Ajul Luxury Hotel & Spa Resort — Hotel in Kassandra Municipality

As a family we made for ourselves a magical holiday, but the hotel did not really add much to this. We would definitely return to halkidiki but not to the Ajul hotel again. There were some nice elements such as the grounds were well maintained and the facilities of the pools were nice but aside from that, it is definitely not 5. There is not enough staff fot a 5 all inclusive resorts... waiting 10 minutes of an evening for a drink. During evening meals, some waiting staff seem to have had enough of the season and aren't really happy to serve you and there are too many tables for just 2 people and service is haphazard and slow but its not there fault if theres not enough staff. We luckily had a car hire and the nights we could not get an A la carte, we went out to nearby towns for dinner because we value good food and the buffet restaurant looked like something out of a school canteen. Even the a la carte restaurants seem limited, Ambrosia could not even serve our toddler an ice cream..we were told we could go after and take ourselves from the a buffet restaurant. There is also a very limited amount of everything.. at the waterpark there are doughnuts... well there are about 5 doughnuts a day! The website for the hotel is very misleading.. it says about there being nice snacks etc available at the beach bar.. there are hot dogs and hot dogs alone.. so if you want to eat a hot dog everyday then great...! With young children it's not convenient to pack them all up from the beach and head all the way back to the buffet. I'd rather pay for something at the beach and be able to have some lunch! Even the hot dogs every time there is always a wait of 20 minutes. The description on the website for happy place is laughable... waffles and pancakes...lots of ice cream flavours and soft serve..sweets and syrups.. there are basic ice cream flavours, not a crepe in sight, and some popcorn if you're one of the lucky 3 to get some.. Lots of food on the a la carte menus was also out of stock. Even one day the pool bar had no cola zero or diet coke for around 5 hours... how can an all inclusive run out?! Our air conditioning was also broken and the first night was unbearable...we told the reception first thing the following day.. they assured they'd send someone, we had to remind them again when we returned to our room to find it still not working at 6pm, they finally sent someone and our room was out of action until gone 11pm meaning neither us nor our children could go to bed...! And even since being 'fixed' it has only worked intermittently. The hotel didn't seem to take the issue seriously and didn't even really apologise for such inconvenience. We also asked to move rooms as a room on the 2nd floor up hard concrete steps is inappropriate for a family with an infant and toddler and were only able to be offered a room one floor lower still up steep concrete steps. We were also disappointed that the cot for our infant was not sleep safe for an infant... the mattress was just a piece of cut foam, not an official mattress for the cot - for a hotel attracting families this is not appropriate (nor safe!) - luckily the bassinet of our stroller is registered sleep safe so we slept him in that but it was not ideal and our toddler had just a sheet for cover and was often in our bed due to being uncomfortable and cold. The facilities of the hotel such as the pools are nice and great for kids and are probably what gives the hotel the 5 star but even there some improvements could be made like shade over the playground as it gets so hot nobody uses it! For us we had a great holiday being together as a family but the hotel didn't really add to our experience. The mangers also zoom around on buggys and dont actually really seem to do much and came running out the office as we were getting ready for departure to make sure we paid our drinks bill that morning - my husband had already asked reception for the bill... The hotel is operating on a "provision of the minimum to get by standard" and it's just not acceptable for a 5...

Wanted to love ‘Ajul,’ but came away feeling a little ‘meh’.

Started going wrong from the 3 hr transfer by bus … 🙈

After then waiting at the main gate to the hotel after bus drop, we then had to stand around waiting to be let in and taken to reception… (15 mins) … for what was a 20 second journey in a golf buggy 🙄

Then took an hour to check in. Staff seemed to all be in a state of bemused confusion… quite strange. Beautiful reception area though so we thought everything was going to be great!?

Eventually got our room key after being given someone else’s passport back.

Taken to our private bungalow with pool, which upon first impression seemed AMAZING 🤩… huge lounge are with dining table and kitchen ( kitchen has no crockery or cutlery though, so is absolutely pointless 🤷🏻‍♂️)

Excitedly went out to view our private pool which was dirty and clearly didn’t have any working cleaning system! We called reception and told them we couldn’t use the pool. It was then 2 days before anybody came to look, and this they did unannounced by hopping over the back wall to fiddle with the pump which was on full view with all its guts showing as the big housing cover had been let off. Nice touch! 🤦🏻‍♂️

So, 2 guys have now joined us in our ‘private pool’ area and are now topping up our pool via hosepipe. He tells me in broken English that by tomorrow it will all be working. I wrongly assume that the pump/ cleaning system will start working once the pool has reached the correct height? Wrong! Next day, pool is full and still as dirty as before! More calls to reception and the next day men again just come over the rear wall and start working. They install a replacement pump. Hour later it’s working. By next day the pool is clean, hooray at last 💦 🏊 this was all good for a couple of days. The pump in meantime is getting louder and louder, till eventually it stops altogether. 🤦🏻‍♂️😣 we gave up after that.

Bedrooms were lovely. Huge bed, lovely linen and very comfortable 👍🏻

Lovely bathrooms, and loads of wardrobe space.

