"If you are a couple looking for peace and quiet DO NOT GO TO THIS HOTEL. The pictures on the hotel website, and many of the guest photos, make the Porto Carras Resort look like a quiet resort, with mostly couples. The reality of our experience was entirely different – the hotel atmosphere was cold and unfriendly, the sunbeds on the beach were not spaced out as per the hotel photo, but jammed close together, and the majority of the clientele were young Eastern European families with 2 and 3 children, mostly under 5.
As an older couple, looking for a relaxed 5-star experience, as advertised, we were sorely disappointed! The standards at this hotel were not 5 star, the cleaning was basic, there was no turn down service in the evening, a lot of the staff were surly and service was hit and miss. The hotel was packed full, manic, and noisy with screaming children everywhere we went. At the restaurant in the evening we couldn’t hold a conversation for the on-going noise. In the end we had to adapt by having a very early breakfast, and very early dinner, before hordes of young families with buggies and multiple children in tow arrived – on one observed occasion there was a 20-metre queue to access the dining room, because there were no available places for people to sit. Similar experiences were had on the beach and in the hotel grounds during the day. We resorted to taking the ferry, almost every day, from the marina to the nearby village of Nea Marmaras, just for some relative peace and quiet.
We were given a room on a high floor facing the sea and pool areas. There was nothing apart from water in the room fridge, and no promised welcome drink on arrival, despite us booking our accommodation directly with the hotel. The hotel is built with an atrium style reception area, with open corridors above it, which means the noise from this area floats right up to the top floors, even at 11 pm at night. Also, despite being on the 5th floor it was virtually impossible to get a lift; they took ages to arrive, were small, only able to take 2 prams/buggies at a time, so when they did arrive they were full. People smoking on their balconies made sitting on our own balcony frequently unpleasant, and smoking seemed acceptable on the open-air verandas of the restaurants. The TV in our room did not work, although a fine engineer, after three visits, eventually solved the problem. The room itself was spacious and the bed supportive, but the pillows were awful. We had to ask at Reception several times before they were finally replaced on the third day.
Cleaning in the room was only ‘average’ and room service was very poor. We had to ask for our allocated daily bottle of water on at least 3 occasions, and the cups in our room were often not cleaned/replaced. Staff frequently tried to enter the room when we were trying to relax in the afternoon and early evening, often entering with their key card before being given permission. On several occasions they confused our room with others apparently needing assistance, once with a phone call at 11 pm when we were sleeping asking about ‘an ant problem’! Maids often left a key card in the room after servicing, so we ended up with five cards at the end of our stay (a definite security issue in our opinion). On the third day we were electronically locked out of our room by reception; when we went to reception to complain, we were issued with new room keys, no-one bothered to ask our names to confirm who we were (another security concern) or whether we were actually the rightful occupants of that room. The room itself had no pictures or character of any kind.
Food in the restaurant was reasonable, but with little variety on different days. Service in the restaurant, was (with one exception on our first night) very poor. To the extent that we discovered on paying our final bill, that a waitress had herself added a tip to our signed table receipt! Not good - and probably reflects how the staff are treated or remunerated.
The ‘guest relations’ lady, one gentleman on reception, and the waiting staff at the beach restaurant can all be singled out as better than average in the resort, but the rest of the service was barely 3 stars let alone 5.
The marina was very pleasant to walk around in the evening, and the café / beach on the other side of the marina, away from the hotel, can also be recommended.
Cycle hire was advertised, but when we tried to access it, we were told it was no longer available. The cycle store on the marina, gave us a similar response, unconnected with the hotel offering.
Another building in the resort grounds which is shown on the hotel website pictures, looks like a second hotel, the Sithonia Hotel, but it is an abandoned eyesore, fenced off from the rest of the main resort and rapidly becoming derelict.
Much of the above was reported to ‘guest relations’ during our stay, but it appeared there was nothing the young lady was able to do about most of it.
In short, this hotel is not a five-star experience, as the advertising suggests; in our opinion it has a bad vibe, poor service, smoking seems acceptable in most areas and is certainly not a place for couples without children. We left the hotel one night early and had a very pleasant, proper five-star experience, in Thessaloniki."
