Marina Beach Hotel

I came to Crete expecting an average 4 star hotel, but the marina was brilliant. It was huge, the rooms were cleaned daily, good entertainment at night for the kids and a lovely staff. It was brilliant i think this hotel should be 5 star it is truly spectacular and i encourage anyone coming to Crete to stay here. There was only one problem and that was the fact that the hotel was too big, walking from my hotel room to the bar or pool seemed to take ages but its really not a big problem.

I really liked this hotel and some people are saying that the food was horrible but it wasn't it was probably beause you did not grow up with that type of food. I think the hotel was great and I wasn't dissapointed at all. All the staff were very nice and helpful they were fun to talk with adn I will never forget when I went to this hotel.

I really enjoyed my holiday at Marina Beach hotel. The hotel was beautiful and more than I expected. The hotel room was plenty big enough and catered for all our needs. The rooms were cleaned on a daily basis and to a good standard. The people were really friendly and made you feel at ease. The pools were cold but nice after being in the hot sun. The bar in the pool was great because you didn’t have to leave the pool to get a drink. The entertainment team were great and kept you entertain you throughout the day.
The area surrounding the hotel had plenty to do and we enjoyed going to the different pubs along the sea. The town just up from the hotel had everything you could need from pubs to shops.
I enjoyed the trips provided especially the jeep safari which went around the island and the water park. There were plenty of activities to choose from to keep you busy throughout your stay. Also plenty of time to relax and enjoy the sun and unwind.
Everyone from the group enjoyed their time there and are planning on going back.
The Raki was good as well.

The hotel was clean and welcoming! However our room was appalling - the furniture was dated, the beds had seen better days and were so uncomfortable and our balcony door was jammed shut, probably due to the fact that it looked 50yrs old!
We complained and they moved us the following day (after having to request they move us 3 times!) The next room was just as bad - bathroom floor flooded, hardly any water would come out of the shower and it was luke warm. There was a huge crack down the bedroom wall and it was so dark in the room as there was only a tiny window and no view at all.
There was never any reps around, sure they avoid their customers. The main pool was very noisy with the entertainment staff pestering you regularly, so we used the smaller pool instead which was pleasant. The indoor pool needed a good cleaning out and the gym equipment was all out of order!
The food was basic - great if you’re Italian: pasta, pizza and spaghetti Bolognese everyday without fail. The dining room was also dated in decor!
The drinks in the day were warm as they are not in the fridge and for lunch there is only ham and cheese baguettes or chewy sausage rolls! Unless you are Italian or German the bar staff take forever to serve you in the evenings, maybe as they were paying customers and we were all inclusive.
Also loads of cockroaches around in the evening (they even visit you in bed!). Very disappointed with standard of hotel, definitely not 4star standard. As for the area Gouves, well don't ask - a shambles!
We go to Greece every year and have been to many different islands and hotels and this is the worst ever! Never again will we visit Gouves and we certainly do not recommended this hotel to anyone!

If you're looking for a holiday where a quick transfer to and from the airport is handy then this hotel will suit. Great if you're only going for one week and you've just spent 3 hours 40 minutes getting to Crete. Fifteen minutes down the main coastal highway and you get to Gouves.
The resort is only a village so don't expect it to be a Benidorm or Ayia Napa. It only has bars, restaurants and shops. It is not a resort for the teenagers and for staying out all night. The hotel is situated right opposite its own perfect small beach. The beach has been extended here so that Marina hotel have their own section and its perfect for walking and playing around on. Its pure golden sand unlike further down the road where there are narrow strips of scruffy sand as I call it. This beach is great for kids proper bucket and spade stuff. The hotel also has its beach volleyball/football areas on the same patch right at the far end.
Hotel staff are great and you will find if you only smile and say hello you'll always be greeted in the same manner. We have been to around 17 different countries now and sometimes you just find British people slagging everywhere off. Well the locals are great, don't expect them always to speak first. But a friendly smile to them and they are a real pleasant lot. If you fancy a trip down to one of the local bars (there are a few dozen around the village) you could do worse than try Pella's bar and restaurant. Just a 50 yard walk from the hotel. And what a great family they are, they really make you welcome.
The Marina Hotel is efficiently run and has friendly bar staff. Antonios is the bar manager and Efi (she's his no.2). There are a few others working behind the bar too depending how busy it gets. We sat at the bar chatting some nights to friends we'd met and Antonios and Efi would poor us all an Ouzo every so often and toast our health. This was without requesting Ouzo as we were all drinking other stuff.
Food was fine really. Some of it bog standard all inclusive but some really nice meat and fish. Good selection of pasta as they get quite a number of Italians staying there (makes a change from too many Germans). Good choice at both breakfast and dinner. Lunch a little less on offer but great salads to be had. Good choice fruit and cakes.
This hotel has a disco of its own (indoors and outside in the main car park) but you don't hear any complaints of noise. Overall some lovely space around the hotel and gardens. Nice seperate pool areas, the large pool is where animation takes place and a quieter one with swim up bar.
I would revisit this hotel as couldn't find anything to complain about. But I don't go on holiday deliberately expecting to anyway. Rooms were kept lovely and clean by great maids who seemed to clean same time daily. Gouves isn't the smartest of resorts as the area is still being improved. But a twenty minute walk takes you up to the main road and bus stops. A trip to nearby Hersonissos (lovely town with shops and bars galore) takes under ten minutes and costs around 1.20euro each way. If you're after a family holiday with kids or like us you're a couple who just want to chill out its in a great place to visit other towns.