There was a pool bar at the main pool, which seemed to have staff that were always loudly arguing and bickering. They seemed oblivious to guests and were openly shouting at each other all the time (Imagaine the TV show Benidorm, meets Faulty Towers… but at a supposedly 5 star resort !?!?!????) This culminated in a guest going absolutely crazy at the main barman, telling him in no uncertain terms to STOP ARGUING and SHOUTING. Nobody has paid all this money to come on holiday and listen to this!!!!!

Also our patio doors handle was hanging off in our ‘5 star’ bungalow, so again we asked reception for someone to fix. We called at 9:00am, nobody came that day, nor next… until we were in bed that night at 10:30pm. I heard a voice saying ‘hello, hello’ … got up to investigate to find a maintenance man had let himself in… he was standing in our Lounge area !???? Faulty Towers by this time was looking tame in comparison to our experience. I sent him away … the next day ( in normal daylight) the door was fixed.

We enquired about a massage in the spa, but the prices were ridiculously expensive, so we didn’t bother.

The private beach is quite shabby. Old beds and brollies. Nothing luxurious at all.

We both play tennis, but even that wasn’t a straightforward affair. There is the most horrendous smell down at the 2 courts and kids play area. If you can acclimatise yourself to that, prepare yourself to not break an ankle due to major subsidence shown in pics! 😮🫣

The food offerings were the same at every meal. By the end of the week we were pretty bored of it all.

The private Greek and Italian restaurants were very hard to book into and the service was pretty awful.

We paid for our own taxi back to the airport as we couldn’t face another 3 hour transfer. The taxi took around an hour.

All in all. It’s a 3/4 star at best. We were hugely disappointed ☹️ it could be most beautiful but it isn’t. Such a shame.

If the weather had been bad … it would have been terrible, luckily the Greek sunshine...

I wants to start off this review by saying, that this hotel was amazing, but I would love you to keep reading this, just please.. just the first part. When I arrived at this hotel, I noticed a cat meowing and I fed her and named her Kiki.she lives behind the hole in the fence, I gave her cat food, cooked chicken, high fat milk and some pork too. If you happen to see a poster for Kiki, it’s by me. It was very hard to leave her , but I made sure she had enough food for 2 days before I left. What I’m asking of you is , please, do your best to help her. She won’t stop meowing. I expect she just wants to have an owner ,an home. Please ,please ,please help her, feed her, her meows make me cry each time.

Positive thoughts

You have a breakfast,lunch and dinner buffet. There are also two restaurants , ambrosia - Italian, Thimari - Greek. I’m gonna start off with the breakfast buffet,very nice, everything is very organised. My favourite breakfast foods were there, like beans ,eggs and bread. They also had gluten free options, which is great. First hotel in my vacation that actually has real orange juice, apple juice etc. not powder juice.

Lunch is great,I only went one time tho.

Dinner is very nice , it has basic foods like french fries ,spaghetti and chicken. It also has Greek salad (go try it, it’s so good!) ,and more fancy foods like oysters and shrimp. It has dessert, I love that you can get ice cream , there’s so many flavours to choose from. There’s also syrups to go with it.theres Turkish sweets like 𝗕𝗮𝗸𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗮.Overall dinner is perfect.

Italian restaurant ambrosia has a few starters like mozzarella with tomatoes, and a spinach dish.The main dishes are basically a few types of pasta and pizza. You can also get tiramisu for dessert, I had to mention, cause I’m a tiramisu lover. I have to mention, that you have to be booking like .. 3 days prior , it’s always full.

Greek restaurant is more empty than the Italian one, it has a smaller menu , like some salads, and I’m can’t remember what, personally I really like the snack bar menu, I recommend the club sandwich with chicken, it’s soo good! It’s a perfect place to drink some Greek wine and watch the sunset with someone special or alone!

Moving on to the rooms. We got the deluxe family room ( all included ) for 7 nights, 3 people for a bit above 1k.

Then, there’s a inside pool, 3 outside pools, an aqua park, with 4 slides and finally, a playground! Tbh, the aqua park was amazing ! You had a bunch of floaties ,like, 20! And 4 super fun rides. Then, you had a lazy river connected to the aqua park, and a little island that had a bridge to the main aqua park bar, ,,ananas” they serve around 5 different juices and drinks for the kids and lots of different cocktails for adults .

Moving on to the pebble beach, the beach is very nice, with its own little bar, and a toilet.you can access it with the hourly transfers back and fourth or you can walk. Overall it’s a pretty nice pebble beach to be in.

I actually really like that you get transferred with a golf cart to the front reception with all of your items!:) I think it’s a little touch they added which is very polite!

Negative thoughts

I’m a little bit sad, that the inside swimming pool/spa is accessible only if you pay 15 euros per person.. even if you have all inclusive. Well, atleast it keeps the kids playing outside. Speaking of that, in my week of staying, every single day , I found around 10 kids just playing in one outdoor pool. I’m sorry, it’s just quite funny to me.still speaking of swimming pools, in the aqua park, there were a bit of wasps and ants just wiggling in there , I’m not sure if it’s their fault, just saw it quite frequently so I thought I could mention it.

Rest of review in notes.. it said I don’t have space !

Very nice...