"We stayed here for six nights booking a one bedroom suite via jet2 in the adults only section. We provide this lengthy review stating facts about our stay and experiences. We have tried to leave out hearsay from other guests experiences. If you don’t want to read it all a short version is, Not five star, very basic, poorly maintained, overpriced, awful!
Positives …
WiFi - very good WiFi throughout most of the complex. It was best in our room where we had a download speed of 46mbps in our room (yes we did a speed test!)
Pools - there’s a large number of pools, including several adult only, a child friendly shallow pool where it’s more lively and a large “general” pool with a couple of smaller kids splash pools around it. See negatives as pools made both lists sadly.
Soft Drinks - There are plenty of self service drinks stations where you can get soft drinks, fruit juice, tea, coffee and water. Along with several bars serving alcoholic drinks. The main restaurants also offer self service beer and wine. The only international brands of soft drink was Pepsi and Pepsi Max, the other soft drinks were a local brand and the fruit juices were of a budget variety. Although a positive in terms of availability certainly not a five star offering.
Complementary shuttle bus - The hotel provides a complementary shuttle bus to and from Kardamaina throughout the day. This was a nice addition and was frequent enough you could go for the day or an hour or two.
Negatives …
Star rating - Greece has introduced a tourist tax which is charged per room per star per night. This is not a Five star hotel anywhere else in the world but it clearly is for the purpose of charging more tax. It is a Three star hotel at best based on all the below. However this hotel obtained five stars, it is not by any international standard and it is an insult to any hotel that works hard to achieve and maintain this standard.
Accommodation - Our room facilities were extremely basic. Bed, fridge (empty) tv, small balcony, air con. No bathrobes, slippers, tea / coffee making facilities, no room service, laundry facility’s or anything else that would genuinely suggest anything more than bog standard. In the bathrooms there’s an all in one soap/shower gel / shampoo / conditioner in a dispenser. Showers only no bath (we paid for a room with a bath. Towels were small and of a very low quality. Nothing wrong with the facilities per se but they do not align with the price point and what is being sold on Jet2’s website. We were apparently “upgraded” to a Masonite. Although we only became aware of this midway through our stay. We had two small bedrooms and bathrooms rather than the suite we wanted, so our upgrade was for an extra bedroom and bathroom we had absolutely no use for. The TV for the main bedroom was obscured by the bannister from the bed, and the sofa was under the stairs so at one end had no head room and the other had a dressing table blocking it. Due to arriving at 01:00 we just got on with it and tried to make the best of it. We didn’t fancy walking back to reception and joining the back of the queue for the other guests to be booked in before we could make our complaint. This was a mistake, we know, but at that time in the morning we just wanted to sleep. The room was reasonably cleanish but the higher to reach spaces were not cleaned, such as upper windows etc. There was a general lack of upkeep throughout including in the bathrooms where this was most evident with the grouting being black and fixtures being tarnished. This lack of upkeep was also evident throughout the hotel in many other areas. There was also the development of mold above the balcony door. We did however have a lovely view of the mountains from our bed.
Food - The food was ok. Nothing more, nothing less. There was a selection of Greek food along with some basic pizza, pasta, meat, veg and child friendly options. However it was all of a basic standard, batch cooking to feed the masses, again definitely not five star with the menus being very similar each day and by day three we were used to the food and had a rough idea of what would be on offer before entering the resturant. Drinks at the restaurants were all self service and there wasn’t a drinks menu should you want to purchase something different. We would expect for five stars something slightly more than just run of the mill canteen cooking such as cooking to order or something a bit different. It was just all mass produced and sat there until it was eaten. We did not personally witness anybody checking the temperature of the food once throughout our stay and food would quickly look dried out. The majority of dining spaces are outside at both restaurants along with a small inside section. There was bird excrement on top of a metal hood where pizzas were cooked which was not cleaned away and remained throughout the six days we were. At the main restaurant the lighting had upturned glass lampshades which have become filthy with bird excrement. They provide an excellent place for starlings and crows to perch and go about their business. This isn’t something that really should be acceptable in any food setting. Whilst wild animals can’t be fully controlled cleaning can be and isn’t here. Just further examples of the poor standards of this hotel and its up keep.
Adult only area - The adults only restaurant served a much smaller selection than the main restaurant. The hotel also decided to inform us that for the second half of the stay this would be closed at evenings. We tried to complain about this via our Jet2 rep. When we went to speak with her she had our terms and conditions on her tablet ready to rather rudely and bluntly point out that the hotel were perfectly in their rights to withdraw this service. When we mentioned the room the rep did go and speak to hotel staff and came back telling us we had been upgraded and were told this when checking in. We were NOT and nowhere else would you pay for a suite and be upgraded to something smaller without the facility’s of a suite. We should have had a bath and didn’t, and the larger balcony area on the pictures on Jet2 was also lacking. If booking the Masionete it is more expensive and had a larger sq ft, however the extra space is taken up by beds we didn’t need and a bathroom with a disgusting shower in it! Of note we didn’t see a single person enter the block where the suites were so it did seem like this had been closed down again at the hotels convience and again at our loss.
Pools - All are surrounded by ample loungers and umbrellas. However many of the loungers are past their best, most are looking tatty and tarnished and many were broken. So sadly not what you would expect at this price point. The water looked clean but the tiles around the pools and the floor of the pools did not look clean. When debris was blown into the pools it could take a day or two for this to be cleaned up. In the adults area a number of pools had edges with white stones. These seemed more suited to picking up debris and just looked uncared for. The pools whilst ok just were not of the standard five stars would suggest.
Alcoholic drinks - The selection of alcoholic drinks was limited and again … not what you would expect from a five star hotel. We found several staff at the bars and the beach snack bar to also be very rude and unpleasant.
The holiday - Whilst we tried to make the best of our six nights away we feel that we had very much overpaid for this holiday which cost over £1800. Specific things we had booked were not provided to us and when we did try to resolve this the Jet2 representative was in place ready and waiting to point out that the reduction of services was in the terms and conditions and basically there’s nothing you can do about it. There was no mention of any refund or any effort or wish to remedy. The hotel and Jet2 had been paid and that was that. The rep made us feel that we should be greatful that the sq ft of our maisonette was bigger than a suite. Fair enough the t’s&c’s are on us but the way it was handed just wasn’t done in a friendly or caring manner. It was very forthright and officious which just wasn’t what we needed. There’s ways to tell someone that they have screwed up their own holiday by not reading every inch of the small print and correctly interpreting it, and the way we were treated wasn’t very pleasant at all. It just feels very wrong that they are allowed to sell you a holiday at a price but they don’t have to provide the services and you get nothing back. It’s just tough luck because you checked a box when you booked.
In conclusion we will never book with Jet2 again or visit this hotel. We clearly could have paid much less for somewhere like Benidorm and received the same level of service and amenities. We incorrectly thought we were paying extra for heightened facilities and whilst happy to charge extra the hotel was also happy to not provide these at our expense.
We hope this goes someway to preventing others falling foul of this tourist trap."