Well I wasn’t expecting much after reading the reviews! We are a family with 3 children aged 16, 14 and 13.
The hotel is good and has good clean swimming pools. All the communal areas were clean and the rooms were cleaned on a daily basis. The room was quite large but very basic.
The food was good when we got there but with it being all in you tend to eat a lot at each meal which leaves you not hungry for the next one and that’s where the problem starts. It did get a bit boring but wouldn’t it anywhere? The staff were mostly helpful not over friendly but I didn’t want them as friends just to do their job which they did.
The area of Gouves is not particularly pretty and when you travel about you can see some truly amazing places, so this isn’t a bad place to start. The snacks on offer where as others have said ham and cheese baguettes, but why would you want snacks when there’s so much food on offer at meals?
We had a truly enjoyable holiday and would stay in the hotel again if it wasn’t in Gouves as there are nicer places near. The beach was nice and the shops were worth a look. Don’t be put off by fussy eaters. Not much to worry about just go and have fun, it’s what you make it at the end of the day!
Oh yeah and beginning of Oct is a brilliant time to go as it’s quite quiet.

I stayed at this hotel 2 years ago and went back this year with my sister and really wish I hadn’t bothered.
We were there from the 18 Sept to 2 Oct and the Air Conditioning was turned off from the 23rd Sept which was an absolute joke as the heat in the rooms was unbearable especially at night, luckily we were on the third floor so slept with our door open in the hope that a breeze came through.
I cannot complain about the cleanliness of the room as they were cleaned daily with fresh towels and bed linen.
The main pool was very noisy, music blaring all day, we just went to the beach where your sun beds and parasols were free, and you got peace from the music but were deafened by the Italians who cant seem to talk at a reasonable level they just shout. It does say in the brochure that there is a beach bar, but there wasn’t.
What can I say about the food!!!! Cold, I don’t expect roast beef etc when in Crete but I never had a hot meal yet, everything whether you were there when the restaurant first opened was luke warm or cold and the snacks at the bar!!!! Ham and cheese baguette every day nothing else. And like the review before me said don’t bother trying to queue in the restaurant it is a joke, the Italian guests just barge in as if it is their right to be first, I came away with a few bruises where they just push you out of the way, a good pair of high heels does the trick with a sickly sweet apology when they look at you in pain.
The evening entertainment was a joke, provided by the animation team, and went once stayed for 5 minutes and never went again.
Would I go again? Never.

If you are expecting a 4 star hotel you will be very disappointed. This hotel would be luckily to pass for a 3 star.
We stayed in a one bedroom bungalow. We were told this was one bedroom with a living area and a pool view. It was infact one room with a double bed, a very old chair that pulled out into a sofa bed and a single bed.
The furniture was so dated and old you were scared to sit on it. The bathroom had mould around it. The televisions do not work properly and our air conditioning unit leaked for four days before the hotel staff did anything about it. There are no pool views from 95% of the 'bungalows' as all the pine trees are overgrown.
Most of the parasols and quite a few of the beds around the pools are broken and one of the ladders into the pool is broken.
The so called buffet bar serves cheese and ham rolls every day, nothing else. The food in the restaurant was very monotonous and in cases recycled.
Many of the amusement machines and computers were always out of order and seemed to take days to fix. We bought a beach bag in the lobby shop and it broke the day after we purchased it. We took it back and the lady argued with us telling us we had cut the handles ourselves. Then she 'politely' told us to go away. We were appalled.

We normally read reviews of hotels before booking our holiday and sometimes you have to make a judgement on some of the reviews. But we cannot believe anybody would stay at this hotel and be satisfied with the facilities or the service of the staff.
The staff are overworked and in most cases quite rude. If you approach the reception staff with a problem i.e.: 'our air conditioning unit is pouring water out of it' they argue with you then just ignore it and as for Olympic Holidays, they were never there. Our representative who knew of the problem with our room hid every time she saw us.
Gouves itself is not the place to stay in Crete. There is not a lot there. Go to Agios Nicolias or Rethymnon.

