- Greece Holidays
- Rethymno
- Grecotel Creta Palace
The hotel is 4 km from Rethymnon town centre, 80 km from Knossos Palace and 75 km from Nikos Kazantzakis International Airport. This beach hotel and club resort is in a class of its own. From the marbled foyer to the luxurious bedrooms, every detail in this hotel echoes style, quality and prestige. There is a hotel safe, lift access, a café, pub and restaurant, a shop, a hairdressing salon, Internet access and a play area, everything needed to a wonderful holiday. The rooms have balconies or terraces with sea views and most of them have an open plan lounge area with a sofa bed that can be converted into a child's bed. All feature en-suite bathrooms and appliances to increase experience.
Pamper yourself with a visit to the spa, which offers massages, body treatments and facials. You're sure to appreciate the recreational amenities, including an outdoor pool, an indoor pool and a hot tub. Additional amenities at this hotel include complimentary wireless Internet access, concierge services and babysitting (surcharge).
This is a stunning hotel with excellent service. The food is really good, with lots of nice touches such as the lunchtime bbq by the family pool, with varying meats each day. We were really impressed that the Luxme package includes dinner at Agreco Farm, which was amazing. The newly renovated village area was stunning with some lovely shops. The bed service at the beach was great, again with nice touches such as fruit being brought around in the afternoon. The staff are very kind and hospitable, and the resort is excellent for children - we really appreciated that all the à la carte menus have a simple menu for kids! We also appreciated the playground and kids area. However, there were many things that let the hotel down during our stay. The superior family “bungalow” (not a bungalow as it’s part of a two storey building of other rooms) was very dated and the whole area around the room, and in the room, smelt like sewage. The bathroom had a poor shower over the bath, which drenched the entire bathroom when in use, and a shower curtain which stuck to you when trying to shower. When paying for a 5 star resort, I don’t expect to be unable to shower properly and to be stuck inside a manky old curtain. I saw flies on the fruit at the breakfast buffet every day, again I would not expect this at a 5 star resort. The sun lounger situation is really not good. We were never able to get a lounger at the main pool. On arrival, we were told it’s not possible to reserve sun loungers (which is fair and correct) and that belongings will be removed after 30 minutes. However, this is not true - some days on the beach or pool we saw belongings/towels left on beds for 3+ hours with nobody in sight using the beds. Nothing was ever removed. The sun lounger situation is dire and needs to be fixed. For the size of the hotel, there are not enough beds. We had a booking at Pavilions restaurant on the last night of our holiday, which we were really looking forward to. On the day before, we were told the restaurant was closed due to “technical difficulties”, which was apparently because it had been booked for an event and accidentally still taken guest meal bookings. This was really disappointing, as we would have booked the restaurant earlier in our stay had we known. When we went to drink the bottle of wine in our mini bar, we found it had already been opened and partially drank. We had a lovely holiday, but improvements are required for this to feel like a true 5 star experience.
I recently had a stay at the hotel. At check-in, they said breakfast and dinner is included in my package, while i ALSO have an ADDITIONAL 20 euro voucher per guest for lunch at the hotel restaurant. Of course no item on the menu was less than 20 euros, but I had the voucher in mind. At checkout, they charged me for the full pricing of the lunch(es), mentioning that the vouchers would have only been available in case I wuldn't have went for dinner. Of course, A SCAM. They mentioned I was given a checkin info paper, which indeed i was given, but nowhere on the info paper was it mentioned that it is either "Lunch Vouchers OR Dinner". Quite the contrary, all: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner were present on the paper. At checkout, they only wanted me to pay and said it's "hotel policy". Of course, a scam. They know exactly what they are doing. More than that, the beach is full of stones and the water immediately gets deep. This is also the reason there were not many children around the sea. So if you are planning on a family vacation where you want your kids to enjoy the sea and for you not to be scammed, better off find another place.
We had a beautiful time at this location. The water Park was amazing. We could enjoy the beautiful beach and pools. The lunches are great with big Selection. The Staff are very friendly and Keep the hotel in a harmonic condition. A big thank you to the Hotel manager Mr. Tsaklas and all the employees.
