Eleni Holiday Village

Just returned from getting married in Cyprus. This was our second time staying at the Eleni and we would go back again given the chance.
It is a great place for families with a very large pool in the centre, but is equally as good for couples such as ourselves who like to explore.
The nearest bus stop is just a few minutes’ walk away and it’s a flat rate of 80c whether you go all the way to Coral bay or up to the market.
A special thanks to the staff at the Paris bar, who kept us supplied with drinks and great conversation.

Just got back from a week’s holiday in Cyprus & the Eleni. What a great place.
Food was excellent with a very wide choice each day.
The room (1402) was large & spacious & very clean. The staff was so friendly, well done to Barbara & Mohammad, they kept us laughing throughout the week.
We really could not find anything to dislike about the Eleni, we go all inclusive most holidays & this ranks as one of the really good ones.
Every guest at the hotel was so friendly (especially Del & Wendy), & most joined in with the fun & games.
So if you get a chance to stay there, go, enjoy, we will be going back for more.

We stayed for 14 nights.
Apartments were cleaned regular but still had a few ants. My mum had a cockroach in her apartment which attracted more ants.
Beds were slightly uncomfortable but apartment was spacious and clean.
The food was less impressive, too many green leaves or herbs which put me off.
Entertainment was excellent, lots to watch, bingo was good. Be warned if you win you have to do shaky shaky but it’s all part of the fun and Mohammed and Barbra kept us entertained.
All inclusive is good value for money, weather was excellent and my son loved the pool.
All staff were friendly Mohammed was good with my son, kept him smiling. My brother loved the drink and entertainment too.
Would go back to Cyprus but maybe some where different.

Again, we were slightly concerned about the Eleni; however as soon as we walked through the main doors late at night, it was clear we had made a good choice.
Our room was very spacious, clean and comfortable and our 15 month old daughter certainly seemed very happy to be there!
We went all inclusive and we found the food to very good with plenty of choice and variety, and the waiting staff were friendly and helpful. Our fellow guests were very friendly as well.
It was just what we wanted as a 1st holiday abroad for our daughter and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone wanting a family location.

We had 10 days stay and can I say the staff were fantastic.
The hotel was clean, we stayed in room 3114 overlooking the sea, it was clean.
The food was excellent, but too much for us as we were fully inc which yes we booked, but it was great to see the other guests over filling their plates as if they were not going get another meal.
My only complaint was that we were told that the kids club was active all year long, but it was not true. We were told it was the winter season so my 11 yr old son soon got fed up, so did the other kids, but the Adults seemed to be well cared for.
It was a shame that more effort had not been put in for the little ones. I guess it was the draw of the beer and the so called kids club entertainer, but after my moan the holiday was great and we did enjoy it.
But we would not book full inc again, as you need to be able to eat and drink like a king and end up like Henry the 8th.
Can I just say it was our first fully inc and it was a real eye opener.

