Minos Mare Hotel

At arrival our booked room was not available for the next 2 nights and the replacement for it was o.k.

The room for the balance of the week was noisy. (Constant humming noise as well as the frequent starting of some pump for several minutes).

We got 2 other rooms offered both facing the parking lot, one at the lower level and one at ground level . Since we are not in favour of exhaust fumes and the noise of cars, buses and bikes coming and going, we declined the offers.

The defects (not exactly 4 Star) in our room had been rectified immediately after our complaint.

The young entertainment provider in the evening had an interesting program, unfortunately he had the music at eardrum busting level and when he made announcements he spoke way too fast to understand him clearly.

The dining room - the food and the service mornings and evenings were excellent.

The entire complex has been very clean and very well kept. Every single staff member was very helpful and friendly and we like to thank them at this occasion very much.

We will not be back at this hotel.

We stopped at the Minos Mare Hotel back in 2003 and are now planning to return there in 2008. We have tried many other places since but none compare with this superb hotel.

The cleanliness is excellent and the food is second to none. The position right on the beach is just perfect and is not very far from the beautiful town of Rethymnon.

I cannot recommend this place highly enough.

We have just returned from a two week holiday in Crete at the Minos Mare Hotel in Platanias. The hotel was great, very clean and ideally located on the beach. The staff were very helpful and pleasant and all spoke English.

The rooms were well equipped and cleaned every day with linen changed three times per week. The room does have air conditioning but it is only switched on when the room key is inserted in the magnetic holder on the wall so room can be hot when returning after a day out.

The food at breakfast was very good with plenty of variety and a corner dedicated to the local Cretan fayre. Dinner was palatable but needed more variety than was offered. The staff in the restaurant were again efficient helpful and polite.

The entertainment in the evening was enjoyable and the staff succeeded in getting most of the audience to participate in the fun. The Greek night was well worth the money about 18 euros each if you were half board and more if you were not.

Access to the town is within easy walking distance and the local restaurants are reasonably priced and the food very good. There is a shop in the hotel which sells just about everything you need and the local supermarkets are well stocked. There is also a wonderful bakery in the town and the bread is to die for! A taxi costing approximately 6euros will take you to Rethymnon (but it is not easy to get a taxi back) which is a lovely place with restaurants situated around a beautiful harbour but is spoiled by being constantly harassed by restaurant owners vying for custom.

The sun loungers on the beach cost 6 euros but that is for the whole day so it is not too bad the ones around the pool are free.

Overall we had a fabulous time and we were pleasantly surprised at how lovely the hotel was and how good the entertainment was especially after reading some bad reviews from previous years.

We think it was definitely the best hotel in the resort and we have recommended it to our daughters one of which has very small children who would no doubt enjoy the benefit of being so close to the beach and enjoy the baby pool and the day time entertainment.

We certainly recommend this hotel.

NB.

We booked 14 nights (through first choice arriving on the 16th after traveling through the night of the 15th) which because of the flight times turned out to be only 13 nights as the room is booked from 12 noon on the first day of your holiday (the 15th). This meant that we had to vacate at 12 noon on the 29th .As our flight was not until 5am on the 30th we had to pay 37 euros to keep the room until 12 midnight on the 29th! Make sure you do not fall into this trap as we did! The bog standard response by the first choice rep was there was nothing they could do as it is explained in the terms and conditions on the back of the brochure.

My wife and I stayed there in September 2005 and the biggest problem with this Hotel is that it was consistently overbooked.

There were numerous guests farmed out to other Hotels for 3 or 4 days on both 1week holidays and also 2 week holidays.

We travelled via First Choice and were left by the rep at Minos Mare reception who then advised us that the hotel had no accommodation for us for 3 nights!!

Thomson. Thomas Cook and Olympic guests all got the same treatment but these companies all paid higher compensation than First Choice.

My advice is if you want a stress free holiday steer clear of Minos Mare and if you want satisfactory customer service(after sales) be wary of First Choice!!!

A lovely hotel for couples and families.

I stayed at the Minos Mare hotel from 6th to 20th July 2004 with my 13 year old daughter. (Do not confuse this hotel with The Minos which is owned by the same people).

The hotel is situated about 5km to the east of Rethymnon in an area called Platanias, it takes about one and a half hours to transfer there from Chania airport. The hotel itself is about 250 meters off the main road next on the beach in a pleasant quiet location. The hotel has a good size lobby with friendly English speaking reception staff and a dedicated multilingual guest relation’s manager. The air conditioned rooms have a balcony, bath, shower, toilet, TV (with international channels), safe (28 euros to hire), minibar, wardrobe, plenty of cupboard space and room for a double bed, single bed and cot. The rooms are beautifully made up every day and there is plenty of hot water with good pressure in the shower. Some of the rooms have a view of the sea, although others look over the car park (not busy) or restaurant.

The hotel has a main buffet style restaurant, which serves breakfast (Greek, English, continental) and evening meal. There is usually a choice of main course as well as a buffet with starters, soups, salads, other main courses, and desserts. All well prepared and delicious. There is also a pool bar serving drinks and snacks (2 euros for a soft drink, 2.7e for local beer, 5.5e for cocktails, 7e to 20e for bottle of wine) with a happy hour and a beachfront restaurant serving lunchtime food. Again this has a good selection including Greek items.

The hotel has a round pool, which is clean and has free sunbeds and umbrellas, there is also a small children’s pool. There is a large garden area with palm trees, which is nice for relaxing and reading. The hotel maintains its section of sandy beach well and again there are plenty of sunbeds and umbrellas although there is a 3 euro charge per person per day for these. The beach has a European blue flag and there is a lifeguard. On calm days the sea is warm for swimming, but the constant cooling wind means that it is quite often not safe to swim. The hotel has an entertainment person (new when we arrived) who organises volley ball, exercises etc and runs a mini club. There is some entertainment about 3 nights a week, which is ok but could be better, however the Greek night is excellent and is done together with the evening meal in the beach bar. There seems to be some arrangement with local Greek people to join in and everyone has a good party and dance.

You can walk into Rethymnon along the beach in about one hour or you can take the bus, which costs 0.95e (buy tickets from supermarkets, to get back take the Hotels-Panorama route from the bus station). Rethymnon has lots of little shops and alleyways and it is easy to spend a day wandering around. The Old Town taverna near the interesting folk museum is a good place to eat traditional Greek food. The Kalipso Rocks diving school has an excellent introductory day on the south of island for about 80 euros.

The main street of Platanias contains reasonable tavernas and supermarkets (with cash point machines), car hire (80 euros for 3 days for a small car with air con) and some British bars with picture menus (how sad).

I can recommend this hotel to couples and families and feel sad that I an unlikely to visit such a good place again.

Stephen Davies