Hotel Ambasador - Liburnia

This was our third and last hotel during our stay in Croatia (Istria and Krk), but unfortunately not the best. Let me begin this review by giving some positive feedback: - we had a room with a balcony and seaview. The view was just stunning, and the balcony a nice place to sit and watch over the sea. - the bed was good, as was the room itself (not taking about the bathroom, more about that later) - the breakfast was excellent. Lots of choice, eggs made à la minute, fresh produce... loved it! - if you found yourself a good spot by the sea on the beach, you could enjoy the scenery - personnel was friendly - you eat very good at Cubo, the fine dining restaurant. Very very good even (but there are other issues there) Now, why do I state that the Ambasador is not a 5-star hotel, although it is rated as a 5-star hotel? Well, there are some clear issues: a lack of oversight, no managerial direction, and no taking responsability. I'll give some examples: - by the poolside and at the beach it is clearly stated that smoking is forbidden. Everyone who wanted to smoke, smoked. Staff even handed out lighters and ashtrays. If you have rules, enforce them. - the sun loungers at the pool and at the beach had a tag that stated that seat reservation was not allowed. At 7am there were already hotel guests putting down towels to reserve seats. In the weekend this meant that by 8.30 half of the seats was already taken, whilst no one was on them. If you have rules, enforce them. - at breakfast, dirty plates were quickly taken away, but then lingered on carts in the middle of the breakfast area. In a proper 5star hotel, plates are immediately taken away to the kitchen to be washed. - we had a reservation at Cubo, the fine dining restaurant for our final night. We already had to come back 45min later because nobody of the staff (because there is no oversight by a maitre d') cared to check the reservations and there was no table for us or called ahead (they knew our room number) to say we could come a bit later. If you have a proper maitre d'h (which a fine dining restaurant should have), this would be taken care of. - And there were 2 big tables (5-6 people each) who where screaming, doing loud video calls, walking back and forth ... If you are a fine dining restaurant (not my words, those are the words of the hotel/restaurant itself) with a price tag that goes with fine dining, this is behaviour which you can simply not put up with and staff should intervene. Btw, the food itself is excellent at Cubo, they received 14/20 in Gault Millau and for the food that is well deserved. - the menus at the lunch restaurant: we had lunch 2 times by the pool side (the garden restaurant was closed - we don't know why). The menu was full of mistakes. E.g. one of the dishes promised grilled bell peppers and courgettes. There were no courgettes to be found on the plate, and the peppers weren't grilled. Another said that it came with burrata. Again, no burrata, but something that