Like many others, I read plenty of reviews of the Eleni before travelling with my partner and three year old daughter and so was a little concerned.
This holiday was however, thoroughly enjoyable and we would definitely return to this hotel. Perhaps not in the busiest season though - partly because of the heat.
We returned yesterday after a fab week here on an all inclusive basis. Didn't want to come home!
We arrived close to midnight after a short transfer time of around 30 minutes, which included two drop offs in the centre of Paphos. In the dark its' difficult to get a feel for a place, but the apartment we stayed in was close to reception and situated handily above the onsite mini market.
The room was really clean, spacious and comfortable. Bring some tea or coffee things if you're arriving late at night!
Our first day, expecting to feel stranded in the middle of nowhere after reading some of these reviews - but this was far from the case, we had a bit of a wander.
The complex is really lovely with 2 excellent pools, and a grassed area (fantastic views from here), small children’s climbing thing (seemed very safe).
The small beach in to the side of the hotel was too gravelly with quite a rough, rocky sea for us. A few bars and restaurants, chemist and bigger supermarket were all a short walk up toward the main road. Perfect.
The bus service is excellent, no real need to hire a car. A short walk up to the main road gets you to the bus stops. Simple - go right for Paphos harbour and the daily Market in old Paphos OR left for the brilliant Coral bay Beach.
Stay on the bus until the end for the best bit of beach - ideal for families with little ones and you can hire a couple of loungers for £3 per day. The buses are frequent and cost 80cents per adult.
If you have a pushchair, be prepared to fold it and store it in the luggage compartments under the coach as some are quite old.
We spent most of our days at Coral Bay Beach, one day in Paphos and two days by the pool. One day was rained off! but the rest of the week was hot, with a bit of a breeze.
This was our first time all inclusive, and to be honest we used the hotel as a base but many families spent the full week within the complex. You can practically eat ALL day if you choose to.
The food is very good; always a very wide selection and the kids are well catered for.
One possible niggle would be that no one tells you exactly what you can or can't have, we found out on the plane home that you can order a picnic the day before if you are going to be out of the hotel all day - as we were!
The entertainment was good, ideal for families with small children. I never saw anything suggesting a 'kids club' during the daytimes - but I wouldn't have used one anyway as we were on holiday as a family!
Early evenings there would be a mini disco followed by a quick game of bingo before things like, parrot shows, fire eating shows, magicians, Greek dancing or karaoke/quizzes.
We found ourselves staying for most of these, and they were good - especially for the kids.
The hotel was full of British people who were all pretty friendly. It might have gotten too much though if we'd stayed all day everyday by the pool and every night in the bar! We agreed that at the height of the summer season things might be less bearable as we don't tend to go on holiday and wake up with a hangover every morning!
Overall, the three of us would definitely recommend this hotel. The flight times were good, arriving late at night and flying back to East Midlands at midnight also meant that we had 7 full days!
There is a charge of £20 Cyp to keep your room until 6 on the last day as regular check out time is noon - but if you are all inclusive you can keep your band until the coach comes to pick you up for the airport allowing you to have a meal before you depart. We didn't bother with in-flight meals.
Take some insect repellent! They were just coming into force as we were leaving! We had only a few ants in our room - as we killed a larger bug which attracted them!
If you want to stay by the pool, put your towel out! - We didn't!

Just returned from two weeks at Eleni Village, very pleasant lovely large room and very clean. The staff were very friendly and helpful.
We didn’t have any extra visitors (ants) maybe that was because we kept all the food in the fridge.
We didn’t find anything to complain about and would definitely recommend to others.
As our children are grown up we don’t go in school holidays, so it was mainly adults just a couple of small kiddies and was fairly quiet.
Overall a lovely holiday.

The eleni is a great place to go if you have children or not. There is everything there from kids club to darts. The food is lovley, so is the people. When you're there try the waterpark or the castle. There is tons to do.
There is four pools to choose from, One is a baby pool, One is the activity pool,
One is the main pool and last is the indoor pool for adults, (beware the pools are cold when you get in but it wear's out).
The night life can go on for ever weather it's karaoke or bingo. You will love it.
Since I went last year I want to back again, I recommend it to anyone.

