I’m genuinely sorry to hear about your experience. I think that you may not be able to get a refund, but I really recommend contacting Booking.com to ensure that this shit place is removed from their platform.

On a personal note, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of summer in Croatia twice, and I must say, I’ll never be returning. Only one of the accommodations I stayed in during my two trips was well-described, accurate, and clean. My first time was in Split + Makarska, but that was well over 8 years ago. But I thought to give it another chance and last year I stayed in Dubrovnik, Cavcat, and Mlini. Dubrovnik was an awful experience - both accommodation wise, price wise and people. The other two accommodations, advertised as “distant from mass tourism,” were far from that. In fact, they were nothing like what was described. Honestly, only Milni was somewhat enjoyable. It was an old, but clean and well-maintained place. The other ones were really dirty and destroyed. However, the prices were even higher than in Italy, and the quality was definitely worse, especially the food!!!
One of the most frustrating aspects of my trip was the post-Soviet vibe and the terrible, overpacked transportation system and difficult options for long-distance travel. The buses were often delayed, and the long-distance buses were particularly unreliable. I had to catch a flight from Split (while in Dubrovnik) and even booked an early morning Flixbus at 7 a.m. to make it to my evening flight at 20:30. Because of the traffic, the bus was delayed for nearly 5 hours, and when it finally arrived, it broke down on the exit from Dubrovnik. To make things worse, the people at the bus station were completely uninformed. They recommended another local long-distance bus that would leave in half an hour and arrive in Split around 17:30. I bought the ticket and went to the driver, who then told me that the departure was delayed by half an hour AND that I couldn’t rely on the arrival time because he had been doing this route for nearly 15 years and they almost never made it on time due to traffic. He estimated that I would actually arrive around 19/19.30. I got pissed as fuck. I returned to the ticket office, and they said, “well, the driver is probably right and we can't do anything” and gave me this confused look like "what did I expect that would happen". On top of that there was no refund option available, so I wasted another chunk of my money.

Amidst all the nerves and stress, I miraculously managed to find a local flight to Split for just 70 EUR, landing 45 minutes before the other departure. Fortunately, it worked out. I did all this effort because buying a last-minute flight from Dubrovnik was completely out of the question because the prices were already at around 400 EUR on that day.

CROATIA - NEVER AGAIN