Kapetanios Bay Hotel — Hotel in Paralimni

We arrived at the hotel fairly late and were greeted by a really welcoming front of house staff. Good start.

We thought we were onto a winner after our first couple of days at the hotel, but the cracks began to show.

The breakfast was pretty bland, your standard, chew bacon, rubber sausages, watery scrambled eggs, but it served a purpose for the first thing in the morning, I guess.

Some of the staff were really pleasant, smiley and helpful. Some staff gave myself and my girlfriend some do the dirtiest looks we’ve ever seen, very odd.

Onto the pools, theres a good sized pool in the middle which is for everyone, and a lovely little knee high pool for baby’s and toddlers towards the back. There’s an “adult only” pool to the left. My partner and I thought we were in luck, a pool bar, jacuzzi, adults only, no screaming kids, what a winner…

However, you can pay €50 a day for sunbeds that are slightly elevated off the ground and have a sheet thrown over the top of them. Now if you pay for one of these, the hotel will let you do whatever you want really. So we often found that there were kids in the adult pool, purely because their parents had bought a sunbed for the day.

The prices of food around the pool are obscene. Absolutely ridiculous. Now we’re from London so we’re no strangers to silly pieces for things, but comparing the prices of the hotels food and drink to prices around the area of Protaras, we were in shock.

As someone who doesn’t drink alcohol but still enjoys a 0.0% beer, I was in trouble. The only 0.0% beverage they served that wasn’t Coca-Cola or lemonade, was a horrible Calsberg Pilsner type thing, watery and at $5 per 150ml bottle, I soon became sick of them. I had been to Aldi the preview day and bought a load of San Miguel 0.0% and Koppaberg 0.0%, I thought I would bring one down to the pool. Before I wasn’t even able to sit down, a hotel staff ran over to me and said I wasn’t allowed outside drink by the pool. I explained it was 0.0% and you don’t sell these here. In broken English, he said “it’s better for us if you buy drinks at the pool bar”, I said “I appreciate that, but it’s better for me if you sell these by the pool and I would buy them here”. In honesty, I said I was going to drink them and you can bring a manager over if you wish. Be prepared to be cornered if you want to bring your own stuff down.

When laying on the sunbeds, I’d AVOID the back row 2 rows of sunbeds by the wall. You’ll often get a waft of a sewer system that hasn’t been build properly.

Finally, the pool, be prepared for random people to be walking around your pool who aren’t actually members of the hotel to be walking around your pool. And on Sunday, oh wow, be prepared to have to fight for a sunbed. There’s something called “Greek Sunday”. This is where loads of Greek locals bombard the hotel on a Sunday, making it ramo for the actual hotel tenants. There’s also a DJ on Sunday, who doesn’t understand the crowd he’s got by the pool.

Onto the hotel rooms, a really good sized bed that was really comfortable. However the rest of the room is beyond small. Be prepared to do some gymnastics then get in the shower as the door will block your path. The balcony is really small too. So if you’re hoping to have a game of cards on the balcony one night, it’s not happening.

We noticed after a couple of days that our sheets hadn’t been changed. We called and asked and were told they will be the following day, but again we found the same couple of suncream stains on the bottom of the bed where we had sat down on. This caused me to get a rash on the back of my neck and my girlfriend to get a rash on her back.

Overall, it is abundantly clear that hotels main objective is to upsell to you as much as physically possible while you’re there. And now, I know it’s a business and everyone needs to make money, but this made for a really uncomfortable environment in the end because me and my partner loved going out to explore different parts of Aiya Napa.

I wouldn’t stay in this hotel again and I hope they can...