Just back from the Eleni and must say we were happy with our holiday there. In this life you normally get what you pay for, and as we had booked a budget holiday, we were not expecting anything more than what we got.
As previous comments have said, the Eleni is a nice clean and welcoming place. The room we had (2002) was perfect for our needs. We had a perfect sea view, a balcony and peace and quiet as it was as far away from the bars and reception as you could get.
The room facilities were basic, you could not do any more cooking than a breakfast, but that did not bother us as we like to go out and sample the local restaurants wherever we are at. We tried the Eleni's restaurant on a couple of occasions, and were happy enough with what we got. At £6.95 (Cyprus pounds) for a 3 course, it was value for money.
The entertainment was very basic, and to be honest we did not partake of any of the daily or evening events. The chap doing the quizzes was very difficult to understand.
The Eleni is about 5 / 6 km out of Kato Pafos, and a car is almost essential for getting about. There are car hire sites just about everywhere you look, but my advice is book your vehicle before you leave Britain, it is cheaper. I booked a 4 door family car costing £60 for 5 days through moneysupermarket.com When I went to pick it up, I was upgraded to a 4x4 Nissan Terrano free of charge.
The only downside we had about the Eleni is, the towels/bedding are not changed often enough, and we had to share our apartment for a couple of days with a family of ants, but a tin of insect repellant from the local supermarket sorted them out.
I would recommend the Eleni if you want a hotel away from the busy tourist area, and you are looking to have a peaceful relaxing time. If we go back to Cyprus, we will definitely consider going back to the Eleni.

