Grand Hotel Holiday Resort

I am currently midway through our 10 day stay at this hotel. Firstly let’s start with the positives because there are many. The staff in terms of cleaners, bar staff, restaurant staff are all excellent and have a brilliant attitude. They work long days, 6 days in a row and will do anything to help. The rooms are always cleaned to a high standard. The lifeguards are always switched on and keeping an eye on everyone in the pool. The food, although a smaller selection compared to previous hotels I’ve stayed at, the food quality is very good, I do not have fussy children who eat anything, but I can imagine if you do, you may struggle or have the same food. The location is beautiful, me and my partner went on morning runs along the beech and with the views, it was amazing. There are beautiful sea views, Mountain View’s. The slides are probably some of the best I have experienced, it’s ran very well, and effective. You are never queuing for long, and they are very very good and fun. Adults and kids enjoyed them. Evening drinks are waiter service only which to be honest I liked. It felt slightly upper class, and was nice to not have to queue and they would come to you. Often with a side of peanuts, we never waited too long for a drink when finished. The 2 restaurants (Italian and Greek included) which were lovely. Huge portion sizes!! Sunbeds were always available and you never had to try hard to find one, always plenty available. Drinks are really good quality with actual branded beer. Fair play to the pool bar staff as they work hard all day every day with 2 of them, I think maybe an extra person would relieve the amount of time they are run ragged! There is a lovely jewellery shop on site. Evening entertainment was pretty good all in all. You can either go to the theatre for a show or sit on the terrace bar area with live music. I emailed prior to coming and got a very quick response and our wishes were met, so it’s nice they listen. There is also a baby pool with slides, and its own bar and snack bar.

Now onto the few negatives- There are quite a few hidden extra costs, when we arrived we got told we have to pay 100 euro environmental tax for the 10 days we were staying, fair enough we had to pay it, but there was no pre warning and it’s a fair bit to have to pay considering you have already spent god knows how much on the holiday already, either pre warn or include it in the holiday package. We then wanted to use the safe, which was 3 euros a day… again there is no need because nobody else is going to use it. The shop is very expensive in the resort for what you are buying and I would go elsewhere out the resort as there are a few supermarkets near by. The air con in the bedrooms could be better, but I know Greece do struggle. Now onto the big one, the animation team are there just for a summer holiday and a laugh with one another. They rarely interact with the kids and will let them get on with their activities and just sit there on their phone, they aren’t very natural with the children, it kind of feels like they are a chore, and they do the bare minimum, I get it, they are just ‘doing their job’ but I have never experienced the lack of interest at previous resorts, during every break of the mini disco songs for 5-10 seconds everyone all just looked around a bit awkward, our kids would go and play games and nobody would speak to them and would let them just get on with it. It’s a shame and does let the hotel down massively in my opinion. We wouldn’t trust sending them to the kids club during the day because from what I saw everywhere else they weren’t interested, however I didn’t experience the kids club so can’t comment. For a lot of the activities the children would have to go and ask to play and what to play, and again the response was just ‘darts’ ‘monkey climb’ just no real emotion. I was really disappointed with them to be honest.

I personally didnt find it a negative but it is quite hilly to walk around, but there are shuttles that run constantly to drive you to certain aspects/rooms.

If you have read reviews and are not sure, as an honest review I would book for sure, and I would come back, we have had a great time here, as will anyone who books, there are a lot of different nationalities, English, French, German, so there are loads of people to be able to speak with and interact with. But I do think there is room for improvement here based on the potential it has.

It was really nice and my skin is smooth and i smell really nice

This is a lovely hotel. Smaller selection of food but something for everyone and it was delicious. Cleaning was impeccable. Staff work hard and do a great job.

Only negatives is that the animation team were not great, no interest in interacting with the children round the pool. Did the basics of announcing what was going on but otherwise on their phones. They also seemed to get involved in the rough water polo, rather than stopping the rough play.

One big thing I’d say is don’t wear your favourite swim wear as something (possibly salt water) in the pool leaves yellow stains. It was on most guests swimwear. Speaking to others at the airport this was not confined to this hotel.