Sol Marina Beach Crete

The hotel boasts clean rooms, convenient location near the airport and beach, friendly staff, diverse amenities including pools and spa, and a delicious breakfast with plenty of choices.

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

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!!