Leptos Panorama Hotel — Hotel in Municipality of Chania

My wife and I usually do self catering but decided as it was late in the season to try a hotel. We are very glad we chose the Leptos Panorama!!!||We had paid to upgrade to a Superior Sea View room and All Inclusive. On arrival Yannis met us off the coach and took our suitcases inside then onward to our room which was a great first impression. At reception we were informed by Maria that we had been upgraded again to the Panorama Blue Executive Wing which was a lovely surprise. This not only gave us the Sea View that we paid for but access to the exclusive adult only swimming pool and pool bar where we were very well looked after by Betty ... nothing was too much travel. ||The main pool area itself was beautiful with comfortable, plentiful sunbeds and of course the amazing view of the sea and surrounding areas. ||All week the food was excellent with huge variety every breakfast, lunch and dinner. Themed dinners every evening. My wife does not like seafood but on the 'Fish' night there was grilled Chicken and Pork on offer as well as the many vegetable and salad offerings. I really cannot understand why previous reviews contain any negative comments about food variety unless you are the most fussy eater or only like cheap, poor quality food. We even found the 'gyros' and salads at the pool bar at lunchtime to be tasty although no variety day to day but was a variation on visiting the main restaurant every day. Thank you to all the restaurant staff (too many to mention) for all their service whilst we were there. ||Drinks were fantastic and strong! Drinks at mealtimes were delivered to your table. As both my wife and I were drinking red wind each evening we received a fresh, full bottle of wine to dinner ... more if we wished! As mentioned we were All Inclusive which covered almost all spirits and cocktails with only a very few being extra. I found that if you asked for a branded spirit that is what you received otherwise you may be given a local brand which we had no complaints about. Special thank you Georgios, Nikos 1 and Nikos 2 in the main lounge bar and once again Betty for making great cocktails especially the Pina Coladas, Margaritas and the best Aperol Spritz!!!!||We also read some criticisms about the rooms being 'dated'. Like any hotel, if you actively look for issues you will find them. Apart from an older style hairdryer in the bathroom and room telephone I don't think the dated comments are justified. Our room had a 50 inch TV, tea/coffee maker and a very comfortable HUGE bed. Other reviews have mentioned the in room fridges for water which although not restocked daily, we found it was easy enough to obtain replacement bottles from either the bars or restaurant ... maybe that may have been more difficult at the height of the season and other reviewers had a different experience. Rooms were cleaned every day with replacement towels provided daily. I always cringe when I read reviewers saying that hotels are 'not 5 star' when they don't understand the rating system ;-) ||The only, very small, negative for us was the evening entertainment but we are more used to finding our own entertainment. The acts and events were a hit or a miss with The Greek night and Abba tributes excellent and others not so great. However, the entertainment was only for an hour or so with the rest of the evening spent in the lovely, comfortable lounge area with those aforementioned wonderful drinks served by the bar staff. ||Maria and Georgia on reception were fantastic. Always very helpful with suggestions and booking trips. A trip into Chania old town is a must ... it is beautiful. The local '21' bus tickets available from the in hotel shop. The Panorama is the last stop on the bus route and takes about 20 to 25 minutes. ||I can understand why people stay at the Panorama year after year. If we were to revisit the Chania area in future we would definitely consider staying again due to the wonderful staff, location and facilities. We would thoroughly...

A hotel is o.k. but not 5 stars for sure. Reception area pleasant for the eye, the same about swimming pools and dinning area. Lots of plants and palm trees.

Checking in: A long, time-consuming electronic form should be removed. Hotel should have all details already from and agent and we should only read and sign it.

Room: a good size room with a big balcony. Nice view and lovely sunsets. Clean- a big thumb up for a cleaning lady- she did a great job. I can compare it to service in other hotels. Big tv screen and quick Internet- never had it that quick in Greece. Fridge a bit small but worked well. Air-con was doing its job but probably too weak for very hot weather. A bed was comfy. No socket on a one side of bed that was a bit of disadvantage. Not many sockets in the room in general. A bit loud in the night due to a busy street next to a hotel and noisy drivers on some nights- but this is an issue on every street in every country now. But a room was situated in more quiet part as we required. That means, we were listened to.

Food: sometimes very good, sometimes not. Breakfasts good but fried eggs need to be kept on a frying pan a bit longer as they were half-raw most of the time! Good omelettes, halva and pastries. Plenty of veggies for dinner. We didn't have all incl. so we don't know about lunches and drinks. No a glass of wine for free for HB guests- shame as it it not always a case.

