Olea All Suite Hotel

A few reflections on my recent stay at Olea All Suites...

Pro's

• The dinner buffet had a great variety with good quality produce
• The cleaner was friendly and did a perfect job
• The pool area is visually very beautiful
• Reception rang our room to ask for feedback mid-stay, which we appreciated
• Some members of staff were very charming & made an effort to build rapport, though this was not consistent & others were elusive

Con's

• Our "welcome drink" was a welcome dessert which we could not eat. We were offered a coffee as an alternative, and only given alcohol drinks once we pointed out it was stipulated in the package of our booking. Big mistake from the hotel in my opinion not to offer a proper drink after a long journey, it set the tone for the rest of the trip
• Check-in was inattentive, left waiting in a corridor for ages. Could have used the time to show us the hotel facilities etc. We weren't informed on where any of the facilities were & the layout wasn't intuitive. A map would have been helpful
• Had to change rooms as our 'pool view' room had no view of the pool, just a big tree. No apology from the hotel staff & delayed unpacking for another 24hrs.
• The pool is freezing cold, despite the weather being good. They are not heated - and as such barely got used by guests. This was a huge disappointment as the pool was a big part of the reason we chose this hotel
• There are 3 parasols across the entire pool area, so you have to commit to either sitting in the sun or the shade. This became increasingly frustrating as the week went on. A lot of the loungers are also lay-down only and can't be adjusted
• Both the room towels & pool towels are not of an acceptable quality for a 5 star hotel. They are tiny, frayed and rough material
• Poolside service is non-existent. Often pool towels (left on the side for you to help yourself to) didn't appear until after 10:30am, so we had to sit on sunbeds with no towels. No one comes round to offer drinks
• The poolside bar/restaurant is obscenely expensive. 9 euros for bread & butter, no choice but to go into town for even a light snack
• Backlog of coffees at breakfast each morning - they clearly need more coffee machines to cope with the capacity
• The hotel is directly under a flight path, with planes going over approx. every 30mins in the peak of the day
• The local town of Tsilivi is trashy and down-market, with a steep walk up the hill to get back to the hotel
• The beautiful views advertised from the breakfast & dinner room are covered by plastic screens which are in desperate need of a deep clean, cannot see through them. We appreciate they are needed to block the wind, but they are not maintained well at all
• No vibe to this place, you can hear a pin drop most of the time - we found the evenings in particular quite depressing. No effort made by the hotel to create a sense of atmostphere

After reading so many positive reviews before our stay, we expected so much more from this hotel. It looks great in the pictures, but the reality was quite different. We felt it really didn't reflect value for money & wasn't anywhere close to the service and quality we've experienced from other 5 star resorts.

It’s a beautiful hotel, an oasis of tranquility. The food is delicious, both at breakfast and at the Flame restaurant. What’s really too bad is that the water in the pool is freezing cold, so nobody swims there. We had booked a swim-up room, but we might as well not have. Because of the cold water, we went to the beach every day—the seawater was at least 10 degrees warmer.