Sol Marina Beach Crete

Firstly - since you might only get this far.....THIS IS NOT A 4 STAR HOTEL. I feel extremely ripped off. I feel cheated by the reviews on this place. I always check trip advisor extensively before booking a hotel. How this obtained #2 Hotel in Kato Gouves is beyond me. I can only presume this is an anomaly based on people wanting different things from their holiday. I have written a very detailed review as I don't recognise my own experience in the positive reviews on Trip advisor. I have been to Crete before - to a Sensatori and it was far superior. There are so many better hotels. This is just a rip off. On walking around the area there are also at least 3 other hotels that look better. I'll be fair and start with the good aspects - The front desk, bar and animation staff, are very very good. They really seem to care. The rooms seemed to be clean, no bugs or anything like that, so that's a plus. They have a small arcade for small kids, ping pong, bocce, 1 pool table and mini golf. All good. but perhaps a couple more ping pong and pool tables (like on the website) Looks like they have a good kids club, but most of the entertainment of an evening is based around kids & toddlers. I was fooled by the Melia connection to this hotel and assumed it would be on a par with other Melia hotels that I have visited. It is not. You can see where certain parts of the hotel and decor have been slightly adjusted or upgraded when Melia got involved, for example, really nice chairs in the bar, but with old, mismatching sticky tables that are too small. Some nice wall decor in common areas but old grubby floors. You can see they've tried to update the decor in some of the bedrooms, but left the old bathrooms (honestly look like they're from the 80's) In general the overall impression is inconsistent and shabby. 1. Not enough public toilets, there is one WC in the lobby and one outside, to be shared by the pool and beach. The former is shabby and not well maintained, smells and sometimes that spills out into the lobby. The outside one has only two toilets (3 or 4 changing rooms) old slatted doors and one didn't lock at all. Not clean and constantly smelly and floor covered in water and sand. These were the only toilets I found, our room was quite near the pool so frequently went there during the day. 2. The food is atrocious. Special shout out to the poolside Gyros and the daily Baklava. Those are literally the only things worth eating. There was no omelette station in the morning (every other hotel I've stayed in offers this, even 3 star) Rubber scrambled eggs or fried eggs swimming in oil. PLEASE invest in a second toaster. It's carnage waiting on toast, and we all know that there are some people in buffets that just will not wait their turn. Please sort out the music in the buffet area. It is a long narrow buffet with two ramps up and down to the seating area, creating lovely bottlenecks, please, please don't also blast really loud rock music into t

Lovely hotel very clean Plenty of sunbeds. Our room was clean and had a small balcony maid came in every day . Lots of options for food only problem is food is not always very warm Limited drinks on the all-inclusive Lots of activities for young children and the beach is just a cross the road

Absolute amazing week away, far surpassed our expectations. Highlights: Gorgeous sea/Marina view room with the most stunning sunsets on the beach Hotel clean throughout and staff constantly working hard to maintain this Animation team were fab and really had our children laughing- particularly John Unga Bunga who went out of his way to involve us The BEST bar staff in the lobby bar - Aspa, Antonio and Popi made our night every night and made us feel so welcome Live singer had us all up dancing on the Wednesday night Great range of activities for the children who never got bored Water sports available at the beach Shops and bars on the doorstep Isla A la Carte restaurant was stunning and the food lovely We have had the best week no complaints at all! We will return! Only thing to note- be careful walking around the pool we have seen so many people slip and slide!!

Currently on our way back to the airport so thought I’d write our review while it’s fresh in our minds. Our first impressions of the hotel complex was really positive. We were greeted politely and shown a small buffet a food that had been provided for late night arrivals. Our room was clean and plenty big enough for us and offered all we needed. The pools are great, plenty of sun beds and you could pretty much get a space around one of them. It was nice not to have to get up at a ridiculous time to put towels down. The pool area is clean and well kept. The restaurant was a mixed bag. Breakfast was great, always a wide selection. The food at other times was really variable. I would not consider myself to be a fussy eater but I really struggled to find something I wanted to eat some nights. My husband and son are fussy, and ended up eating chips and bread. The quality of the meat went downhill during our stay. At the beginning of the week, it was much better. The bars again, variable. Snack bar was our favourite as the evening barman was very friendly and made good tasting drinks. The lounge bar, the barman was always grumpy and looked like he was telling the other staff off and the the lady just made awfully strong drinks as she didn’t measure the alcohol… way too strong to drink. Shame the clean air zone isn’t implemented… vapes and smoking is prevalent. The room was always cleaned and the fresh beds. The housemaids worked hard to keep them clean and tidy. Thank you! The evening entertainment was variable: the acrobatics and music were enjoyable. However the comedy evening was terrible, lots of people left throughout the show. The theatre isn’t overly comfortable and gets very cramped when busy. The entertainment team are always around, I enjoyed the aqua aerobics each morning. I did find that they tend to ‘favour’ certain children/families. No one came to try and engage my child with any events and he didn’t particular like the clown costumes. On our final day, we went out in the morning, came back for some lunch, got changed and went to the beach around 2pm. When we returned around 4pm, our hotel room door had been tampered with. When we got to the door, a metal fixing was poking out from under the door. When we opened the door, it was clear that someone had forced the door open. I reported this to reception and was made to feel like I had done it myself! The lady huffed at me, rang the maintenance team (who came to fix it promptly). No apologies or even showing any concern that the room had been broken in to. Our son was upset, he said he didn’t feel safe and kept asking if we’d been burgled. Thankfully nothing had been taken but we were quite disheartened that the hotel didn’t even ask us if all was okay or whether anything was missing. Put a dampener on our holiday. Overall, we would not recommend and wouldn’t return. Shame as we were looking forward to this trip away as a family.

Sol Marina Beach hotel offered everything our family needed. The hotel has different pools but we chose always to be at the main pool because of the TopAnimation team and their excellent entertainment. Katastrofa is a very good team leader and his team is really amazing! Gabi, Michaela, Unga Bunga, Marco and the rest of the team really did an amazing job entertaining children and adults with Sports activities during the day and mini disco and other shows in the evening. They were always smiling, taking time to talk with kids and adults and they made the stay very pleasant. The hotel is nice and clean, and our room had a good size. Lots of food with changing themes at dinner time ex Italian night or Asian. The pool is a bit crowded but one of the lifeguards at main pool did an amazing job moving the towels which ‘reserved’ spots but wasn’t used! So thank you! An amazing stay with a beautiful view, very good entertainment and a lot of fun and nice staff !

Absolutely great. Great selection of food and drink. Beautiful surroundings and the beach itself. But the animators are on the first place. Their energy and kindness are above all else. Programs like aquagym or fitness are great, but the mini disco was the best. I was on vacation with a camp and even though I'm 16, I danced like a 7-year-old on a family vacation. It was great and I hope to come back again.