Family of four with 2 teens (age 15 and 12) staying half-board for 7 nights. We found a very good deal on Tui for Half Board which worked out same as B&B even though we eat out on evenings. We split our break across 2 rooms as due to our teens age they cannot share beds / bathrooms which worked out well for us with 1 x adult and teen in each of the 2 rooms which were bungalows so plenty of space and they were just a short walk between each room. Family room with separate bedrooms and 2 bathrooms was not available and by the looks of it would have been quite expensive. We have been to Crete before and other parts of Greece but not Rethymon area or a Grecotel hotel. Very nice 1st impression of Grecotel brand and would try another Grecotel again. Breakfast was very good quality, coffees, pure juice all served with very good table service. We used our half board for lunch at the day restaurant near the beach and enjoyed every meal and the ambience chilling looking out to the beach and again very good service from the team. Drinks at hotel high quality and not expensive for a 5 star hotel, evening bar man at the main bar did great cocktails and looked after us with generous measures! We ate in the buffet for dinner the 1st night using one of our half board vouchers and it was very nice with a good wine list and again well priced. Onsite supermarket was well stocked and there is also a supermarket within a 5 min walk. We used the waterpark which is brand new and spent time around both pools although as others have said, sunbeds around the main pool are taken quickly and perhaps there should be a few more, however there are loads on the beach and also the pool around the waterpark has more. The beach is very nice but as per some parts of Greece quite pebbly and rocky and the sea is not crystal clear, nice of bit of a dip but not a far out walking/swimming beach. There is also a bar next to the beach, darts, table tennis, volleyball and fitness/spinning equipment. I used the onsite gym a few times after a morning jog, and it is really well kitted out with modern equipment. The hotel overall is clean, modern and tidy and all staff were very nice and helpful. We ate out in Rethymon and it's a 10 euro taxi each way approx 5-10 mins or the bus is just under 5 euros each way for the 4 of us. Lots of great bars and places to eat in the old town and marina, spoilt for choice and very lovely area. You can walk to it in about 30 mins which we did one day. You can also go left out of the hotel and about 15-20 mins takes you to bars and restuarants which we used one night also if you don't want a taxi. Added bonus we witnessed baby turtles hatching on the beach making voyage to the sea!
Overall a lovely stay at Grecotel and I would recommend.
We stayed at Grecotel Creta Palace for our wedding, with around 20 of our wedding guests also staying at the hotel, so we had very high hopes for what was meant to be a particularly special stay.
Our experience got off to a fairly disappointing start. Despite having booked a sea-view room, the first room we were given didn't actually have a sea view and was not what we had expected. It didn't even have a double bed setup. Getting this resolved involved quite a lot of back and forth, and it was frustrating that we had to work so hard to get a room that matched what we had booked. We were eventually moved to a lovely renovated room with a proper sea view, which we appreciated, but at that stage we were feeling more relieved than excited about our stay.
However, everything changed the day before our wedding when we met Antigoni.
Antigoni completely transformed our experience. She went above and beyond to look after us and found us a beautiful villa, which made an enormous difference to the whole wedding experience. It gave me the perfect place to spend the morning of the wedding getting ready with my groomsmen, and, more importantly, it made us feel genuinely looked after and valued by the resort.
From that point onwards, our experience was completely different. Antigoni was incredibly thoughtful, attentive and proactive, and her involvement turned what had started as a rather frustrating stay into something we will remember extremely fondly.
The villa was gorgeous, the resort itself is beautiful, and having that extra care and attention at such an important time made all the difference. We also really appreciated the lovely gift we received when we left — a thoughtful final touch after what became a very special stay.
I think it's important to mention the difficult start because it makes the turnaround all the more remarkable. What could have remained a disappointing experience was completely changed by one person taking ownership and genuinely caring about our experience.
A huge thank you to Antigoni for everything she did for us. She made a real difference to our wedding experience, and we are incredibly grateful. We would also like to thank the wider Creta Palace team, and staff in restaurants like Nikos and Tomas for helping make our stay and wedding celebrations so memorable.
If you're staying here for a special occasion, I would particularly hope you have someone like Antigoni looking after you — she was exceptional.
