"We booked through easyJet to stay at the marinate apartments for a week, all inclusive. Our room was comfortable and clean, although not the most modern. We also had a kitchen area and living space which we weren’t expecting. The room included a safe and complimentary cans of soft drink and water in the mini fridge. Our room had a great view over the pool and the sea behind it.
For location, Marlita is excellent. You are a stones throw from the beach and walking distance to central Protaras and the beautiful Saint Nicholas chapel. There are lots of nearby beach activities that you can pay for including water sports and boat trips - we took the €20 Coca Cola boat tour and swam in the blue lagoon/turtle bay which was excellent. There are plenty of supermarkets close to the hotel too, as well as bars and restaurants if you wanted a break from the all inclusive.
The all inclusive food was average. There was plenty of it, with a snack bar serving chips, pizza and chicken nuggets/fish fingers in between meals. Breakfast offered the usual hot food (eggs, bacon, mushrooms, beans) although the sausages were a bit strange (frankfurter style in water). They also had a man making fresh crepes and there was porridge, yoghurt, cereal and toast available too. There was always fruit and fresh melon, but some of the fruit wasn’t great quality. There are machines to make tea, coffee and also have fruit juice (not freshly squeezed).
Lunch/dinner served at the hotel was pretty similar. There was always a salad bar available with freshly prepared salads every day which always changed - a good variety of halloumi, feta, tuna based salads. Some of the hot food was a bit hit and miss for us in terms of quality. But they always usually had some sort of rice/potato dish, with various hot plates of meat or fish with sauce, as well as pasta with sauces. In the two evenings we dined onsite they had moussaka and lasagne which was nice. They did have puddings but we found them to be over sweet and not to our taste.
By the pool they had a variety of cocktails on offer, which were ok but not always fit to the description (when listed made with orange juice they’d use Fanta from the tap). They also had wine, beer and soft drinks including Pepsi, Pepsi max, Fanta and 7up. Be warned - when ordering cocktails in the evening some of the barmen tended to make them extremely strong to the point where we found them undrinkable. They also had small ice creams available from behind the bar, just plain vanilla or banana flavour.
As well as the hotel restaurant they had four off site restaurants available for booking 1 time per week you are staying. They had a Mexican, Greek tavern, Italian and Chinese restaurant. You can book them using the machine at the reception. Make sure you do this early if you would like to go as bookings fill up quickly. The Greek and Italian were in the same place, and owned by an extremely rude and unfriendly owner. We ordered 1 wine and a bottle of water each, and when we wanted another drink he told us we had a 2 drink limit and we’d have to pay more. For the Greek meal you do not choose your meal, it is brought to you (a ‘mezze’ style arrangement of food including meat, dips and some chips). The Italian offered choice, but they brought us a pizza with the wrong toppings on it which we daren’t felt we could complain about. The Mexican and Chinese weren’t really restaurants - they were based in other Tsokkos hotels (the chain for Marlita). The Mexican had some limited choice, but again the Chinese they just brought everything out to us with no options. The food was again average, the Mexican probably our favourite. The reception advised we could book a taxi to go to the restaurants but we walked to them all - they were all in a similar area and about a 25 minute walk along the coast from the hotel.
The pool facilities were good - they had aqua aerobics and darts games run by a hotel rep every day. There were plenty of sunbeds available when we visited but imagine it might be busier on peak. And the main pool itself was very big and spacious, always clean and well maintained. The music played by the pool was very irritating - it kept playing music on full blast and cutting the song off from playing halfway through the track to play something else. We won a darts game and a free prize of champagne, but when we went to the bar to collect our winnings we were rudely told ‘no champagne’ as they didn’t have any. The staff were a bit hit and miss, some friendlier and more helpful than others. There were evening shows but they were set behind the Marlita apartments as a part of the shared entertainment with the hotel next door.
I would recommend for value for money and for location. The facilities and food/drink on offer were pretty standard, but we weren’t expecting 5*. We enjoyed our holiday and had a great time here."