OUR ARRIVAL: After a relatively short and pain-free transfer from Paphos airport, we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the Eleni.
It looked clean, quite modern and generally very pleasant. After a quick and simple check-in we headed up to our room.
ACCOMMODATION: On opening the door to our apartment (No. 1019) we were taken aback by how large it was.
It was an enormous improvement on the apartment we were stuck with on our last holiday (in Corfu) which had been similar to the prison cell/apartment that Victor Meldrew was given in One Foot in the Algarve.
Like the first impressions of the hotel itself, our apartment also appeared clean, relatively modern and, apart from a bit of a pong in the bathroom, not bad at all.
However, after just a couple of hours we noticed the odour coming from the bathroom was getting worse. By next morning it was apparent that there was a serious problem with the plumbing and by the evening, when we returned from the bar, the whole apartment was absolutely stinking of raw sewage and we had to keep the bathroom door firmly closed.
Andy, the First Choice Rep, sorted this out the next day, we were moved to the room next door and all seemed well and good.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the occupants of the next room over (which was connected to ours via a door, presumably for families needing two apartments) had somehow managed to burn out their apartment a few weeks before we arrived (I wonder if the occupants had been staying ‘all inclusive’ and taken too much advantage of the free bar).
We were reminded of the fire every time the cleaners turned up as the acrid smell of smoke wafted through the gaps in the door when they attempted to 'air' the gutted apartment.
Being British, we didn't ask to me moved a second time as we’d already made our point. Anyway, after a couple of days in our ‘new’ apartment an entire battalion of ants turned up to eat a few crisps that we had inadvertently dropped by one of the beds.
Someone from housekeeping quickly arrived and sprayed all around the room with a can of ant killer. On her way out she handed us a canary and advised us in broken English to keep the patio door open. Okay, I may have dreamt the bit about the canary.
Despite the amount of chemicals deposited in the apartment, the ants did turn up again, but at least they were wheezing a bit now and kept having to put down their crumbs every now and then to have a rest.
COOKING FACILITIES: As is usual with self catering accommodation in the Med, the Eleni apartments are 'equipped' with one of those horrendously temperamental/fundamentally flawed portable all-in-one oven and hob thingies.
Typically, you turn on both hobs and one of them will heat up relatively quickly while the other seems to take an eternity to catch up. If you have the audacity to turn on both hobs AND the oven then one of the hobs simply refuses to heat up.
How I actually managed to knock together even one half-decent meal on that horrible thing still amazes me. In my last attempt, I was so frustrated I just chopped up all the ingredients and chucked them in the casserole dish to make a stew (or casserole, I suppose).
Anyway, if you want to cook a meal in your apartment at the Eleni, then you will need to bear in mind the following:
1) An extra hour will need to be added to your preparation/cooking time to make up for the temperamental oven/hob thing.
2) No matter how small or simple your proposed meal is (apart from the previously mentioned stew), you will have to use every single pot and pan provided (a tiny frying pan, one boiling pan and two large casserole pans) if you want to get the job done.
3) When buying your ingredients from the local supermarket (the best one being about half a mile up a VERY steep hill) make sure you also remember to buy luxurious catering equipment not provided by the Eleni (a sieve, a spatula etc.).
HOTEL ENTERTAINMENT: If you like a game of bingo every night, a game of ‘Killer’ darts in the afternoon and are into quizzes, then you will be well catered for at the Eleni.
The ‘proper’ entertainment wasn’t too bad, but after two weeks it started to get on our nerves. The club style singers and the geriatric magician (who obviously loved what he did, bless him) weren’t really our cup of tea, but I must say that the Greek dancing show was good fun.
The best entertainment was provided by the very friendly Mohammed, who when he isn’t doing the bingo, quizzes or the occasional karaoke night performs his fire breathing, lying on a bed of broken glass and feats of strength routine.
I think Mohammed is from Tunisia, but he sounds a lot like Borat which can be very amusing.
As we stayed off-peak in February, I really hope that the entertainment at the Eleni improves as the season begins and the weather gets nicer (the weather was appalling during our stay, by the way).
If any managers from the Eleni are reading this, please make sure you hang on to Mohammed, he’s the best thing about the place.
THE BAR: The drinks prices at the indoor ‘Paris’ bar (where a lot of the entertainment takes place out of season) aren’t horrifically expensive, but they aren’t cheap either. If you want a quick ride to oblivion, I recommend you get a shot of the relatively cheap local fire water ‘Sivania’ and add it to a glass of Pepsi.
A couple of those and you’ll gradually begin to think that karaoke is the best thing ever invented and was created just to showcase your hidden talents.
As with the rest of the hotel, the bar staff at the Eleni pretty much turn up and do their job. There isn’t a lot of banter between guests and staff which is a shame. Maybe they hate their jobs, are badly paid or simply hate the British. Maybe it’s all three!
Anyway, the tall gangly bloke who was behind the bar when we were there got on my nerves with his lack of social skills and was very moody. Mind you, people probably say that about me, so there you go.
THE HOTEL RESTAURANT: As someone mentioned elsewhere, you should not book to stay at the Eleni expecting a Four Star Hotel when you get there. I’d give it three stars at a push.
Despite going self catering, we decided to try the hotel restaurant when I couldn’t face the cooker/hob thing anymore.
From our experience, the restaurant meals tended to be good every other day and were excellent only when genuine Cypriot dishes were on the menu. Having said that, the fresh fruit and salads were consistently good.
