We were quite disappointed by this hotel having seen the amazing website and read the reviews. We were not upgraded, so I don't know if that influenced our impression, as we found the room to be quite dark and poky. The shower was also very temperamental, alternating from freezing cold to scalding hot. Also, many of the advertised services on the website such as the beauty service, day tours and extra restaurant were not available, with little explanation and no alternative provided. Dinner was 45 euros a head, so we did not avail ourselves of this option.

The good points about the hotel were definitely the private beach, pool, and the location. Procchio is beautiful and it was very relaxing having aperitivi by the pool, served by the very hard-working and efficient pool staff. The maid service was also very reliable and the room was kept very clean. The wifi was temperamental but I could use it at times. Breakfast was OK, however I found a lot of the cakes to be quite dry.

Now to the very bad points... having stayed at the Magellan resort in Malaysia, my standards in beach resorts is quite high, so I was quite shocked that the hotel charged us a fee to wash our beach towels. We were told to keep the one set and charged for a cleaning fee at the end anyway. I can appreciate the need to be environmentally friendly but I think the first set should have been provided for free.

The thing that really ticked me off however is on the last day we got up extra early as we wanted to catch an early ferry off the island to move onto our next destination (around a 6 hour journey). We arrived at the check-out desk to be told simply that the receptionist on duty did not have the password for the computer (yes computer says no) and that we would have to wait until 8am to check-out. This meant that we would miss the 7.23 bus which we had planned to take and bought tickets for. On principle, neither of us wanted to catch a cab as we had planned to take the bus, on top of the fact that a bus on Elba is as direct as a cab, except a cab costs 30 euros one way! I said to the receptionist that as we would miss the bus, the next one wouldn't be until some time past 9! He drew out a timetable and said that no, the next one was at 8.43, meaning we could still catch the 9.40 ferry off the island. I pointed out the fact the timetable was one day old but he insisted it would continue... of course most resorts would have offered a shuttle service at this stage, however he simply said he could call me a taxi later, or I could go check the times on the bus stop outside the hotel (all the bus stop signs on Elba had conflicting and at times indecipherable information). Needless to say, I was right about the times, after check-out we spent close to a fruitless hour waiting for a 9.18 bus, which was late, and we missed the 9.40 ferry by minutes. We then wasted more time waiting for an 11.00 ferry, which meant the rest of our day was wasted travelling. I think this is particularly disgraceful as being able to check-out when we want to seems to me to be a fairly basic service.