BE WARNED. This is NOT a four star hotel. Whist the rooms are well maintained and clean, the food, in both quality and choice is ABYSMAL. Yes, the restaurant staff were very attentive and polite (which is more than could be said for the barstaff) and could not wait to get your drinks for you, but when it comes to food, if you like spaghetti, you should be in your element. Anything else wasn't worth looking at, let alone eating. I will take that back, the ice-cream was OK....AH!!! I thought one day... Cheeseburger...I retract my words, only to find the burger was in a brown breadbun, the cheese was not melted, and worse still, when I bit into the meat it was RAW with blood still running on the inside of it. Likewise with a sausage roll on another occasion, the pastry jacket was just about eatable, but the sausage was completely raw, never seen a frying pan or grill.
The bar was just as bad. I could not taste the coke in my drink, only soda water, and I could see right through it, same with the sprite. Half-board (paying) customers got served first, while all-inclusive customers got ignored. Same for the drinks. I don't know what it was about the beer, but when you were prepared to pay for it, it tasted completely different, almost palatable.
As for the animation team. please don't make me laugh, they certainly couldn't. Third rate, at times vulgar sketches to an audience largely consisting of French and Italians who seemed to lap it up??
Another thing, don't bother queuing in an orderly fashion for the dining room, the French will just walk straight in front of you as though it is their right. I did try to explain to one that he was being rude, but he either didn't understand me, or didn't WANT to understand me, I suspect the latter. A good hard shove against the wall put him in his place however.
The main pool was noisy, noisy, noisy, so off to the smaller pool with a lovely swim-up bar. Only problem here was you were not sure what you were swimming through to get to the bar; Filthy and disgusting. Funny, when I started taking pictures a man suddenly appeared from nowhere with a net on a long pole and started fishing all the muck out. (This was at 2 p.m. one day) He was still at it hours later.
In all a very sad, bad experience. I COULD NOT recommend to even my enemies.

Very disappointed after looking forward to a holiday of a life time originally to Mexico but with the weather conditions our holiday was relocated to marina beach gouves Crete. If I had to give one word to describe our holiday it would have to be insulting!!!
The holiday brochure specifies "a host of leisure and entertainment options", but what they actually meant was evening shows that consisted of rude gestures every evening but the main content of the show was not even funny, and was only acted out in Italian!!!
A room with 12 computers with internet access which only 4 out of the 12 worked at one time the others had 'out of order' signs pinned to them. The few machines in the arcade continuously swallowed the money when the children notified reception the man behind the desk said he did not believe them; we protested our children were not lying for a euro, after paying £4300 for a holiday from hell asking for the euro was about the principal!!!
Other leisure or entertainment, options there were none!!! After 6 days we chose not to use the swimming pool with the swim up bar as it was disgusting.
There was a fitness room with all the equipment but it was all out of order, it would not have been possible to work out as there was no air conditioning. We never found any sign of the chance of a massage or sauna.
In the brochure it also states there are two restaurants, again incorrect, only the one, it says the children’s menu completely untrue, the food was as good as the same every day lunchtime and evening oh unless you just fancied a pool side snack and you could choose a cheese and ham or even a ham and cheese roll, same same same every day.
You might also like to help yourself to a bottle of warm water whilst you pick up your same old roll! Whilst abroad we try to avoid having ice in our drinks but as all the juices are not refrigerated and are just sitting on the side you do not have any choice unless its hot juice you prefer!!
Whilst you eat your meals do not look away from your plate for a split second because they whip it away at the first opportunity, we had to call ours and the children’s meals back on 4 occasions, it makes you feel guilty for eating the food you have paid good money for. The decor in the restaurant was terrible with paint peeling from the ceiling to the floor on the walls on the furthest walls of the restaurant.
"Water sports" don’t make me laugh, this hotel has 400 rooms so you can imagine how many people it holds, it has 1 yes just 1 pedlo with all of 2 seats, it took us 6 days until it was available for our use as it spent most days locked away, but they do have 2 yes that’s right all of 2 canoes as well that’s the water sports that are inclusive.
Air conditioning set on high, makes a noise but does not blow out cold air, fantastic when its 42 degrees eah... we called out the technician 3 times to be told its normal as they point to the unit, yes its set correct but the unit is not working they did nothing about it so we resulted in sleeping on the balcony hoping and preying we didn’t get bitten, luckily we didn’t!!!!
But reception put a note under our door complaining that we were sleeping on the balcony we couldn’t win. The lock on our door broke on our way out one evening at 9pm we called reception and reported it they sent someone to repair it we went out when we came home the door was shut tight some how, we opened it closed it to go to bed and it still would not shut we called reception again they said they had no on to fix it until the morning, we stayed with the room 2pm it still hadn’t been fixed we phoned reception they said they had more important jobs first, it was fixed at 2.50pm after phoning my travel rep.
I would not advise any British people to go to this hotel as they do not like the English. If you’re Italian you’ll love it as they will bend over backwards for you, don’t ask me why the Italians were very rude jumped all the ques, and stare and I mean they even stop in their tracks to stare at you.
Two of my three boys had their west ham t shirts stolen from around the pool whilst swimming, and a pair of flip flops were stolen as well, what a sad situation!!
My advice to fellow English people save your money and your sanity!!!