Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik

The Hotel

Hotel Excelsior was opened in 1913 on the Ploce headland east of Dubrovnik's Old Town — at the time the most ambitious hotel project on the eastern Adriatic and a deliberate Habsburg-era statement that Dubrovnik (then Ragusa, in Austria-Hungary) belonged on the same circuit as Abbazia, Trieste and the Italian Riviera. The original Villa Odak structure was extended through the 1960s with a modernist sea-facing wing that almost doubled room count, and the property was acquired in the 2000s by the Dubrovnik-based group that now trades as Adriatic Luxury Hotels — the same group that today owns Villa Dubrovnik, the Grand Villa Argentina, the Hotel Bellevue and the Hotel Kazbek. Excelsior is the group's flagship and historically the city's most decorated address.

The 158 rooms and suites are split between the historic 1913 Villa Odak wing (with the named heritage suites — the most senior categories on the property) and the contemporary 1965 main building, where the southern elevation gives every room a balcony with a direct, framed view of the Old Town walls across the small Banje bay. Standard categories begin around 27–32 square metres; Premium Sea View rooms add the balcony as standard; Junior Suites and Deluxe Suites occupy the corner positions; the Imperial Suite, the Royal Suite and the Tito Suite (named for the Yugoslav president who occupied it) are the headline units in the historic wing, with the largest interior volumes on the property and the most direct walls-of-Dubrovnik views in the city. The overall stylistic register is contemporary with quiet historic gestures — gentler than a Belmond restoration, more polished than the post-Yugoslav neighbourhood average.

Food and beverage runs across four named outlets. Prora is the principal sea-view restaurant on the lowest terrace at the water's edge, with a Croatian-Mediterranean menu and the most directly framed sunset view of the Old Town walls of any restaurant in the city. Sensus Lounge runs the bar programme and the all-day menu in the historic ground-floor public rooms — including the cigar lounge and the long, often-photographed bar terrace. Abakus is the breakfast venue (the buffet is the most considered in Dubrovnik). Satori is the pan-Asian summer terrace, the city's reliable answer when guests have already been through the Croatian-Mediterranean repertoire twice. The Sensus Spa occupies the ground and lower-ground floors with an indoor pool, sauna and steam circuit, and treatment rooms looking through to the Adriatic.

The position is the singular proposition. Excelsior sits on the Frana Supila promenade — a five-minute walk along the seafront to the Ploce Gate (the eastern entrance to the Old Town), and the only Dubrovnik hotel from which the walls form the actual room view. The hotel's private sea-bathing platform on the rocks below the lobby is the city's most established hotel swim spot. The Adriatic Luxury Hotels service operation — concierge, butlers in the senior suites, the airport transfer programme — is the deepest in Croatia by some distance, and is the reason Excelsior continues to outperform newer competitors on every honest measure of repeat-guest behaviour. By any reasonable assessment, this is the best historic luxury hotel in Croatia and the most reliable single luxury booking on the Adriatic east of Venice.

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