Active & Family Hotel Gioiosa

We had a great stay at Hotel Gioiosa! We booked the Panorama Ibisco room and it was super spacious and very clean and comfortable. The lake view wasn't all that special (the hotel is quite a distance away) but we loved our outdoor space regardless. The staff is friendly and fluent in Italian, English and German. Breakfast is phenomenal, the pool and grounds are beautiful, and there's a good amount of parking. There were a lot of families (as you might expect from the name of the hotel), but as a couple on our own we still had a great time. We would love to return (and next time we'll make time to check out the hammam!).

The hotel and staff are actually fantastic. Rooms are approriately equiped for a good family stay, food is top quality both for breakfast and dinner, service is great without being annoying. The only downside is that you are too far away and up the hill to enjoy roaming around on foot.

I'll kick off by saying this hotel is for a very specific type of tourist, which is fine if that's what you're looking for, but it doesn't deal at all well with guests who don't necessarily want to follow a set agenda of when to eat, play, travel and sleep. It's also geared very heavily towards German speakers. The staff do cater for other languages but not nearly so well. This led to us not really knowing what was on offer to us and we missed out on a few things we could have taken advantage of. I'm not entirely sure how kid friendly they are either. One of the staff full-on yelled at my kids for spinning round in the chair by reception while I was trying to read the local tourist guide. They were extremely wary around her after that. The rooms were ok but small (we had a family comfort room) so expect to have to tiptoe around if your kids fall asleep before you. And all outside lights are turned out by 11pm (there are no private lights on the balconies) so, again, you'll be sitting in the dark outside if you want to enjoy a glass of wine after that. Finally, it's a bit outside Riva Del Garda (10 - 15 minute drive). Again, that's ok if you plan to centre yourself around the hotel the whole time (which seems to be the idea) but not ideal if you plan to spend a bit of time enjoying the fantastic food and events that are available in town. At €320 a night, it's also very overpriced for what it is, whichever way you look at it. None of this ruined our holiday - Lake Garda is a beautiful place and there's loads of stuff to do. But this hotel really didn't live up to expectations at all. Pity.