"Firstly, do your homework before booking this hotel. There seem to be a lot of very high-scoring reviews from people who have never contributed to TripAdvisor before, we booked largely on the back of those.
This is far from a 4-star all-inclusive hotel. To put it bluntly, I’ve stayed in far better 2-star hotels.
Positives
The hotel, including our room, was spotlessly clean. The staff (with the exception of the restaurant manager) were all extremely friendly and helpful. The bed was very comfortable, and the air conditioning worked brilliantly. The location was also good, with a lovely beach just a 10-minute walk away and a great selection of restaurants and bars nearby. Overall, Pefkos is a lovely, relaxed resort.
Negatives
We’ve been on a lot of all-inclusive holidays, but this has to be the worst we’ve experienced for food and drink.
The drinks, whether beer, wine or soft drinks such as Coke, were all very poor. The beer, in particular, was simply not drinkable.
Breakfast was mostly cold, with poor-quality sausages and awful bacon. It wasn’t great, even by all-inclusive standards. We went for the first two mornings and then decided to skip it after that.
Lunch was extremely disappointing and was cooked in a separate BBQ area. The concept was good until you actually tasted the food. Almost everything was incredibly fatty. I didn’t think it was possible to be served chicken skewers with chunks of pure fat on them. If the meat wasn’t to your liking, you’d expect to be able to help yourself to a salad, but there wasn’t one—just tomatoes every single day. It was incredibly poor.
Dinner wasn’t much better. It was difficult to get a table outside because they were always occupied, but eating inside wasn’t an option as the dining room was unbearably hot. Strangely, there were four tables reserved for smokers on the left-hand side of the dining area. If you sat there without smoking, the restaurant manager would move you on, despite the fact that we barely saw anyone using those tables all week. Meanwhile, families were left waiting around the pool for somewhere to sit and eat. The food selection itself was very limited, with more extremely fatty pork and chicken. After three attempts, we gave up and ate out for the rest of the holiday.
The daytime snacks consisted of a single slice of ham and cheese between two pieces of dry, curled-up white or brown bread, with no butter available. It became almost comical watching people lift the lid, look at the selection, shake their heads and put it straight back down.
One thing we found quite telling was that, halfway through our stay, what appeared to be members of the owners’ or chef’s family arrived. Whether they were connected to the hotel or not, they certainly weren’t eating the same food that was being served to guests.
Finally, the sunbeds. There simply aren’t enough. Unless you were down there at the crack of dawn, you had little chance of getting one before around 4 p.m.
To sum up, I would never stay here again. Take the full-mark reviews with a pinch of salt. I’d strongly recommend reading the lower-rated reviews as well, as they reflected our experience far more accurately."
