Philoxenia By Kyriakakou — Hotel in Municipality of Aegina

It’s 1am and a man is loudly threatening me, shouting about getting the police and his lawyer. We are standing in the stairwell on the first floor of our hotel and he is the owner. Apparently it was unreasonable of me to suggest that just maybe returning to my room from a lovely day out to find the toilet cistern hanging off the wall and swinging precariously by a thin plastic water pipe doesn’t constitute acceptable service and should perhaps result in a discount to the rather excessive 65 Euro fee being charged for the miserable Health and Safety nightmare that is masquerading as our hotel room. This suggestion of a discount evidently hasn’t gone down well with the owner, or his wife, who is also now shouting at me with little regard for me, the other hotel guests who can presumably hear every word, or my baby who is sleeping in his buggy next to me. I wish I hadn’t said anything, because now the owner is in my personal space, jamming his fingers towards my face. He is much bigger than me, and male (I am not) and this is all a rather a scary situation. I won’t sleep tonight, and will get out of here as fast as possible in the morning with my partner and my baby.||||**||||It had all started well enough. Wishing to extend our time on Aegina by a night, we were pleased to find that Philoxenia had a room for us at short notice when everywhere else seemed booked up. The woman asked if we wanted to see the room first, which seemed a bit of a weird question, but we put it down to courtesy and said no, that’s fine. As it turns out, this was a mistake. The next day, upon arriving from our previous accommodation, it was evident that this hotel had seen better days, exuding something of an uncared-for atmosphere. We laughed upon noticing that the photo frames on the wall still contained the stock photos from the shop, complete with photo dimensions printed on them. Obviously whoever put them up didn’t care very much or pay much attention. We laughed slightly less upon entering our room and finding the doorknob so wobbly it felt like it was about to fall off, and then noticing the tired furniture and the pool of water leaking from the mini-refrigerator. It had evidently been leaking for years – the fridge door and the floor beneath was stained with rust. A picture on the wall was faded and squint in the frame, having slipped years ago and never been fixed. Sad. The suitcase storage base was also visibly dirty, and the air-conditioner looked like it was from about 1985. The room itself was a tad claustrophobic, and looking out of the window over the balcony we found ourselves gazing directly into the living room of an old couple having lunch – we quickly shut our curtain. ||||Venturing into the bathroom, we found salt marks on the door and stains indicating that they hadn't been cleaned in a while. There was sand in the shower and no shelf over the sink to store your toothbrush, and not enough hooks to hang towels for two people. There wasn’t even any complimentary soaps or shampoo to wash your hands, and while the towels were clean they were incredibly dry from having dried in the sun. Then we flushed the toilet, and half the water from the cistern suspended above just flowed down the wall.||||Oh well, we thought, it’s only one night. Let’s get out of here. We met our friends, who then missed their boat and then needed a place to stay, so we phoned Philoxenia and booked another room for them, then enjoyed our evening in Agia Marina. At about half past midnight we returned to the hotel, planning on washing our baby and putting him to bed, to find the afore-mentioned situation with the toilet cistern hanging by a thread. We pondered as to whether this constituted an emergency, and decided that with the potential of flooding and so forth that it probably did, so we phoned the emergency number found at the hotel reception, only to find that it was a disconnected phone. We phoned the original booking number and left a message on the answerphone and then sat in our friends’ (equally unlooked after) room for half an hour wondering what to do. At this point the female owner, evidently just awake, called and said she was going to come up and have a look, so we met her in our room and showed her the problem. With a “couldn’t-really-give-a-toss” look on her face, she took the cistern and plonked it back on the pipe. She then flushed it, ignored the fact that three-quarters of the water flooded out of the cracked pipe and down the wall and said “it’s functional.” When I suggested this wasn’t really much of a solution and we’d like it to be attached to the wall she said “why? In case it falls down again and gives you a fright?” Well, no, to be honest, because I don’t really fancy dying on the toilet in your temple of misery in the middle of the night because I’ve been smashed in the head by a falling toilet cistern, I should have said, but didn’t. Instead I replied “No, so it doesn't fall off again and cause a flood or other serious damage to the room or injury to ourselves, especially when there's a baby in the room." She grumbled away downstairs and came back with a toolbox, then proceeded to make a huge amount of noise attaching the cistern to the wall, which I’m sure the people in the room through the wall really appreciated at 1am. ||||While this was going on my partner went for a cigarette, and it was then that I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t think this situation was acceptable and that I didn’t think we should be paying 65 Euros to come back and find this situation in our bathroom. The female owner flew off the handle, screaming that “some people are just all about the money” and “who else would come and fix your toilet at 3am” (it wasn’t 3am at all, it was actually more like 1am) and then her husband, who had swaggered upstairs with macho threatening body language and the surly manner of someone who won’t ever admit a mistake, started shouting “you are going to pay every penny of that 65 Euros and if not then in the morning I’ll call the police and my lawyer.” Then the pair of them stormed away downstairs, obviously without any hint of an apology for our inconvenience or their completely unprofessional manner.||||At this point our friend, who was out on the balcony of their own terrible room, heard the owners then go out in the garden below and swear at length about us. She told me they sent us to hell 3 or 4 times, but the highlight was when the owner asked her husband "and how do I know that they didn't detach the cistern themselves?" Of course, this was the only reasonable explanation, not that they had completely failed in their most basic duty of providing a reasonable and legal standard of room maintenance.||||Our observations are as follows: Not only do they maintain a hotel far below safety standards, (we also saw the dates of the last fire extinguisher safety check - 2012 in case you're interested) but they think they are doing you a favour(!) by coming to fix damage that wouldn't be an issue in the first place if the hotel had been maintained with even the most basic level of care. They lack a basic understanding of good hospitality and professionalism - for example a decent hotelier would first try to maintain a good reputation by apologising for the broken facilities or offering some form of compensation - not try to turn the situation around on the guest. Also, what an unimaginable lack of professionalism that following the incident they were cursing us under the balcony for anyone to hear. Whoever was right in this dispute, as hospitality professionals they should maintain a professional attitude and not behave like sulking gossips. Ultimately, they obviously don't realise or simply don’t care that their hotel needs a serious renovation. 65 euros for this experience was a joke. Oh, also, legally they are supposed to post in the room in a prominent place the room rates per season, stamped by the police - that wasn't there either.||||There are no words for the behaviour of the gentleman who threatened me in front of my child and threatened to call the police on me for asserting my right in a situation where he and his wife were clearly in the wrong. If he continues to deal with situations in this way, at some point he'll be faced with a man his size and not a woman my size and then the outcome might be different. One more observation - they leave personal (potentially valuable) items at the reception desk, completely exposed, with no-one there, which is indicative of their general indifference. For the record, after the "fix" the toilet tank gushed water even more than before, as they hadn't sealed the pipe and cistern together. What a joke.||||On leaving we paid the full amount, although the owner, to her credit, asked what we thought was fair to pay although she added a "just to get this over and done with." I didn't have the energy for another fight so I told her we would pay the full price, which we did.||||If you don't want to leave Aegina with a bitter feeling, DON'T go to this hotel. Instead, avoid a serious risk of injury and an argument with owners who will threaten you and try and make you feel like you shouldn't complain about their damaged and dangerous fixtures.||||Other hazards: peeling marble between the room and the balcony and the wooden balcony railing...

