deluxe" room, was the large balcony and its view. The reality is quite different (if I can, I'll post the advertising picture and the image of our actual balcony). There is exactly one room in the whole complex which has that balcony and view. You won't get it. The air conditionning too was from the '60s. An installation with a largely incomprehensible control panel which, even when set (with expert help) to "all-to-the-max", barely made a difference. The included Wi-Fi was variable: good near the door, inexistent on the balcony. It is quite incomprehensible how such infrastructure could honestly get a 5-star rating. I have stayed in 3-star hotels with better rooms. The whole sprawling complex is on a slope. You are constantly climbing up or down something. The beach is also sloped and narrow, with many loungers crammed in a small space. However you lie there, you feel the slope. The loungers have umbrellas with a small table and a little ashtray. That's it. There is nothing on the private beach: no toilet, no food, no drinks and, of course, no Wi-Fi. If you want any of this, you have to climb to the pool grounds (and it is an actual climb). The picturesque pool has, for the most part, a depth of around 60cm. There is a small area where it peaks at 1 meter. It is, essentially, a dip or wade pool; you can forget about swimming. But it looks terrific in selfies. The sun loungers are pretty hard. You get to cover them with beach towels, which are not quite long enough and certainly not thick enough to attenuate the lounger hardness. This is typical 3-star fare. The same loungers are in use at the pool and on the beach. All this is extremely overpriced. But this is not enough; there is some pettiness too: 2 euro for a Nespresso in the room, 10 euro for extras in a breakfast omelette!

The pool was ok

The room had a strange smell, everything is old and moldy even the furniture. The room view wasn t worth it, breakfast also very bad, not many options, old food.

Dejlig beliggenhed, fremragende og skønne faciliteter

Tutto bellissimo ! La simpatia e la cortesia di tutto il personale con la fantastica signora Lucia che ringrazio …

Le cialde del caffè a pagamento in camera non è da 5 stelle 😂

Lage sehr schön,

Zimmer in die Jahre gekommen und keine 5 Sterne wert, Essen Buffet mittelmäßig, insgesamt etwas enttäuschend und Preis Leistung stimmt nicht, viele alte Menschen..

Super Lage. Poolanlage und direkt am Meer

Essen und die Zimmer sind veraltet

Der Strand ist traumhaft und es is nicht viel los. Das Frühstück is vielfältig und es is für jeden etwas dabei.

Die Klimaanlage ist ziemlich laut und diese kann man leider nicht zur Gänze abschalten. Die Zimmer sind etwas in die Jahre gekommen.