Phaedra Beach Hotel

Very noisy, full of drunks. Very unresponsive personal. Not nice at all. If somebody wants to come unstitched without any break among the drunk britans - go to Phedra beach! We didn't stay even one day!

4 readers found this review helpful

We just came back from this Hotel. We always go all inclusive, and for the measly price we actually pay for the Hotel, always go with an open mind. We were pleasantly suprised by this hotel, after reading many bad reviews.
Ok, so the drinks are limited, but you can't please everyone all the time. I am quite a fussy eater, and often find it difficult to find something I like....but the food offered, was of a good standard, and I don't think we ever had the same main meal twice.
We did find there were lots of Germans staying there, and true to form, they were as rude and ignorant as hell, but that is not the Hotel Staffs fault. It's the end of the season, and some of the staff were exhausted by the long days and night for the season, but they were always pleasant.
Our room was lovely. Nice and clean, and as requested, a double bed, and lovely sea view.
The English moaned about the other guests, the lack of proper English food etc, my response? You should have gone to Blackpool.
My only slight annoyance, was that as it is the end of the season, the staff were making good use of being quiet, by packing away stuff. eg. the sunbeds on the public beach, and some from around the pool. You wondered if you would get up one day, and the pool would be empty lol. I understand it all takes time, but I really do believe that they should have waited until the Hotel was empty, as we felt they were pulling the carpet from under us.
We rarely visit the same place twice, but I would consider this Hotel again. The beach and Sea were fantastic.

1 reader found this review helpful

I stayed at this hotel with my boyfriend and two of our friends (antoher couple)
We arrived at the hotel about 4.30pm the man on the reception seemed like he couldn't be bothered with us, handed us our key and got a cleaner to show us to our room, barly said a word to us, then left us to get on with it.
As soon as we walked into our room we were shocked on the size, it was tiny. We were disappointed to later discover that the maids come in everyday to clean but only gave clean towels and bedding every other day. We had to pay 5 euros a day for our air conditioning and 25 euros to use our safe deposite box in our room. Throughout the whole hoilday we has ants in our sink and our friends has ants in their bath.
The pools looked nice but had far to many chemicals in, couldn't get our face wet as it felt like it was burning and really stung our eyes. Dont know how children stayed in there. The beach was lovely and water sports were offered, although we paid to stay all inclusive if we wanted a sun bed we had to pay 4 euros each for each sun bed each day.
We paid to stay all inclusive but the food was terrible. We were offered chips, bread hard eggs and horrible orange jucie for breakfast. Chips, pasta, watered down pasta sauce, bread and 1 choice of horrible meat for lunch and dinner. Drinks we were omly allowed lemonade, coke, orange, ouzo, brandy, wine and beers and it all tasted wrong. We ate out a lot as the food was really bad. There is a resturant next door to the hotel which serves beakfast, lunch and dinner which is very nice but we also wanted to try other places. The next neariest places are in Malia strip which is 7 euros in a taxi each way. Takes about 35-40mins to walk.
The bar and resturant staff were friendly and one of the bar men was always there to entertain us but the recetion staff were very very rude.
The holiday was great but the hotel was a real let down to the hoilday and we only stayed there to sleep and ended up spending a lot more then expected due to the food and drinks being horrible and the lack of choice offered.

I love this Hotel and all the nice people from the lovely Phaedra Beach Hotel , good food , clean room and every day , lots of fun in the sun

We stayed at the Phaedra Beach Hotel from 8.6.10-15.6.10 and I couldn't wait to come home.
The food wasn't the best, breakfast was especially the worst- sausages that were cut up into small chunks, sometimes beans, hard boiled eggs, fries or potatoes and the usual cereal etc... was awful! Lunch and tea weren't so bad but you could have your lunch at 12.30 and you'd have to wait until 7pm for food again due to there being no snacks.
Drinks not a wide selections, half a pint of beer, raki, oozo, wine and brandy- anything else you have to pay for.
There are two pools, one where the groups hang about and one where the kiddies and families go. The kiddies and family pool is better and the pools aren't too bad.
To go on the beach it is 5 euro per day per person, even though it's the hotels beach?!?
Our room was very damp and I could hardly wear any of my clothes. The sheets were cleaned but they weren't dry when put on, very uncomfortable nights. Was situated right next to the alley by the bar so as you can imagine very loud every night.
All in all spend more money and get a better holiday :-)

hotel was very clean, bedding and towels changed everyday!! staff were friendly especially bas off beach bar who been there 11 years always got a smile even though he works 10am till about 2am most of days. entertainment was poor not much on (only a few nights a week). the food was ok jst nothing was labled so you have to keep aking what is what. the pool was clean also. would stay in hotel again if i took my daughter but as me and my partner went we would of liked to be closer to the night life but the 20min walk wernt too bad with cafes and bars on your way!!

2 readers found this review helpful

We just got back from the Pheadra Beach Resort last week 11/05/10,to say we asked for a sea view room we got a room about 10yard from the reception, and had to be the noisest room ever day and night. As for the A.I well thats a joke food not good at all but you wont starve,puds very nice,but all very limited,alcohol was a joke local beer,wine,raki,ouzo and brandy yep thats it all other spirits you have to pay for. Staff are fine not a problem from them, The private beach well you have to pay 4 euros a day for a bed lol.Entertianment none!.Its also a good 35min walk into Malia or 7 euro taxi ride,thats a long walk in the heat of Crete.we hired a quad and explored highly reccomend you hire. good look if your going.

3 readers found this review helpful

i have never been to a hotel where the staff are rude, and even though we paid to go all inclusive when we got here we found that we still had to pay for everything apart from wine, beer, brandy or raki. The food was awful and to get to the nearest town it was a 30min walk unless you wanted to pay 10 euros for a taxi. There was no entertainment at the hotel, and to sit on a bed on the beach the hotel charged you for that. The fridge in your room you are even charged to store anything in there.

