Elounda Beach Hotel & Villas

Lovely location and magnificent views. Superb staff. Excellent spa. Beds are very firm and I found them particularly uncomfortable. There seemed to be lots of music in the restaurants at night but we were never made aware of what was on and when, which is a shame. The beach area is small and organised and you are allocated a sunbed on the first day but we were never told this.

Excellent location, lovely views. Close enough to Elounda to walk if you fancy a change from the on property restaurants. Taxis are easily obtained though a bit pricier than when we last visited. Great friendly service from everyone we encountered, from reception, to the porters, to housekeeping, to the gardeners, to the staff at the various restaurants. Special thanks to the Concierge/Guest Experience team (Elisavet, Maria, Ioanna, Laura - I hope I’ve remembered everyone who helped us before and during our stay) and the Breakfast team. We had Villa 163. Slightly dated if truth be told but it had all the amenities and everything was clean and worked (not something that can always be said of every hotel room, whatever the standard), with a great view over the bay. We enjoyed the smaller beach, much better in our view than the larger one closer to the main hotel building. The restaurant offerings are varied. We ate at Argonaut (great view) and Dionysos in the evening and at Kafenion for lunch. Service was excellent. The food was good and varied. Lots of choice. Good wine selection by the glass. The restaurants in Elounda are cheaper, but sometimes eating onsite is needed. These places don’t disappoint.

We spent 10 days at this lovely hotel. This is a hotel deserving of its 5 star status. We found the hotel staff to be very helpful, while we were there , we had some extreme weather resulting in our room flooding ( there was a foot of rain in one night) we had to be moved to alternative accommodation, which the hotel did, and up graded us to a beautiful suite. The hotel allocates sun-beds on the beach for the duration of your stay. It made life very easy. The first two days we had to use sun beds that were empty, but allocated to other couples because there weren’t any free. The guy on the beach was very nice and very helpful on the Saturday he was able to allocate us sun-beds for the rest of our stay. It is not a massive beach so a bit of flexibility is required on all sides. The food in the hotel is good, the breakfast buffet has everything you could want. The coffee system is the only negative. It takes quite a while for the coffee to arrive and they are not that hot. I do wonder if some top quality self service machines might work better. The girls making the coffee really do work none stop trying to keep up. We ate at the Greek restaurant the first and last night, the food was lovely and the service was good. The rest of the time we went into Elounda and ate at the local restaurants which were excellent and half the price. Food and drinks at the hotel are very very expensive as others have said. I can’t help feeling if the prices were reduced the hotel would sell much more in the way of food and drinks. We aren’t mean but €7.00 for a very small cappuccino is a lot! I ordered one Coke Zero at the beach it was a 330 ml can and cost €6.00 . Food and drink aside, you can walk into Elounda easily from the hotel it takes 20-25 minutes. If you walk to the sister hotel which is on the same complex it cuts down the road walking enormously. You can then walk in along the road a short way on pavement then walk by the sea front to all the restaurants. There are also golf buggies at the hotel that will take and collect u from the sister hotel which was very useful when it was pouring with rain. Taxis cost €11.00 to town and can be found in the main square in Elounda. There is a little shop open 10-8 by the hotel’s main entrance. This is great for snacks, water, soft drinks, beer etc. we found ourselves going there most days! The hotel shop didn’t really sell anything we actually wanted to buy, not even water. The hotel is very clean, the house keeping staff work tirelessly and are to be commended on doing a fantastic job on this huge complex. Bedrooms are well equipped even having bathroom scales! You get three bottles of complementary water each day and some coffee pods, etc. if anything gets forgotten just phone reception they will send someone over straightaway with the missing item. They are very efficient . There are also three other À la Carte restaurants, a Mediterranean , an Italian and a fusion Asian style restaurant. The odd thing is, these restaurants do not have signs outside them, or Menus on display. I don’t understand why they don’t have signage, we had no idea where the Italian and Fusion restaurants were for a few days. All in all we had a lovely holiday despite the poor weather and we would like to return.

As always, Elounda beach hotel surpasses all expectations. Incredible facilities, fantastic staff and lovely meeting the same staff within the hotel over many years. Constance and Eddie

We returned to Elounda Beach having stayed about five years ago and remembering it fondly\. Unfortunately, this visit didn’t live up to those memories\. It’s an okay hotel, but while the facilities may tick the boxes for five stars, the experience certainly didn’t feel like what we would expect from a “Leading Hotel of the World”\. It’s a dated property\. Some parts have aged well and retain their charm; others look tired and need attention\. To give credit where it’s due, we weren’t happy with the noise and view from our first room, and the team moved us quickly and without any fuss\. That was appreciated\. Unfortunately, too many basics fell short\. At breakfast, my poached eggs were cold in the middle and swimming in water, my wife’s omelette was excessively oily and over\-seasoned, and the cappuccino was lukewarm\. In our room, a loose shower\-door seal allowed water to flood the bathroom, the wardrobe light didn’t work and most English television channels were unavailable\. Turndown missed replenishing tea and coffee and emptying the bin\. These items were addressed but the general room maintenance should be checked in between each guest\. The beach service was frustrating too\. We were told the only available sunbeds were beside the towel station, then watched three subsequent sets of guests being offered better beachfront positions\. Getting a drink took three requests and around 45 minutes\.this did improve after complaining and was good thereafter\. More seriously, we returned one afternoon to find our room door wide open after housekeeping had serviced it\. Nothing appeared to have been taken, but securing a guest’s room is a basic expectation at any hotel\. Although this was subsequently addressed, with assurances it won’t happen again, it just shouldn’t happen ever\. I raised these matters directly with the general manager during our stay\. He said the earlier issues had been acted upon and that they had considered this sufficient in place of a reply\. His initial response about the open door did little to reassure me\. After I challenged it, he apologised and confirmed that corrective action had been taken\. That should be acknowledged, although the exchange left us disappointed with how the concern was initially handled\. Individually, some of these things are small\. Together, they affect how a holiday feels, particularly somewhere presenting itself at this level\. This stay was a reminder that “The Leading Hotels of the World” is a brand, and the name alone should not be relied upon as a guarantee of an exceptional experience\. Certainly, our experience here didn’t match the expectation it creates\. The hotel was okay, but we expected considerably better\.