Umag hits visitors in the face with its huge modern hotels, concrete beach, and banners everywhere advertising the city's annual international ATP Croatia Open tennis tournament, festivals, concerts, and even restaurants. The crowded waterfront shops look more like bus station concessions than resort boutiques, and the atmosphere shouts "vacation package deal." Savudrija, on the other hand, is a hard-to-find, lazy, rural village on the sea with nothing but vineyards and farmland at its back. Nonetheless, these two disparate towns have something in common with the opening of the ultraluxurious Kempinski Adriatic in August 2009: sprawling resorts with luxury spas that cater to the well-heeled traveler. The Sol Umag in Umag and the Kempinski Adriatic in Savudrija target different clientele, but both have spas with endless menus of services and each offers something unique: The Sol Umag hotel is a renovated socialist style hotel with one of the best spas in Croatia, and the splashy Kempinski Adriatic is as exclusive as it gets with the first and only 18-hole golf course in Istria.
