We stayed 6 nights halfboard in the 3 * star Hotel Maestral on the car-free island of Prvic Luka, near Sibenik. The Time Out Croatia guide praised it a lot, but boy are they wrong!
The island is beautiful, the scenery lovely and the location of the hotel - a renovated former schoolbuilding - super. We had the best room of the hotel, with 5 windows and a magnificent view and paid quite a lot for that (=140 euro/night) - considering the region. We saw some of the other rooms in the house and they are pretty small.
It is such a shame and wasted opportunity the hotel is so bad: "stylish" here translates as 100% Ikea and the common areas have a distinct youth hostel feel. It is badly kept: in 6 nights, the sheets were NOT changed ONCE, there were hairs on the floors and hardly no cleaning of the (bath)room during our stay. The terrace smells of the sewer that flows directly into the sea and the food was VERY bad: never before have we been offered fishsticks with french fries and cornichons as salad, dessert wasn't included anyways! Extra side orders were unappropriate expensive (for example 20 kuna (= about 3 euro) for a handful of cooked potatoes - for Croatia VERY expensive); the a la carte prices were the most expensive ones compared to the 4 other restaurant we saw on the island, service was hardly friendly, with the only exception the guy responsible for the grill, Sascha, who was very nice.
Breakfast is served form 8-9.30 in the moring, quite early in our opinion for a holiday hotel.
The advertise having TV and Internet. Well, there is a TV in the room - but it only has HR 1 on it - all in Croatian - so that helps only if you understand Croatian. Internet is next to the reception, a very slow connection thats costs 1 kuna per minute - ridiculously expensive compared to internet café's in Zagreb or the classy 4* Hotel Park in Split, were we stayed as well.
The hotel caters to swimming & sailing groups so during 5 out of 6 nights of our stay there was a big group of 14-16 people around - and that is were all the attention goes to. We got a very second class guest feeling there, not only because of the food: the air conditioning was turned off the night there was no group in the hotel.
The prices they are charging are in NO relation to the value they are offering. We would never return and recommend for this pretty island to rent an appartment - there are plenty that seemed nice on wonderful locations.