"I feel duty-bound to write this so that nobody else parts with their hard-earned money quite as enthusiastically as I did.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. I’ve sailed around the Ionian Islands twice and visited plenty of the less touristy parts of Greece, so maybe my expectations are different. But having stayed at a fantastic 4-star TUI Blue in Crete last year, I expected even more for our 10-year wedding anniversary. Instead, I spent most of the week wondering whether I’d accidentally booked myself into a social experiment.
Let’s start with the positives.
The hotel staff are lovely. Polite, friendly, helpful and always smiling. The grounds are immaculate and clearly very well maintained. Everything is spotlessly clean. The bed was comfortable. There were plenty of sunbeds available (more on the quality of those later), and because we travelled during term time, finding one wasn’t a competitive sport.
That’s pretty much the list.
The beach became my sanctuary. The loungers are expensive to hire and look like they’ve survived several Greek economic crises, but the sea is beautiful. Every morning I walked along the shoreline with a coffee before the children and my husband woke up. Watching the sunrise and the early swimmers was genuinely the best part of the holiday.
Now for the reality.
If your idea of experiencing Greece is never leaving the hotel and later telling everyone you’ve “done Greece”, this place is perfect.
If, however, you enjoy exploring, you’re in for a challenge. It’s a 25-minute walk in nearly 30-degree heat just to find somewhere that might sell a drink. A taxi to a larger town is around €50 each way. Thanks to another reviewer, we discovered a nearby town and the Fres.co ice cream parlour. That evening meal and ice cream quite possibly saved my sanity.
For gym users: lower your expectations immediately. The climber machine is bordering on a health and safety demonstration, with a slipping belt that feels genuinely dangerous. The resistance machines are outdated and uninspiring. The entire gym desperately needs modernising.
The food deserves its own section because, quite frankly, it was astonishingly bad.
Everything felt tired, repetitive and often cold. The salads looked like they’d lost the will to live several days earlier. The chicken and seafood inspired the sort of fear usually reserved for Russian roulette. To test whether the food was genuinely cold or I was imagining things, I arrived at the buffet the moment it opened. Still cold.
The “themed” evenings appeared to consist of taking yesterday’s meat, giving it a different sauce and a more exotic name. Breakfast was the same every day. Lunch was the same every day. Dinner was essentially the same every day wearing a different hat. However, I will say lunch at the grill was more pleasant.
The buffet restaurant itself was chaos. We have young children, and the noise levels were biblical. At one point I escaped to the adults-only section simply because my ears were filing for divorce. It was marginally better. Arriving later only meant there was less food left and somehow even less edible.
The children’s buffet was a masterclass in beige. Rock-hard chicken nuggets, fish fingers with the structural integrity of concrete, chips, mash, cold baked beans and bread rolls capable of causing dental injuries.
I actually took some nuggets to reception and banged them on the desk to demonstrate their hardness. The receptionist looked horrified. The nuggets returned the following day just as hard.
Our children survived almost entirely on pancakes and ice cream for seven days. Every mealtime felt like entering World War Three, and honestly, I couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t eating much either.
The grill restaurant was acceptable. Not amazing, but edible, which by this point felt like fine dining.
The taverna restaurant on our final night provided calamari so rubbery that chewing a tyre from my car may have offered a similar culinary experience. The kebab was dry. Dessert was nice.
Now let’s talk about stars.
Hotels earn 4 and 5-star ratings through attention to detail. The little touches matter.
The sunbeds are cheap and some are breaking. The pool towels are of a quality I would normally reserve for drying the dog after a muddy walk. The plates, glasses and cutlery appear to have been sourced from the bargain aisle. The buffet restaurant resembles a school dining hall more than a premium resort.
Our room also came with complimentary ants.
Not the occasional ant. Hundreds. Sometimes thousands.
Every evening we had to shake ants off our bathroom towels before using them. One morning I woke up to what can only be described as an organised ant invasion stretching through every room in a perfectly straight line towards the bathroom.
After being upgraded to a suite for our anniversary, this wasn’t quite the luxury experience we’d imagined.
It took four hours for someone to deal with the problem and nobody apologised.
When I reported it to reception, the reaction suggested ants were simply another hotel amenity.
I also complained to the TUI rep about the standards, misleading information on the website and the evening entertainment.
I don’t expect West End productions. I don’t expect Cirque du Soleil. But every evening I experienced levels of second-hand embarrassment I didn’t know were possible.
The website advertised activities and facilities for children that simply weren’t there. The kids club seemed aimed almost exclusively at toddlers. Our children, aged 8 and 5, had very little they could do together. My eldest joined an aqua-yoga session and played Jenga on the grass. That was about the extent of it.
To compensate, the rep gave us passes to use the neighbouring water park facilities, which was appreciated.
One thing that genuinely concerned me was the lifeguards. The number of times they sat staring at their phones while on duty was alarming. Of course parents should supervise their own children, and most did, but emergencies aren’t always predictable. Lifeguards shouldn’t be scrolling through their phones poolside.
By midweek I wanted to move hotels. To be fair, TUI offered to help facilitate a move, although the nearest suitable alternative would have cost us thousands more. No realistic option was suggested.
The rep also seemed genuinely shocked that anyone could possibly be unhappy here. Apparently I was the first person ever to complain. A quick glance at TripAdvisor suggests otherwise.
Overall, I know there are far worse problems in the world than a disappointing holiday.
But when you’ve spent £3,200 on a supposedly 5-star family holiday to celebrate your 10-year wedding anniversary, you’re entitled to expect decent food, decent facilities and a room that isn’t hosting its own ant civilisation.
This is not a 5-star hotel.
It’s barely a 3-star.
We only spoke to two other couples during our stay, but both were experiencing similar issues and had made complaints of their own. Had we spoken to more guests, I suspect we’d have found many more feeling exactly the same way.
The biggest disappointment isn’t the money. It’s the fact that we spent a year looking forward to this holiday.
Please don’t waste yours.
(I cannot seem to upload photos or add a video on the ant invasion!)"