Recently returned from another fantastic week in Cyprus with the family. |We had booked this hotel on the basis that it is at the top of the strip and on level ground due to parents being unable to walk up hills etc. We were a group of 11 across 5 rooms varying ages from 2year old to 70 year old... ||Good points...|* comfy beds - everyone commented on how comfy they were.|* right at the start of the strip and close to all amenities so easy for anyone with walking/ mobility difficulties |* Modern and stylish hotel|* Pool area looks clean, comfy sun loungers and a nice pool with swim up bar ( although we didnt use it as water was too cold in october) |* staff gave service with a smile and was polite and friendly |* the deck bar at the front of the hotel is nice and clean and serves a selection of cocktails and beers. ||Bad points...|There were only 2 real bad points and I think this is where the deal breaker is for us when deciding if we would return.|* room cleanliness - the maids did attend daily they swept, mopped and made made our beds each morning but the following could have been highlighted for us due to having a toddler crawling around... we found the room to be very dusty - you can see the dust floating in the daylight and when we put our phone down to charge there was a layer of dust on it when we picked them up again. The room also smelled musty after the maids had been in. we had a suspicion that it was a dirty mop so we took notice when we went down for breakfast the maids were halfway up the corridor, we clocked the mop buckets with clean water in. |We then clocked the mop buckets when we came back from breakfast and just after they had cleaned our room, the water was black so we think that they don't change the water regularly enough causing the musty smell, we stopped baby from crawling around as much as we could, his feet and knees were filthy after crawling around the floor. |Others in our group didn't really notice anything wrong with the cleanliness (but their rooms were cleaned earlier than ours) but we all noticed that the towels we had left on the bathroom floor (to be changed) were folded and hung up again. |After a few days I commented at breakfast that there was a really strong smell of wee in the bathroom. I joked about thinking the Mrs had a water infection or something. everyone else said they could smell it too so not sure if there was a problem with plumbing. My brother in law said that when he flushed the toilet there was a yellow tinge to the water, when I checked ours I found the same. |I flushed 3 or 4 times but there was still a yellowish colour to the water and a smell of urine (not good when you're hungover). |My parents bought a bottle of bleach and just kept putting a dash in the toilet now n again. |* The food - breakfast was ok, there was a selection of fruits, yogurts, honey, chocolate spread. |Usual bacon, sausages, eggs beans etc, there is something you could have each morning but isn't great quality, an elderly lady passed comment about it to us 1 morning aswell. |We mainly just had fruit and greek yogurt with a drizzle of honey. |We tried evening meal twice and gave up on it. Non of us thought the quality of food was good enough ie - powdered mash. We also noticed that evening meal times were very quiet so I suspect others thought the same. |* noise from the bars, now we did expect there to be noise as you are so close so can't really complain, the first night we arrived we thought we couldn't cope with the sound of Amy Winehouse or legends of SkA every night from ghetto bar but to be honest it became background noise after a couple of nights and didnt bother us. It all goes quiet after 1am anyway. ||If it was just me and the wife going away for a week, this review may be alot different. We probably wouldn't have noticed half the things you do when you have young ones to consider.||If the hotel could up its game on the quality of food, and room cleanliness it could be a...

This hotel was that fantastic that we have booked to come back at the end of October. Where to start??? Firstly having never been to cyprus before but seeing the reviews about the noise i emailed the hotel in advance to request a pool view room and was emailed back the most lovely personal email, not the usual 'we will see what we can do'.. we arrived, the greeting we received was so friendly and warm from the reception staff, who always took time to say good morning/evening when ever we passed. We get to our room, and as requested it is a pool view room at the back of the hotel, just a standard room that we paid for so we weren't expecting much, it was extremly clean, not huge but all we do really is sleep there. Awaiting us was a lovely welcome card with a plate of fruit and 2 little bottles of wine which i thought was just lovely. We did have a funny moment when we realised that my 6ft 3in husband had to bend to have a shower as the ceiling is quite small, so a little bit of a design floor, but we found this funny rather than a complaint. So we get back from having a few drinks after a long day travelling and see that at 1.30am some people already had towels around the pool (pool area is amazing, large family pool and adult only swim up bar and jacuzzi pool) so i was a little worried that this was going to be one of those holidays where you have to be up early for a sunbed or miss out... that wasn't the case.. some people liked to have the beds reserved right beside the family pool (maybe to keep an eye on kids) but the rest were easy to get even if you didn't wander down till after 10am.. we preferred the sunbeds nearer the jaccuzi pool anyway which were never taken. They do have a pool towel service that you get from reception with a 10 euro deposit which you get back and can change the towels daily. We stayed bed and breakfast and the breakfast was plentiful, tasty and im sure with the choice there would be something for everyone, we weren't disapointed! As the weather was in the 50's when we were there, we didnt venture far away from the adult only swim up bar and jaccuzi, the staff at the pool bar were just amazing... they give you a tab on your room number and bring cocktails/drinks to you in the pool and you just settle up at the end of the day. We ordered food a lot from here and the portions are huge, very tasty, defo recommend but we often just got a meal between us they were that big and very good value for money. Just read some reviews about the cleanliness and im sure they have this mixed up with another hotel, my husband and i even commented several times about how the cleaners are there all day and night thoroughly cleaning not only the rooms but every area of the hotel and grounds... the goundsman was out at 1.30 in the morning one time taking debris from the top of the pool! As for the noise at night... we had a room at the back of the hotel so maybe this is why it didn't bother us and we were out quite late most nights, but, we had a night in one night and if you open the balcony door you can hear the music from the bar next door but with the door shut you can't hear a thing so it really wouldn't disturb your sleep and i would really question why people would book a hotel right on the strip surrounded by music venues if they wanted total silence anyway!! The staff here really can't do enough for you, hence our return so quickly only a few months later. I have just emailed again to request a pool view room and received the most lovely, again personal, reply. Can't recommend this hotel enough and can't wait to be...