St Constantin

We travelled as a family of 7 — 4 adults and children aged 12, 16 and 17.

Unfortunately, this was probably the worst All Inclusive hotel we have stayed in. We didn’t let it ruin our holiday and still had a lovely time together as a family, but that was largely because we made the most of things ourselves and spent quite a lot of time outside the hotel.

Location & pools The biggest positive is definitely the fantastic location, right on the beach. The pools are also a good size, and we mainly used the pools by the swim-up rooms as they were a little quieter.

However, the pools could have been cleaned more regularly and the surrounding areas were not well maintained. We saw rubbish left around the pool areas for days, and we rarely saw staff during the day cleaning or maintaining the pool areas, toilets and communal spaces.

Another major issue was the lack of sunbeds. There simply didn’t seem to be enough for the number of guests staying at the hotel.

Unfortunately, this was made worse by people reserving sunbeds with towels and then not using them for long periods of time. We also saw towels being left on sunbeds overnight, meaning they were already reserved before the day had even started.

There didn’t appear to be any system in place to deal with this, and the hotel didn’t seem to enforce any policy around reserving sunbeds.

Food The main restaurant was actually one of the positives. The food was good and there was a reasonable variety.

However, the self-service snack areas had very limited choice and, in our opinion, the quality wasn’t particularly good.

We had planned to use the à la carte restaurant but decided against it when we discovered that our 16 and 17-year-olds could only choose from the children’s menu, which consisted of options such as chicken nuggets or fish fingers and chips. Drinks also weren’t included and had to be paid for separately.

For an All Inclusive family holiday, this was extremely disappointing.

Drinks & entertainment The evening entertainment was another disappointment. There was only one small bar open in the evening, and All Inclusive drinks finished at 10pm.

The cocktails were extremely poor and there wasn’t really anywhere particularly nice or comfortable to sit and enjoy an evening drink.

That said, the daytime entertainment was actually good, with activities available during the day which we enjoyed. It was just a shame that the evening entertainment didn’t match this.

Thankfully, there are some lovely bars and restaurants outside the hotel, so we ended up going out most evenings — which wasn’t what we expected to do when booking an All Inclusive holiday.

Rooms We booked two rooms — a standard family room and a superior double room.

Unfortunately, the rooms looked nothing like the photographs advertised on the website. There appear to be two very different sides to this hotel, and we felt that our supposed superior double room was actually a tired, run-down family room.

I raised this with reception but felt completely brushed off. I wasn’t prepared to spend my holiday arguing about it, so we accepted the situation and carried on with our holiday.

I will be including photographs with this review so future guests can make their own judgement. The pictures are not great as I filmed the room but had to edit to photos to upload. There was only a small widow and no French like doors, so room was really dark and depressing.

Our cleaner was lovely, friendly and helpful. Unfortunately, the cleaner for our other room was extremely rude.

More generally, we found a lot of the staff to be miserable, dismissive and unwelcoming, which was disappointing.

Too many additional charges Another thing that really disappointed us was the number of additional charges.

• Wi-Fi was charged separately
• The safe was charged separately
• A deposit was required for an additional key card
• All Inclusive drinks finished at 10pm
• Drinks at the à la carte restaurant weren’t included

After paying for an All Inclusive holiday, we simply didn’t expect to have so many additional costs.

So much potential This hotel has so much potential. The beach location is fantastic and there are some beautiful views.

There even appeared to be a bar area overlooking the sea which was no longer being used. With some investment, better maintenance and more seating, this could be a fantastic area for guests to enjoy.

Instead, the hotel gave us the impression that it was doing the bare minimum.

To be fair, we didn’t have a bad holiday. We are a family who make the most of things and we still enjoyed our time together. The location is fantastic, the main restaurant was good and the daytime entertainment was enjoyable.

However, we genuinely felt that the hotel was more interested in taking our money than providing the All Inclusive experience we had paid for.

With better maintenance, more attentive staff, improved evening entertainment, enough sunbeds and a clearer approach to sunbed reservations, better use of the hotel’s facilities and fewer additional charges, this could be a really lovely hotel.

Unfortunately, I would not return to this hotel and it is definitely not a 4 star!

Magdalena, Angela and edi are amazing service. I like this people

We have just finished a stay at the hotel and had a great week. Everyone working at the hotel has been polite and made our summer break really enjoyable.

We stayed all inclusive and found the food to be varied and reflective of a Mediterranean diet with lots of salad options, cold pulses, pasta and grains. There was a variety of hot and cold meats available and the outdoor kitchen provided a variety of options each evening with no foods repeated during our stay.

The snack bars provided enough food with pizza, hot dogs, Greek salad and other things like lamb kebabs on rotation.

The pools are also good with two long pools between the beach and the main hotel square and then there is a large pool at the top of the hotel with slides which operate in the mornings 10.30-1pm and evening 4-5pm which wasn’t a problem for us.

We stayed in room 3013 which had a small plunge pool. This provided a welcome break from the heat in the evenings and after visiting the buffet restaurant and I would recommend this if it was available. We used it every day.

The only downside is that is is adjacent the evening entertainment and there is music playing until 11pm every night which didn’t allow our children to fall asleep until this finished.

Gouves is a lovely local community and there are some small beaches and local amenities. It does suffer from power cuts but this didn’t affect our stay as the hotel had a generator and a large array of PV panels to provide power.

We would highly recommend the ‘Island Restaurant’ opposite the hotel on the sea front. This was a final night treat for us and although costing €400 the meal, setting and atmosphere was outstanding.

On check out we were able to extend our stay for a small fee (€30) but this wasn’t confirmed until the night before to ensure there was availability. This meant we had access to our room until 2pm and use of all the facilities until we decided to leave including the restaurant, drinks and snack bars.

We would happily recommend this hotel for those visiting northern Crete.