Lantana Resort Hotel & Apartments

The hotel, facilities and staff are amazing. We were a party of 8 (2 x families of 4) and we all loved our stay. The pool is the heart of the hotel and really is excellent. Never an issue getting sun loungers for 8 of us and it was peak season too. The hotel is immaculate and well maintained by a very hard working team. The gardens are beautifully kept. The reception team all speak many languages and were so helpful and friendly. We ate there several times for breakfast, lunch and evening meals and the food was of a high standard. Although not an issue with the hotel, we did have a few challenges (or maybe helpful observations for future guests?): Food shops - the choice is limited, but the closest (Silas) had most of what we needed. Restaurants in the town - about a 20 min walk. A challenge was that due to being peak season and an Italian bank holiday during our stay, it proved difficult to find restaurants in the main town square. We appreciated we were a large group, but we did try to book early in our stay for remaining evenings, but were told in almost all cases that they were fully booked for weeks. Being honest we sensed that the restaurants in the main square just wanted Italian customers. As a result we found restaurants slightly away from the main square. I would recommend Monang Steak house (see separate review). Beaches - they were extremely busy (again noting the Italian holiday) with sunbeds being really expensive to hire (around 80 - 100Euros for 4). The hotel do a shuttle to Nora, the beach is pleasant enough. It takes about 20mins to walk there. Chia is worth a visit, but note as it is a nature reserve it has no running water, so no toilets. You have to walk about 500m back to the car park area where you need to pay to use the facilities. Carhire - we arranged car hire through the hotel ahead of the holiday. The car hire company let us down (no fault of the hotel) and we decided to not have a car in the end. On balance that proved to be fine. It would have been useful for some food shopping, but we made do. We decided to use taxis to get us to different beaches and this turned out to be a lot cheaper than having the car. It did mean we didn’t explore the area, but with the heat we were happy to be by the pool. All in all a great holiday. I’ve reflected on if I’d return and I think the answer is “no”. The hotel is excellent (hence the 5 star score), but as we’re constrained by school holidays we couldn’t return at another time to avoid the general busyness in the wider resort / beaches that was challenge at times