King Evelthon Beach Hotel and Resort

A nice resort unfortunately let down by a very poor reception experience.

Our suite was spacious and comfortable, and the cleaning was excellent. Our housekeeper was absolutely outstanding — professional, considerate and so quiet that when our child was sleeping, you could barely hear her working.

There is a good variety of pools with attentive lifeguards, which we appreciated as a family. Sea access is less impressive; you need to walk around 15 minutes to reach a proper sandy area suitable for swimming.

The main buffet has good variety and always includes a children’s section. Lamb and chicken were consistently excellent, while beef was average and pork was usually dry. The fish selection was disappointing and mostly inexpensive cuts, with no salmon or quality fish — surprising for an island. Fruit, drinks, ice cream, cheeses, dairy products and desserts were very good. I would avoid the falafel. We also found the alternative restaurants not really worth it; the main buffet was better overall. The service in the restaurants was excellent and the staff there were very friendly, attentive and professional, which made dining a much better experience.

The biggest disappointment was reception.

We arrived at 14:15 after five hours of flying and three hours of driving with an exhausted and hungry young child. We were told check-in was at 15:00 and, despite explaining that our child needed food and rest, there was no attempt to help. At 15:00, after queuing again, we were told to wait another 20 minutes because the room was not ready. Ten minutes later, my wife firmly asked for the key — and suddenly it was available.

The attitude throughout our stay was generally cold and dismissive, often making us feel like we were disturbing them by asking for help.

We also reported a faulty shower and were promised a replacement. Despite reminding reception twice, nothing was done before we left.

During our stay, we also asked reception for recommendations on places to visit in the evening. The response was very unhelpful — we were simply told to go to the harbour, without any further explanation, suggestions, or even a map or directions, and no other places were mentioned.

Checkout was similar: no greeting or goodbye. The keys were simply taken without a word until I asked myself if everything was okay.

I travel frequently for work and stay in hotels across Europe almost every week, and I cannot remember being treated this coldly by a reception team.

Afterwards, I read the Google reviews and noticed that many other guests have also mentioned reception problems, so unfortunately our experience does not seem to be unique.

One important exception was a gentleman at reception, I believe of Indian background, whom we spoke with one evening. He was extremely polite, helpful and professional.

This was my first visit to Cyprus and, unfortunately, the experience did not leave the best first impression. Having also stayed at resorts in Sharm El Sheikh, I personally found the overall resort experience there significantly better, particularly in hospitality, service and food.

Overall, the hotel has many good qualities, especially the rooms, housekeeping, pools, the restaurant service and parts of the food offering. With a more welcoming and professional reception team, our impression would have been completely different.

The pool situation with sunbeds is ridiculous. There aren't enough sunbeds to accommodate even a quarter of the hotel guests. I was up in the mornings at 7am, and all the sunbeds had already been taken with people just putting towels on them and disappearing back to bed for another 3 hours! I got up even earlier (6.30am) and still the same issue. I have 3 kids who obviously want to go in the pool and we couldn't get a seat at all majority of the days!

The food isn't great, for a 5 star hotel, the food situation is more like 3 star, I'm all inclusive and I'm now having to pay to go out for meals instead.

The water park is across the road from the hotel and is actually open up to the public, which wasn't advertised when I was looking at the holiday initially to book, so that's one to be weary of, as we have encountered some extremely rude people.