We stayed at Skanes Club Garden but prior to departure we read the reviews on this hotel and thought that we had made a terrible mistake!!However the following points may help other holidaymakers:

On arrival at 2300 the reception staff could not have been more helpful. The room was clean tidy and well appointed. A safe is available for rent. The air conditioning worked really well and was used every day!

We found the hotel to be very clean and tidy with just a HINT of the sewage smell if you stood next to the sewer in the heat of the midday sun with the wind in the wrong direction!!

Yes the dining room is buffet style.
The food was fine with something for everyone even my wife ate well and she is really fussy but you are in Tunisia and some of the food is spicy but if you dont like it choose another dish! The sweet desserts were very good. There was not the plague of flies we were led to believe we only saw about a dozen during our two week stay.

The hotel is right on the beach and is just excellent for chilling out. It is in the middle of nowhere but a short and cheap taxi ride will get you to Sousse or Monastir and all the hassle you could ever want!

We found the hotel staff to be pleasent friendly people who responded well to a smile and please and thankyou. They had to put up with some really rude and bullish guests but always managed a smile. We got to know the deputy manager who was a really nice man who would sort anything out for you if he could.

The entertainers worked their hearts out to make sure the children were kept busy. Yes the evening childrens show is the same every night but they all knew the words and dance steps and would wait patiently for it to start. Later entertainment was different every night.

My wife and I liked this hotel so much we WILL return as soon as we can.

So to recap:
It is hot and sunny so if you dont like the heat dont go.
The food is basic and plentiful but some of it is spicy
if you dont like it choose something else.
If you want to be in the middle of a bustling community this hotel is not for you.
Great staff that always had a smile for you.

Well where do I start?? Shambles waste of hard earned money...
I found our room was very clean it was cleaned on a daily basis to a very good standard. The maids worked very hard and are an asset to the hotel. As for the communal toilets and restraunts they were an utter disgrace toilets were filthy mainly the beachside toilets I ended up walking back to my room each time I needed to go.

Poolside cleaned each morning which is nice to know.
If you

Please take heed and do not go here. The food is awful - cold, chewy and repetitive. The flies swarm around the restaurant but add interest to the 20 min wait in line for all food. We lived off bread or ate out for the last few days as we both lost several days with stomach bugs.

You queue for drinks and then get a small plastic cup of beer, so you queue again. You will never get drunk and the choice of alcoholic beverages is very limited.

The toilets require a lot to be desired, ones close to the bar, and smelt of raw sewage.

The rooms were OK, and the maid was excellent.

Entertainment was very childish and amateur, although the guys did try very hard and were full of enthusiasm.

Skanes Gardens (pronounced SKANNAS)

If Skanes had a McDonalds the question would be: "Would you like flies with that?

We stayed at club skanes gardens in monastir; I found it was a nice hotel, with nice pleasant staff, right on the beach. The hotel food was pretty good though a bit repetitive, I would definitely stay at this hotel again. Also everyone we spoke to on our return home said they were more than happy with the hotel.

The hotel its self was really nice, rooms big and very clean. satellite tv as dicribed only two channels and could not understand anythink. but the food was awful maybe you might like spaghetti every night! the meat was too cold and grisly. tables was always dirty and never set with cutlery. should be three bars open, only one was open at night and only one or two bar staff. the queues was long and getting longer, no way can you get drunk on this holiday. the staff was freindly and helpfully the enterainment was ok could have been better the entertainment staff worked very hard all day and night. there is no way i would go to this hotel again if you paid me.

The rooms were very clean and practically furnished. The standard of cleaning in the rooms was excellent.

The standard of cleanliness in the communal areas often left much to be desired. In particular the dining room was very poor. Shortly into the sitting for each meal, cutlerly and crockery was scarce and was replaced only occassionally. Tables were not cleaned unless requested. There was always a large number of flies in the dining hall, these were on the tables and also on the food in the buffet, granted this is always going to be a problem, but there was absolutly no evidence of any effort being made to reduce the number of flies, this really put us off the food to be honest.

The food itself was ok, but got very repetetive throughout the week, and vegetarians would find it difficult on all but the occaisional day!

The staff in the hotel varied. In particular, the guys in the bars, especially the main evening bar deserve thorough praise. There were too few of them, who worked extremely hard to keep up with the queues, which at times were terrible. Also the maids did a very good job and were always pleasant. If up to me these guys would be running the hotel!!! On the other hand, the staff effort in the dining room was not too good, see previous comments about lack of facilities, cutlery etc. At one point I had to queue over 15 minutes to get a coffee at breakfast!!!
The service at meal times was just not acceptable.

