Secrets Sunny Beach Resort & Spa

Good holiday overall a hotel that could get better. Stayed here for 14 days in club preference. The lounge has no windows and is a bit depressing. no outside area for club preferance and most outside seating is smoking. Guests vape in non smocking area and people remove cushions so you can't get a seat as none avaliable unless you sit on metal bars. Rooms a good size and well maintained our cleaner was great and serviced the Room to our preferences. Views are excellent over the bay. Food. Was good and a good mix only comment is it could be hotter. Club preference towels have to be left in room and can't be changed at towel station which was a pain. To be honest I Question if it's worth it as nobody ever checks you are in club preferance room and can use areas reserved for them Great Beach but lack facilities as no bar area you need to go through a turnstile clime steep stairs to get a Drink and toilets need improving. To many Deams Guests try sitting on the beach and have to get removed but you still end up with children on the beach at times. The hotel overall is to a good standard and staff are friendly and helpful. Drinks are of a good Quality. Bar staff helpful and coffee shop open all day.

We had such a wonderful holiday here last year close to perfect that we couldn’t wait to book again for this year. What a difference! The few little extra touches that we appreciated last year have all gone. The mini fridge near the pool area where you could get a water or soft drinks has gone. Now you either have to walk around the large pool area or go through the swim up bar, as someone who is not confident in water not ideal. Last year if you entered the preferred section of the pool and you hadn’t got the orange towels you were asked to leave, not this year however anyone can sit wherever they like. Although the food was plentiful it wasn’t very hot, I had an upset stomach for 3 days which wasn’t ideal. If you are considering this hotel for your next holiday I would advise not to pay the extra for preferred as others have said, save your money.

We are currently holidaying at Secrets Sunny Beach, travelling with Jet2 and have been here for six nights so far. First impressions are of a clean, modern, efficient, well-kept establishment. We opted to pay extra for the Privilege Package which supposedly gives you a number of benefits. Really, don’t bother, it’s so not worth it. All you get is a bag with two orange towels that you can’t keep. The Privilege areas are just the same as everywhere else. There are cabanas but there are no mattresses so you lie on uncomfortable wooden slats. You get access to the Privilege lobby. A dark place with drinks and snacks, that you can get elsewhere in the hotel. All the rooms in the hotel face the sea, so no matter which floor you are on, you will get a great sea-view. The rooms are great. Spacious, huge beds, loads of pillows, seating area, walk-in shower and a large balcony area. The mini bar is replenished every day with soft drinks and a couple of cans of beer. We found ourselves on the 13th floor. Great views, but the downside is trying to get back down to civilisation. The lifts have obviously been programmed for maximum efficiency. Unfortunately, this means at busy times you can wait up to ten minutes to get a lift. The pools are great and well-kept, but we encountered a brand new phenomenon to us. There are plenty of sun beds and parasols, but there is a severe scarcity of the pins needed to keep the parasols open. A few still have the pins attached but you have to do a search to find these. Otherwise, no luck. Reception advised us to ask at the pool, but they didn’t have any. So if you value not getting sun-burned, maybe you have to stay in the shade of the upper terrace (which is very nice). A better solution would be to supply pins to keep the parasols open. Surely this isn’t going to break the budget. Our biggest issue is dining. What a stress-fest. At breakfast, just getting a coffee is an ordeal. There is one coffee machine which usually has a queue of about ten people waiting. It takes about a minute for the machine to make a cup, so it’s usually a ten minute wait just to get a coffee. For goodness sake, in most hotels, it’s one of the first and most basic things that’s offered to you as you sit down. Not here. No one offers anything as you sit down. Lunch and dinner are no better. It really is a mob scene. I have no idea how unpleasant it will be here when the hotel is busy as it’s chaos just now, during this quieter period. Oh, if you want a drink with your meal, cross your fingers. Today was the first time we were served a drink. Since we arrived, lunch or evening meal, no one has offered a drink. After waiting twenty minutes, if you try to serve yourself in the restaurant, you are told this is not allowed. We have taken to going to the lobby bar beforehand to get a glass of wine to enjoy with our meal. It saves the unpleasantness. On speaking to reception I was advised to speak to the restaurant and pool staff, who are very positive and friendly, but nothing changes. The staff do seem to work hard and for the most part are friendly and helpful. This hotel has a lot of potential, is in a super location and could be really good, but it’s not there yet.

What a beautiful hotel! Great location - right on the beach. Rooms are lovely - very spacious and beautiful views. Staff friendly and helpful. Able to walk all the way to Nessebar on the beach - just under 5 miles but got the bus back! Highly recommend the Old Sailor there - beautiful mussels and garlic bread with good service and reasonably priced. Food was good in hotel - ate in the fish and Italian a la carte restaurants.

