We arrived 23 September and stayed 10 nights with breakfast. The hotel has its good points and also some bad points...

Location: Excellent. On the beach. About 10 mins walk into town with the medina, restaurants and cafes, or 5 mins walk along the beach.

Room: We were asked if we wanted to upgrade to sea view room for £100. This was reduced to £30 when we asked if £100 was the best offer. It was so worth it, beautiful location, large balcony with lovely view of sea and sunsets. Pleased with room, decorated tastefully, beds comfy, plenty storage and spacious. Everything worked! The maid changed our towels daily and made the beds and swept. She even changed my pillow to a flatter one as soon as she saw I had used a beach towel for a pillow, bless her.

Breakfast: Not bad, just a bit hit and miss (one day I could make my own Nescafe coffee, next day just a machine, one day juicy melon available but not the next). You need to like croissants!

Reception: Good, mostly approachable. Amel was especially friendly and helpful.

Beach: The hotel is right on the beach, fantastic! Rubbish on the beach - not fantastic! There is always a guy on beach duty, yet after we complained, their first answer to clearing the rubbish was to rake it into piles and pour sand over the top!! We complained again - second answer was to put rubbish in a wheelbarrow then tip wheelbarrow onto beach a few yards away on the beach next door!! We complained yet again (to a manager). The third answer was to put a few bits of rubbish into a black bag and dump the bag onto the beach the other side of us!! We couldn't believe how management could let this go on, the sea was clear and warm yet we were sitting in a tip.

Pool: I used this twice as it looked so inviting and fancied a swim. Perfect temperature but didn't use again as it didn't seem that clean. Tried the pool shower - completely rusted up and obviously out of use! Ditto the shower toilets - all locked up and forgotten about. Made me more wary about the water in the pool.

Hotel service: This was hit and miss and flavoured the whole holiday. We put this down to the fact that, by mid-week there were only us and one French lady in residence...mostly the waiters were quite sweet, but it seemed as if this made us insignificant, for example it became impossible to get a drink from the beach as all the waiters had disappeared and then they decided not to serve breakfast from the usual place on the beach but never bothered to tell us. By the end of our stay, it became an issue to get hold of sunbeds on the beach. We're sure none of this would have happened had the hotel been fuller.
The final insult was on our last day - they refused to serve us anything to eat at lunchtime when we'd planned to have at least a snack before our coach journey to the airport.

Summary: If management/staff took a bit more pride in their hotel and actually care about the wellbeing of the customer, it could be 4 star. It has so much potential to provide a wonderful stay if they paid attention to some of the basic needs, ie clean the pool, clean the beach - and listen to their clients!

We left Dar Hayet this morning (24 September 2011) and are surprised to find such generous reviews about it on Trip Advisor. The hotel is grubby and in real need of a revamp. The facilities are old and tatty - beach chairs broken and cushions torn. Our room was adequate but the bathroom was disgusting. The toilet leaked and every second day the towels appeared to have come from a 1 star hotel. This is after we had to change rooms - we were locked out of the first room 3 times because of the faulty lock. Much of this was fumbling in the dark because the lights did not work in the passage. We were given the option to upgrade but why? The room we had should have been of the same standard as the rest. We think a lot of people are booked into the hotels worst room in the hopes they will upgrade. The staff were friendly although we did have an incident of theft. The hotel is in a great location but the weekends are noisy and busy. The food was tasty and the restaurant service excellent. Overall we would not rate this hotel - it is in serious need of TLC.

We spent few days in this hotel at the end of June. The hotel is nice and the room was very nice with sea view. Some improvements such as serving a nice breakfast ( not the standard buffet you have in all hotels in tunisia) or cleaning the beach could do it. But the main downside is that every week end the beach is transformed into a disco with very loud music and clearly they want the hotel clients out of the beach to give space to their VIP clients... So we wont be back...

We live in Tunisia so going to Hammamet on the weekends is always a treat. We decided to stay that this hotel for two nights. When we arrived, we were not disappointed. I would classify this as a boutique hotel, very lovely design etc. We were given a wonderful room overlooking the beach. Friday night was lovely. Great dinner, great staff. However, Saturday night turned into an absolute nightmare! Without letting any of the guests know, the restaurant by the pool turned into a party room! The music was horribly loud and it went on until 5:00 am. I called reception twice to complain and was told that it would end at 4:00 am!!!! At 4:15, I could not take it anymore so I went down to the reception. On the way there I was shocked at what I saw - throughout the hotel, young people wandering the hallways, smoking, making out, drinking- had to step over broken glass and cigarette butts - I felt that I had moved to a 1 star hotel without my knowledge! I have to say I did feel bad about the poor staff as they were having to deal with all the complaints but were unable to do anything - seems the owner has decided to do this with total disregard to his paying guests and the neighbourhood) My friends and I informed the staff that we would never be back. I hope that the owner of the hotel reads this as he/she has basically brought the standard down completely just to accommodate one night of insanity! If you intend to book at this hotel, make sure you ask if there will be a private party on the Saturday night and then avoid it like the plaque.