Montemar Beach Resort Hotel

All the other reviews I read before the holiday were mainly true. I would not recommend this Hotel for any British tourists. If you have booked here I recommend you try and change accommodation as I had the worst holiday I've ever had. It is totally geared towards Eastern Europeans, who may have a lot lower expectation of standards of food and accommodation. Of the large number of people staying there 99% are all Eastern European and it was rare to hear any British voices at all for the whole week. That meant almost total isolation. We booked last minute to make a wedding and the Hotel seemed quite nice in the brochure. The All inclusive seemed a good option, but little did we know!
We are completely perplexed how this Hotel can be classed as 4 star. The level of service, food and general appearance are definitely more like 2 star. Some things are OK and they did clean the rooms every day. The pool and beach were quite nice. Some of the rooms do have sea views or nice gardens/plants and all rooms did have air conditioning. So in some aspects it was Ok. However for me these things were far out weighed by the following negative points:
The staff at reception were rude and didn't give a hoot about the customer satisfaction. We were unhappy with our room since it had no fridge minibar, no phone, the balcony looked onto a building Site, the bed was broken and still unmade since the last occupants. We had to stay overnight in another self catering flat and wait for availability of another room. In the end we paid for an up grade to the most modern rooms they had which were nice. However it was an awful lot of hassle to get reasonable accommodation and of the 3 rooms we tried we had to pay extra before we got any thing reasonable. The other room seemed totally unacceptable and not 4 star.
The Hotel was completely over booked and didn't have a room for us when we arrived. We had to spend the first two nights in the Lindos Princess up the road, which was lovely, but still hassle. Overbooking seemed common and everyone was complaining and it seemed that you were given whatever room was left rather the standard that you had paid for. It is run more like a production line and you having a pleasant stay is the last of their concerns, people in, people out.
The whole complex is not one self contained village as expected. The resort consists of various blocks of rooms and buildings that are dispersed over a large area and separated by a busy road. Some blocks are along the main road and separated by shops and supermarkets that are nothing to do with the Hotel at all. One room we stayed in for a single night was at the furthest part of the resort and 5 minutes walk to reception along the main, unlit unsafe road and anyone old or unfit or with children would have struggled. Some rooms allocated were self catering without the all inclusive facilities and some were apartments over shops. If you are unlucky to be given a room in one of the old, low standard blocks then you are not in for a pleasant stay and a long walk to anything.
The food was dreadful, totally dreadful. There was no Greek, Italian themes for what I could see. Presentation was on par with an old school canteen and these can never be called restaurants. Trays of unpalatable food were just left for your self service and they did re-use the food. The actual eating areas were like cheap cafes. Again just a production line, people in - eat - and people out.
I suffered food poisoning and was ill for 3 days, and I could see some other tourist complaining, so it wasn't just me. Staff at other pubs and restaurants in the area instantly new where I was staying when I said I was ill and some had worked at the Montemar and said that the hygiene standards were very poor, the staff were low paid and simply didn't care!
Any entertainment put on was rubbish and not in English and therefore we didn't bother. Not that anything was actually advertised for us to know what was actually going on anyway. All the bars shut by 11-12pm so don't expect to be up all night drinking to drown your sorrows.
The Montemar has nothing of any significance around it and therefore we had a taxi ride or bus ride to the closest village of Pefkos to find any restaurants or lively bars. We did this as the Montemar had nothing to offer in the evenings and I refused to eat there.