The Island Hotel

Our third visit to the Island Hotel, and possibly our last. In terms of location - excellent. Coastal road position, means cooling breezes off the sea. Short walk to a number of very good restaurants, and also supermarkets. Adults only, so no pesky kids.

On this occasion, we had a room in the building above the main pool. Its a long walk through many corridors/levels. The entertainment at the pool/Tholos bar was quite noisy and instrusive, especially for us 'early to bed' folks - fortunately I'd thrown in a pack of earplugs from my mum before leaving! Room was spacious, and kept very clean by the housekeeping staff. The pool areas were fairly well maintained.

The breakfast choice was pretty similar to previous visits, with an 'improvement' of making your own tea/coffee from the machines as you entered. Smaller choice of bread perhaps. None of these things bothered me. We didn't eat in the hotel, but did try to get a drink on our first evening - and didn't repeat the experience. Tholos bar service was pretty appalling, and the hotel has gone onto 'immediate payment' - no putting things onto your room to pay at the end. What a massive pain in the .....

Also missing was the fantastic shop at the centre of the complex - previously serving snacks and drinks. Now only selling toiletries and tourist tat. What a disappointment. We assumed the hotel took a percentage of the shop sales before, and the shop was very well patronised. Not any more - and no idea why this model changed.

The atmosphere just didn't feel as welcoming - I don't know if they've had problems with non-payments, hence the changes. Staffing levels felt more stretched than previously, and some of the familiar faces just didn't engage with the guests like previously.

So - great location, but perhaps just having a bad patch? Giving it 4* but some of that is based on our prior history there.

Arrived at the hotel late at night, checked in and was escorted to our room. The room was ridiculously far from the reception, pools, shop… We got in the room and it was not looking like a 5 star room at all, it was clean and generally nice but our balcony area was two chairs on a concrete slab that anyone could access, looking at a bush. We noticed that the balcony door did not lock at all and we called the reception. They were rude and asked “what do you expect me to do?” We said we wanted a room change as it wasn’t safe on the ground floor with an open door. They sent a security guard who was extremely rude, looking at us like we were idiots, huffing and puffing and wouldn’t speak to us. He slammed the door shut about 15 times every time we pulled it straight back open as it was clearly broken. He tried to pretend it was fixed and rushed out of our room so we asked where he was going and he put his thumb up as trying to leave. We rang the reception again and finally got the room change. The security guard came back, didn’t speak to us just stood at our door and pointed aggressively. We were moved from room 965 to 1000 (the furthest room of the hotel) even further away from the pools and hotel restaurant… In the new room the balcony was in a tree so there was spiders and insects everywhere and the room was clean and generally nice but not 5 star quality or justifying the near £2000 we spent for two people for a week! We slept the night and woke up feeling disappointed with the start of our holiday and couldn’t see how we were supposed to spend a week in this room. We were 5 minutes walk from everything, the pools, restaurant, beach, reception, shop… we were completely separated from the main part of the hotel, they were more like apartments. We decided to look at an upgrade to see if we could get closer to the main part of the hotel, it was an ridiculously expensive upgrade but we felt we had to do it to have a chance of enjoying our holiday. We felt like we were put into the furthest room of the hotel, with an awful balcony so we were forced into upgrading. The location of the hotel was rubbish, the beach was lovely but nightlife was flat. There was 7 restaurant/bars that were very very quiet and it was boring. We also had a power cut in which I’ve noticed through other reviews is a regular problem. Overall, I was gutted with the room, disgusted with the customer service, location was boring and I wouldn’t return!

My mother and I have just returned from 7 nights stay at the Island Hotel and have some positives and negatives to share about our stay. Overall, we enjoyed the hotel and the location in Gouves was ideal for us with the beach across the road. I’ll start with the positives: Location: as mentioned, location was great with the beach, across the road, you can exit through the back door onto the beach this will also bring you onto beach road towards the Supermarket, restaurants, bars etc.

Hotel was pretty and had a real island feel palm trees, water features etc and nice lighting.

Negatives: The hotel definitely isn’t a 5 star hotel and we agree with other reviewers on this.

The staff at breakfast seat you and we would ask to sit inside, they always seemed to get the hump and be very moody when we’d ask for an inside table. It always seemed to be an inconvenience to them when this makes no sense to us considering it’s a buffet, what difference to them is it where we sit. My mother also mentioned the “hot” food was always lukewarm and never hot even when new trays of items came out, they were never hot. No recepticle also for used tea bags when making tea. We only had B&B and ate out for dinner in the evenings.

The Swim-up room was a little disappointing as when we had this experience in other hotels it was far more private and blocked off. This swim-up is opened out onto the relaxation pool so you have everyone on the day beds facing you and looking at you whilst you’re on your terrace. They also at times would walk in front of our terrace to use our ladder into the pool or swim up towards us. This is nothing like what I would have experienced in previous hotels with swim-up rooms which would have been shared usually with 2-3 other rooms max, not the whole pool area.

The cleanliness of the room also needs to be addressed. We had a dead cicada in the room for days that wasn’t removed. (Eventually we did it ourself). The balcony area also was never cleaned and the day beds have definitely seen better days.

Overall, we did enjoy our stay and had a Lovely time at the hotel, however we did feel TUI are mis selling this hotel as a 5 star when it really isn’t. We woukd consider it more a 4 star. There is no little super market onsite only a souvenir shop (supermarkets are however readily accessible outside the hotel) and the restaurants stop serving food at 5:30pm (The Stone Kitchen) (Veranda at 4:30pm) except the buffet restaurant (we didn’t eat in there at night) . Taverna is then only open Monday &Friday only. (We don’t eat there).

Also note, it’s a card only hotel, they do not take cash anywhere.