Dinning room and catering area: Very small catering area for such a big hotel. Long queues and food was going fast! Terrible coffee machines- emptied fast and only one coffee machine with white coffee for a big dinning area. Very long queues again! Dinning area is outside. I was wondering, what happens if there is a rain or strong wind?? Also, being seated by a manager is not needed. It was quite annoying to put all people in the same place when almost 3/4 of dinning area is still empty. And normally people go to get food first instead of being seated and standing up again. What is the point? This is not a restaurant. We were usually doing it our own way ;-). But probably you can ask to be seated somewhere, you would like to.

Swimming pool: we didn't use it much. Infinity pool is quite nice but deep at the nicest point. View from it is mainly on other sunbeds. There is a pool for VIP guests only and for children. Sunbeds, as usual, "reserved" with towels in the morning and this issue is never solved, despite what they say in the media. But we didn't spend much time there. Sunbeds only in sunny area, no shade.

Beach and area: no beach there. Area is nice but you have to walk a bit to nearest and nice beach (there is small, sandy beach on the right just 10 minutes on feet from a hotel) and restaurants. You will not find pita souvlaki that easily. Plenty of shops. Nice area but not for a nature fans or someone, who likes to discover interesting area. Rented car or organized trips needed to see some great areas. Botanical gardens are very nice!

Staff: housekeeping- great, reception- great and helpful, dinning- usually great. I know, this is a hard job as I worked in hospitality myself and I would not be back. I think, all people working there were polite and helpful. But please let people sit wherever they want to ;-).

SPA: I used spa once. High prices but you can negotiate. Sauna and Hammams also included in the price. Massage was nice and good pressure. Only thing- some ladies don't speak much English and seemed a bit stressed. I didn't feel fully relaxed there because of it. SPA could feel more cosy as well...

We visited mid-September, and I must start off by noting that the weather was exactly as we hoped - consistent mid-to-late 20s with sun for most parts of the day. Lovely.||Our stay was all-inclusive, and we went for the standard sea view room. Now, not all the sea view rooms are really sea view; though, we had a side on view of a mountain landscape and some of the sea in view, so it wasn't bad at all.||Rooms... outdated, but fine. But if you're saying you're 5-star you do have to revamp rooms that were clearly built some three decades ago. ||Location - well situated within a 25-minute bus ride of Chania Old Town. And this really is the hotel's best feature - a stunning location in terms of views, and convenient ways to leave the hotel and explore, which is something many all-inclusive stays don't offer.||Now for the negatives..||The food. This unfortunately was really poor - our first experience of the free poolside gyros bar (all inclusive) met us with honestly the worst gyros we've had. Stale bread and even staler meat - whether it was pork or beef, it really was rancid. So that put us off the pool bar all week - until we returned on the last day for a paid club sandwich, that was equally as woeful.||The buffet. Some bits of it were fine, but wildly inconsistent. Breakfast was stone cold most days, with poor selection. The issue they have is they employ a very small amount of staff, so there's only one cook-to-order chef, and he doesn't cook to order. He's cooking stuff for the buffet trays mostly, with a few extra meats/eggs. You can't request anything, and this is poor for a 5* buffet.||Main issue is health and safety. Do not eat here if you have severe food allergies - I have a severe peanut allergy and on the Chinese night, there were whole peanuts in many dishes. And the worse part, is that the impossible-to-work-out allergy stickers implied that some dishes 'may' include nuts, when they were literally visible in the dishes and salads. Chicken pieces with peanut sauce in an open bowl, said it 'may contain'... Most dishes just said 'may contain' out of laziness - and this of course promotes anxiety and unease for the duration of the stay, when one can't trust what's in the dishes. This is not acceptable for 2024 cuisine - let alone 5* - and to quote Gordon Ramsay in Kitchen Nightmares, '...you're going to kill someone!'. ||Laziness also continued with the reception staff unfortunately. A few requests of ours were met with disdain - including a request to see if there was anything they could do to make the trip more special, as it was our anniversary. Instead, they said 'go and see the restaurant manager and you can buy some wine'... Not the response expected (we were already on all inclusive...), and was quite rude. Similar with some requests for room service - they do the opposite of 'go the extra mile'. ||Shoutout to Nikos at the evening bar who seemed to be the only staff member of positive note - and fyi, the evening entertainment is dire, not that it's that...