24 readers found this review helpful

Me and my boyfriend stayed in this hotel 5th-12th of June 2009. We arrived to the hotel at around 4.30am and were greeted by a friendly male receptionist, who gave us a room key and showed us a way to a main restaurant where they had plates with some food prepared for those who arrive very late. The food must have been on the plates for a very long time, because the bread was rock hard, cheese didn’t look fresh at all and if you are a vegetarian you could not eat anything but an apple, as there was ham on the plate.
The room was fine and we did get a sea view as requested. The throws on the bed didn’t look very clean, but I didn’t expect them to be in 3 star hotel (I work as a housekeeping supervisor myself and I know that in most of the hotels they get washes once in few months). The linen on the bed was clean, there were only sheets on the bed with no blanket. There was one in the wardrobe , but I wouldn’t recommend to cover yourself with it as it wasn’t clean and had an unpleasant smell. The bathroom was ok, u get bath towel and hand towel each and 1 bathmat, also u get 1 small soap each. Towels supposed to be changed every 2nd night, which didn’t happen in our case and we had request fresh towels. The linen is changed every 3rd night.
There is air conditioning in the room, for which you have to pay 5 euro a day. There is also small fridge which costs 2 euro a day. We took a fridge for 5 days and a maid came to lock it on 4th day, after arguing with receptionist we did get it unlocked for the rest of our stay.
The maids are friendly, they smile and greet you, but they can’t speak English at all. One of the main problems we had with them is that when they come to clean a room they just knock once and open the door straight away, you don’t even get chance to react, so you don’t get any privacy. Even if you put DND sign on the door it won’t help as they just let themselves in. We did complain about this to Housekeeping Supervisor/Manager, who started shouting at us and said that as the maids have to clean 30 rooms a day they don’t have time to knock on the doors. Which is a very ridiculous excuse, as it takes only few seconds to knock at least twice and wait for a response.
Now the food…The breakfast was from 7-9.45am. For breakfast you get: ham, cheese, 3 types of bread, sliced orange, tomato, cucumber, canned apricot, yogurt, choice of very cheap cereal, sausages, potato bake and 1 egg dish (omelet with mushrooms, scrambled eggs with bacon or boiled eggs) and warm cake or pastry. For a drink you can choose from coffee, tea (only 3 varieties), juice (apple, orange or grapefruit). The juice was very sweet, so its quite impossible to drink.
The dinner was from 7-9pm. The menu consisted from few basic salads (tomato cucumber, potato salad, coleslaw, cold boiled veg), there were local olives and feta, so you could have added them to your salad. From hot dishes there was pasta, tomato sauce, carbonara sauce, chips, fish in tomato sauce (had to be careful as it had quite few bones in it), few pork dishes, okra with potato in tomato sauce, and sometimes u get chicken and boiled veg. For dessert you get jelly, cake, vanilla mouse, melon, water melon, ice cream (strawberry, banana, chocolate, vanilla). So dessert was the best part of our meal most of the time. Drinks are not included, so you had to buy them from a waiter. Bottle of water costs 2.20 euro, 1 glass of apple juice 2.40 euro, coke 2.20, freshly squeezed orange juice 3.60. I don’t know about alcohol as we didn’t buy any.
Restaurant staff was ok, few people were very friendly, some always has a miserable faces, never said you are welcome if you thank them and never smile.
We didn’t get any problems with receptionist lady who works in the mornings, but the male receptionist in the afternoon was quite rude and unhelpful.
The location of the hotel is good, if you want to have a relaxing beach holiday and stay most of the day on the beach or near the pool. You do have to pay for a sunbed, which is 4 euro a day each. The pool was nice and clean, but its not suitable for children as its quite deep. The small part of it is 0.75 m deep, the rest ranges from 1.50 to 2.80 m. The beach is fine, but as you go into the water, there are a lot of stones with sea weed on the sea bottom, so its not nice at all to walk on them with bare feet.
If you are a non-smoker you might have a problem as there isn’t much fresh air around the hotel , people just seem to smoke everywhere, on the beach, near swimming pool, in the lobby…
The hotel does arrange some entertainment: there is BBQ every 2nd week, which costs 15 euro per person , they had Greek evening, with Greek music and dancing.
The also have air hockey (1 euro per game) and snooker/pool (2 euro a game) in the Beach bar.
The town of Malia is around 35 min walk. Lots of people rent bikes, so as you walking to Malia you will breath in a lot of fumes. You can take a taxi which is 7 euro one way. Malia is packed with bars and restaurants and also they have an old town with some traditional buildings in the north or the town.
If you want to visit Heraklion, you ca take a bus from Malia’s main road, it costs 3.50 euro per person 1 way. Taxi to Heraklion city centre or Heraklion airport is 50 euro.
If you are interested in history you can go and see the ruins of Malia Palace , the place is 15 min walk from he hotel (turn left), its open till 3pm and costs 4 euro per person.
Overall the hotel is fine, location is good, but the majority of staff isn’t very friendly so its not a pleasant atmosphere in the hotel or bar.
Guests consist of Germans, Russians, Dutch, Slovenian, Polish, few Estonians and English.

8 readers found this review helpful

Excellent stay,plenty of good varied food.Clean accomodation.Sheets changed daily.TV is free but only BBC World from uk as Sky is illegal in Greece.
Closing down in October but local bars/restaurants eager to please.Car hire, quad bikes and coach trips discounted.
Far enough fom town to avoid night life. Excellent beaches..sun beds 4euros a day.
Cosmopolitan clients but english well to fore. Recommended for a shoulder break.