A word of warning about the breakfasts; the bacon tends to be barely cooked and swimming in grease, the fried eggs are a bit rubbery and the sausages are the worst I have ever had in my entire life. I cannot even begin to describe how horrible those tiny sausages were.
Even if you don’t take on board any of my other comments here, please take heed and keep away from those sausages. The breakfast sausage rolls were marginally better.
Yes, breakfast sausage rolls. Sausage rolls served at breakfast. Don’t ask me. Oh, before I forget, I have to mention that there is a note on the menu as you walk into the restaurant requesting ‘smart dress’ for dinner.
The shell-suited guests at the next table obviously had there own opinions about what ‘smart dress’ means.
HOTEL SERVICE: The maids didn’t turn up very often during our two week stay and when they did it was usually only to make the bed. Not change the linen, just remake the bed.
One morning, the maid arrived to change the bathroom towels and just chucked new ones on top of the old ones leaving the old ones there. Bizarre.
Most niggles were sorted out quite quickly, but we’re still waiting for the light bulb above the bed to be changed.
On the eve of our last day we asked for the bill for our room (as we had made a handful of short, local calls). We were shocked when they told us we owed 14 Cypriot pounds.
It turned out that we had been mistakenly charged for an evening meal which we had paid for at the time and so the amount for this was returned to us. However, at checkout time the money for this meal was mentioned again, this time by the girl who had been taking the money in the restaurant on the night in question.
She was very firmly implying that we had left the restaurant without paying for the meal. We very firmly informed her that we hadn’t because we never charge meals or drinks to our room when we are on holiday and we would never even think of just walking out of somewhere without paying.
Anyway, nothing else was said and we left the Eleni with numerous items of cutlery stuffed in our cases. Only joking.
NIGHTLIFE: Not applicable. Due to its location, there are very few places to tempt you outside the Eleni, bar the odd restaurant or two.
Go up to the traffic lights and follow the main road to the left and you will find a handful of bars and restaurants clumped together, one of which has rooftop bar.
However, if you are reasonably fit you may wish to climb the hill I mentioned earlier (turn left as you come out of the Eleni, walk up to the traffic lights just up from St George’s chapel and follow the road up the hill opposite) where, presuming you haven’t suffered a cardiac arrest, you will eventually find ‘The Railway Inn’.
The owner of The Railway has done her best to create a pleasant, traditional-looking British pub which is usually frequented by ex-pats and is a reasonable enough place to enjoy an occasional drink. If you can handle the guilt of going all the way to Cyprus to spend time in a British pub then give it a go.
CHILDREN: I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t like children. More specifically, I don’t like British children. I especially don’t like them when they are abroad.
I realise it’s their parents I should have it in for, but they’re not usually the ones screeching and wailing and causing a rumpus.
Anyway, the dozen or so kids who were at the Eleni when we stayed (February, half term) were enough for me (how can two kids make enough racket to wake the dead just playing table tennis?). I can only imagine what the place is like when it’s teeming with them during the summer holidays (cold shiver).
By the end of a typical two-week holiday in July, I bet the Eleni resembles something out of ‘Escape From New York’ or ‘The Warriors’ with gangs of feral British kids taking control of different areas of the hotel. Frightening.
The point is, don’t stay here out of term time if you don’t like kids.
RESORT RESTAURANTS: As it is a bit of a trek into Paphos town itself, we only really frequented one restaurant in the quiet area that surrounds the Eleni and that was ‘Pepperoni Pizza’ , which you can see on the other side of the road as you walk up to the traffic lights.
The pizza, pasta and salads here are simply superb and it’s definitely a good place to try when you tire of the chef’s delights at the Eleni.
Jasper’s restaurant always seemed popular, but we simply never got round to giving it a go. In Paphos itself, you absolutely MUST try out the ‘Brasilero Restaurant’ which is on Poseidon Avenue not far from the waterfront.
Basically, the Brasilero is a Brazilian restaurant where throughout your meal various cuts of meat (lamb, pork, chicken portions, sausages etc.) on skewers are brought to your table.
The waiter then cuts off as much meat as you want and then comes back about five minutes later with another one. I don’t know what herbs or spices Brazilians use when cooking meat, but I promise you will want to go back to the Brasilero again and again.
Oh, and don’t worry if you are a veggie as the Brasilero has a fantastic vegetarian buffet as well. Superb! 10 out of 10!
OTHER GUESTS: After reading some of the comments here, we were half expecting the Eleni to be full of tattooed idiots drinking all day and pining for the pit bull terrier they’d had to leave at home.
Apart from one woman who seemed permanently pickled and who actually wet herself in the lift one night, there were thankfully very few ‘undesirables’ present and generally the hotel seemed to be mainly full of respectable retired couples.
Surprisingly for us, this was the first holiday where we didn’t make any new friends. We had conversations with a lot of people and spent the odd night sharing tables with other couples, but there just wasn’t that good a mix of people.
Just in case you’re wondering, we’re not swingers or anything like that. Just in case.
OVERALL VIEW: Overall, I would say the Eleni was just about okay. The place was functional but not particularly welcoming. Contrary to what others have said here, we got the impression that most of the staff didn’t really care if you had a good time or not.
Perhaps it was because we went out of season. Perhaps the lot of the staff wasn’t a happy one. Anyway, Mohammed saved the day for the Eleni. Cheers, Mohammed!