First visit to ‘Secrets’ which technically, perhaps unfortunately, has a ‘Sunny Beach’ address but I prefer to associate it with Sveti Vlas, a small Beach town, a short distance away. I have submitted 363 reviews on Tripadvisor over the years, and this is the best all round hotel resort experience we have had. The resort only opens for the season on the 1st May and runs through to end of November each year. We went on the 16th of May, so the hotel was quiet, and the spectacular outdoor pools were too cold for most but not for some. We were so impressed that we have already booked for 2026, but a little later in the middle of June next time. We had room 927 and we were booked in as a ‘preferred guest’ with an upgraded room. The room on the 9th Floor had a fabulous balcony view right across to Old Nessebar and down along Sunny Beach itself. The bed in the hotel room was enormous, I estimate at least 7ft wide. Quality mattress and bedding. Our chambermaid, ‘Neffi’ was lovely, despite the language issue, we wanted for nothing. The room was spotless every morning by the time we got back from breakfast. I managed to converse with here using a translation app on my phone and she gave use a big hug when we said goodbye. So, we want room 927 again next year hopefully with ‘Neffi’ looking after us. As a preferred guest you get access to special use of areas of the pool and the Hotel private beach. Guest reviews have said the preferred guest upgrade was not worth it or they were disappointed with it. I thought it was worth it primarily because I used the preferred guest private lounge as it had the best Coffee machine and was a place to hide away. The branded spirits on optics were help yourself and you could have a basic breakfast in there rather than the main Market Café buffet restaurant. Preferred Guests also had a small, reserved dining section in the main Market Café. I found all the staff to be most polite and attentive. Even with occasional language issues they always smiled. The service was excellent, when one plate was used… say for a salad or soup and you went back up to the Buffet… it was gone by the time you got back to your table with more food. The Buffet selection was excellent…. If you cannot find something in the various food sections, you fancy… then its time you went to “Specsavers”. Some nights are themed, and my favourite was the Italian night. I love Mussels, Langoustines and Squid. Drinks service at the table was prompt with a good selection of Red, Rose and White Bulgarian wines. The local draught beer was excellent. Requests for a top up were dealt with immediately. Entertainment in the Night Club was enjoyable; the talent and variety of shows was ok. I am not a gym person so I did not use the health spa, personal treatments or facilities. There is an indoor heated pool. There is a hotel shop on the lower ground floor at -1 level. It was disappointing as it could have sold a bigger range of stock. It did not sell basic paracetamol or any pain killers for example. My wife wanted some throat pastilles, but they sold nothing like that or what I would call holiday basics. This hotel areas on all areas and floors we saw were spotlessly clean…. Every general use WC was always immaculate. everything worked. All the pools were in beautiful, clean condition. The staff are constantly working, gardening, polishing. At 6 in the morning from my balcony, I watched cleaning staff, going over every inch of the substantial pool areas removing any seagull droppings from the pool area. There are two uniformed lifeguards on duty every day, one at the main pool and one on the hotel private beach. I noticed from other previous reviews, complaints about the lifts. They run from -1 floor to 12 or even 13. Delays to lifts were caused by guests pressing all 4 of the lift buttons from whatever floor they were standing on. Instead of reading which lift was closest to your current floor and pressing that one and that one alone, guests were pressing all of the buttons on many floors causing multiple delays and unnecessary stops. Some guests mentioned the odd odour of sewerage occasionally in ground floor areas. I never smelt anything like that at all. Having enthused about almost everything in the Hotel, I do have a couple of observations about a couple of minor things that could be addressed and could be worse when the hotel is at full capacity. (1) Warm food and Cold plates, you do have to search for a moderately warm plate in buffet restaurant areas at the various service stations. The majority are cold plates. Every corporate hotel knows that hot food must go with hot plates. The lack of hot plates let the Market Café and Barefoot Grill down and to be honest it was made worse by the fact that a lot of the hot food at stations was lukewarm. So, by the time you got back to your table the food was cold. The same with hot drinks- warm not hot except in the preferred lounge where the coffee machine provided a hotter drink. (2) Speciality Restaurants.. These are booked up very quick at start of any stay… We got a table at the Portofino Italian restaurant… it’s included in the holiday price so no supplement. Service is indifferent and nowhere near as good as the Market Café or Barefoot Grill buffets…. It was a lacklustre menu, food warm not hot…. if I wanted to eat a slice of Margarita Pizza… I would have eaten in the Market Café main restaurant and not as a main dish the Portofino. I asked for a glass of wine to go with my main course and the brusque waiter asked if I was unhappy with my Gin and Tonic. I had to explain that the Gin and Tonic was an aperitif before the main meal. My recommendation to the hotel is upgrade the speciality restaurants… in quality of food and service… and charge a supplement. Ditch one of the restaurants and replace it with a good Steak restaurant providing ribs, steaks, langoustines etc. It would sell well as there would be nowhere else near the hotel to compete. The Portofino restaurant was disappointing, and it was simply not worth me putting on a smart linen suit and decent shirt. I will not be trying any of the speciality restaurants in 2026 when I visit again. Finally, the Staff are one of the most important factors in a successful hotel. I found all staff including supervisors to be ‘simply the best’ I have ever met. The hotel must make sure it keeps them happy as it ensures staff retainment and performance.