Our intention was not to stay in Agia Marina but we were meeting some Dutch friends who were staying there and there was no space in their hotel, which was very nice with a great pool.||Agia Marina used to be a mini Magaluf I believe but the locals have resisted this sort of tourist of late and are trying to attract a more family oriented market. One short visit was enough for us.||Being a family of 4 it is trickier to get suitable accommodation at short notice, but this place came up. We had rented scooters in Aegina Town and zipped across the island with the girls and small rucksacks on board too! It worked well. ||The carpark is a large dusty area in front of the hotel. The path in to reception is marked by 2 lines of white pebbles. As we were early to check in, a lady kindly brought us a large very cold bottle of water which was hospitable although not obligatory. She offered us seating in or out, which seemed a welcoming, relaxing space. The outside space comprised a large patio covered with wooden ribs and a membrane of beautiful climbing flowers such as stunning bougainvillea.||The small apartment was perfectly clean, adequate and everything worked, although quite dark being round the corner through the patio to the right down the side on the ground floor. No view but as a space to come back to for sleeping, just fine. Very quiet at night! Two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom for a decent price of 50 euros a night I think, high season. The two girls slept on a bunk bed in a small room. The only issue really were some of the pillows which were quite lumpy, but in the scheme of things nothing to complain about. Oh, to boil water, you need to use a saucepan. (This seems common in budget Greek accommodation - I don't understand why they can't provide an aluminium camping style kettle). Hey, it's Greece!||After a day out at our friends' pool or beach we hung the damp towels and swimming costumes on the washing lines outside the door, where there was a round plastic table and four plastic chairs under a palm tree. We didn't cook in the kitchen as we ate out, literally on the beach for the 2 nights we were there. ||We won't be back only as we won't be visiting Agia...

Awful accommodation. I booked this hotel cause i thought its a value-for-money one in order to save some money for outside activities. However the room was awful. I am not a person that complains about everything.. but everything was awful!||||We stayed 2 nights. The room didn't have any towels (the owner also complained that we stole them at the end of our stay). The room inside is from the decate of 70s... There were a lot of issues that i could ignore, like the bed that was really really tough and the pillows where not real pillows, but the thing i couldn't ignore was the toilet flush that was making noise for one whole hour after using it... Really really bad experience. Save your money for...