Grecian Bay Hotel

- The beach is very nice and despite the large number of people still well usable. Some days offer a flat sea and others nice waves. - The location of the hotel is great since you can reach a plethora of restaurants and entertainment options in 10 to 15 minutes walking distance. - The pool area is quite large - The hotel is featuring a garden area with some trees and mice views over the sea. - Thanks to a well thought-out reservation system you can always find a nice place with sunloungers and sufficient shade - The rooms have a good layout and feature an air conditioner - The bathrooms are modern looking with two sinks and enough space - The cleaning lady was super nice, reliably cleaned our room every day and gave us enough toilet paper and bottles of water every day. - If your flight back home leaves later on a day you can stay the time between check-out and leaving for the airport at the public area of the hotel for free and utilize the bathrooms and changing areas.

- Some of the sunloungers at the beach were broken or only holding together quite losely (to the point of potentially risking a full breakdown, when you would use them) and some of the cushions on them were relatively dirty. A real 5 star resort would check and maintain such things on a regular basis. - While the breakfast buffet was pretty big offering a nice selection including a custom made omelette station, the other restaurant options were not really used by the hundreds of hotel guests very much. The Fisherman's hut is nicely situated close to the sea in a green area, but you pay the fresh fish by the 100 grams and the only addition to that is a salad bar. So we ended up paying over 70 Euros for a beer, a bottle of water, one fish and the option for my wife to also eat from the relatively small salad bar. - The pool bar (called Grill Bar) only offers a small selection of meat only burgers with no other options. - The largest restaurant (called Aurora), while being full during breakfast, is usually visited only by two or three families for lunch. The quality of the food varies strongly depending on what you order. - That leaves you with the Beach bar offering the same 10 meals (including an average pizza and a avocado wrap) and some ice cream. - We never used any of the hotel restaurants for dinner. As did the vast majority of other hotel guests. Which is no wonder considering the pricing (42 € per person on top of the full board price) and the quality we expected based on their lunch performance. - On a windy day I was enjoying the waves near the beach. But two or three minutes after I had left the water, I noticed a severe itching and needle like pain on my back. A few more minutes later it was apparent that I had been stung by a lion's mane jellyfish. Luckily the lifeguards had some cream available. Applying our very tried-and-tested anti-mosquito-bite cream two hours later got rid of the rest of the red markings before the day was over. But a warning would have been nice. I have been to beaches around the world and many beaches in the Mediterranean. I have only seen these stingy jellyfish once in Mallorca. But there the sea was clear enough to notice and avoid them. - On the last three days of our stay we got attacked by biting midges (also called no-see-ums). While the sting is more painful than a regular mosquito bite, at least the itching goes away after 3 to 4 hours. But it got to a point where we didn't want to use our reserved sunloungers at the higher ground of the beach any more. - Most of the hotel staff is quite friendly and we had great conversations with some of the waiters. But one experience during breakfast was a bit weird. I am not eating any breakfast simply because I am not hungry before noon (and the breakfast buffet ends at 10 am). But I like to drink a big glas of water. Since the buffet only offers tiny glasses (100 ml) and I didn't want to go back and forth multiple times anymore on the third day, I grabbed one of the many water bottles from the buffet and carried it to our table where we sat with our friends. Suddenly a bald brawny man stands at our table and barks at us why we're having a bottle of water on our table. I explain to him in a still friendly but serious tone my reasons. His response: "Bottles are not allowed! Do you see a bottle standing on any of the other tables?". I ask him if they offer larger glasses and he barks "No, but you can go to the buffet as often as you want!". By now my wife and our friends are also becoming annoyed by his demeanor and respond as well. His final words "If you want the bottle to stay at the table it costs 6 Euros". Considering the fact that I am not eating anything from the buffet for the entire 10 days (unlike the other people at the table I had no plate or anything else in front of me except the one small glass of water), I found this pretty brazen. And while I can understand that he might have enforce hotel policies with no leeway, his tone was totally inappropriate. - The garden area near our bungalow is watered frequently. This had the effect that sometimes you would hear the hissing and rattling of the water outlets in the morning. At other times they would spray water over the only path to our room giving us an involuntary cold shower trying to make it past them. - In many public spaces (for example the cocktail bar (called Cork Bar) on the terrace or the outdoor restaurant areas or in a sunlounger next to you) people were smoking excessively enveloping us sometimes in a constant stream of smoke. The bad things: - We had chosen one of the three available smaller bungalows (bungalows 8 to 10), because we thought we would be away from the louder pool scene and free from any noise from other hotel guests blasting the hallway or showering at odd times. That turned out to be a wrong assumption. First of all we got the middle bungalow which features a connecting door to both sides. So we were able to listen to every word that was said by our neighbors who got up way earlier than we did in the morning. My wife asked for added insulation and maintenance quickly brought two precut styrofoam tiles that perfectly fit the space between the connecting doors. Apparently we weren't the first with that complaint. This at least reduced the volume level to a degree. - Out of 10 nights, we had 9 nights with loud music playing late into the night (at least until 2 am). The music is coming from different places with different intensity. The worst is coming from a party place nearby called Kaliva Beach bar that was even hosting a wedding on a Monday! While the other music (including bad Karaoke) is unnerving when you're sitting outside, but only remotely hearable when you're in the room with closed doors, the party place is a different animal. Especially their bass made it through the walls and closed doors. We asked our friends the next day and they were also annoyed by it in their suite in the main hotel complex on the 4th floor. So if that wedding place is on fire, apparently most of the hotel is affected. The exception being the rooms facing the other side (looking over the parking place next to the entrance of the hotel). That side only gets the noise from the neighboring Melissi Hotel which is typically ending their noise activities around 11 pm. - The deck chairs on our small deck with no view were comfortable, but the cushions were really dirty. As was the sun umbrella. Because of the proximity to a building not belonging to the hotel the terrace would also be in the shadow at around 4 pm on October. - During the last days our shower started to give off a bad smell coming from the drain. At first we were able to stop it for some time by letting the shower run for a moment (hoping to refill the empty drainage pipe this way). But the interval went down from twice a day to every few hours to eventually not solving the issue anymore. So apparently the sewage system of these remote bungalows seems to have issues. - Our friends had booked a family room, which turned out to be a regular king size room where the bed was moved further to the bathroom wall to make a bit more room for two additional spare beds. As a result the room was quite crowded and the couch area at the window side completely blocked by the 2nd spare bed rendering the couch area unusable. The family, which has traveled a lot including to far places, didn't sleep well for days and said that was the worst family room they ever had. When they finally moved their two kids to a separate room the hotel didn't give any discount, making the family now having effectively paid for 6 persons eligible for breakfast, deck chairs and other general amenities. The family also complained about the noise made by the cleaning staff every morning before 7 am and who entered the rooms without hesitation even when the "do not disturb"-light was activated.