The location was good for its proximity to the beach, but anything else requires a trip to at least Sousse or Monastir, ok its only a cheap short taxi ride, but it meant that you are at the mercy of the hotels facilities much of the time, and frankly they just do not cut it!!! There is a small town nearby called 'Sahline' but this offers very little other than a few small shops and a metro train line to the other main cities ( quite handy though)

We didn't really make much use of the entertainment, mainly because we just wanted to get away from the hotel. From what we saw however, the entertainment staff seemed to work hard, but it wasn't really our kind of thing and to be honest much of what we saw was a bit on the amatuerish side. They did seem popular with the children however. The music was also very loud at times and could also be heard right at the bottom of the beach! So think carefully.

In all, we couldn't honestly recommend this hotel. it probably to be fair wasn't to our tastes, but the levels of cleanliness in certain areas, incuding toilets and dining room (see above) and the questionable service, in our opinion, would be sufficient to urge anybody considerinbg a trip to think carefully and probably consider a different hotel.

The rooms were very clean and comfortable, the maids worked very hard at keeping them like this. One nice aspect that stood out was how the bed sheets and nightwear were folded into different shapes and decorated with flowers; we thought this was a nice touch.
Now for the bad part! Where do we start, flies in the restaurant, school dinner queues for everything (well us brits queued!) Constantly asking for cutlery, glasses and the fact that you certainly didn

We stayed on an all inclusive option as with kids it is usually the best value for money. Food was passable but by the end of the second week we were fed up of it. I love meat, but it was on the menu every day and cooked in spices (we all had the funny tummy syndrome!!) Breakfast was appalling no variety at all and you are ok if you like coissants, frankfurter sausages (cold!) and tomatoes. no full english here cos the Tunisians are Muslims they dont do pork apparantley even though it was on the menu at night time!!
The hotel was very clean and all staff were friendly especially when they got to know you.
The reps (all Tunisian) were excellent and they made out holiday. They was nothing they wouldnt do to make our time there fun and we laughed daily with all of them. My daughter, aged 9, fell in love with the DJ and he took her for lunch on a few occassions!! he didnt have to at all but wanted to
They do a bingo night every 2 nights and that could take a while as they have to shout it in about 5 different languages but when you've had alcohol it makes it less painfull. We won loads of prizes including paragliding,banana boat, horse riding and a camel. The best part of the hotel was the swimming pool. It was spotless and regularly cleaned and checked.
The hotel had recently been taken over and they were very willing to listen to ideas to make it a better place. We would go back again in a few years to see if they have managed it!!

The hotel was not the cleanest but passable room ok although some had awful smell of sewerage. They will soon move you if you complain.

The food was awful, poor quality, repetitive, poor choice, cold (there was a microwave we were told, when we complained, to heat food in)nothing for kids, although the manager agreed to have one meal a day cooked especially for the kids, i.e. burgers, but it was only for our group and had to be requested at the meal time. Queues for everthing all the time, like the second world war.

There was an open sewer between the beach bar and hotel restaurant which was frquented by many flies which I imagine visited the snack bar and restaurant that were very close by.

We all had digestive upsets lasting about 2 days with constant loose bowels. There were flies on everything, epecially the uncoverd foods like cheese, salad, the only cold meat which was spam, open bowls of yoghurt, preserves, fruit and desserts.

Food recycled, leftover lunch appeared at dinner etc., we mainly lived on french sticks and melon. Drinks either too stong or well watered in restaurant, no chilled wine, beer ok, fizzy drinks tasted strange and were often flat and warm. Poor choice of drinks, we bought from the shop along with snacks as we were hungry.

Staff mostly ok but the males can be predetory with the young females. Entertainment, dont bother, childish, amaturish and repetative, only one act brought in during fornight and they were poor.

Loud music, always same cd's, kids entertinment same every night. The entertainment team worked very hard with no props or skills in their work, although they really tried (under impossible circumstances) and had lots of enthusiasm.

Swimming pool ok except the underwater lighting kept falling out. The life guard was either sunbathing or chatting to young female quests, didnt look at pool very much.The grounds of the hotel were like a scrubland and poorly maintained, weeds everywhere. Hotel isolated, nothing there at all. My advice, dont go here.