Akasha Beach Hotel & Spa — Hotel in Municipality of Chersonissos

I will try and keep this review to the point. Arrived for a 7 day stay at this hotel. Hotel looks amazing from everywhere. Booked a dazzling sea view room and when we arrived I realised it was not a dazzling sea view room and was more what other hotels would refer to as a partial sea view room - showing slight sea view from a corner. I raised it with staff who advised it was sea view but could look at it tomorrow which given the time I agreed to. I also raised it with my travel company. The following morning in the afternoon I was shown another room which wasn’t a proper sea view either. Given that I paid a considerable amount more for a sea view I wasn’t happy with the room provided. I showed the guy in reception the photo of the room I chose when booking and he told me that it “was just marketing” to which I responded it’s false advertising - he then walked off and left us. Later in the day we had a call from guest relations to ask how our first night had been etc which was nice and I explained the night had been ok but room wasn’t good. The lady told me I was in a urban city room not a dazzling sea view which I had chosen and paid more for. I later received a call from my travel company who advised that another room would be shown. Guest manager maria advised she wasn’t sure why we had been told it was city urban view but the new room was front facing sea view - we eventually moved on day 2 and there was no reimbursement for the days we were in the incorrect room. The new room was good but just a shame that it took so long to resolve as nobody wants a bad start to their holiday.

My second critique of this hotel is front reception staff - mainly the men. Their attitude is poor and any questions appear to be a chore for them. When we arrived I asked about late checkout as our flight wasn’t until 11.55pm. I was told to request it a day before which I did. I was then told to come at 9pm and I explained I had dinner reservations but would come later In the night. I already knew there was an additional charge to keep the room which I was happy to pay. I was then told the hotel was fully booked and late checkout was not available now but we would have access to facilities. This again left a sour note to the holiday as it meant we had to rush and pack and then didn’t have comforts of using bathroom or resting etc. I also checked the hotel website and booking.com which showed the hotel did have room availability so the guy on reception was being dishonest. I did challenge him On this but he didn’t appear to care and said if I wanted to book another room I could but it wouldn’t be ready until 3pm the next day. I could write so much more about this experience but overall it really ruined the day and final day of holiday. What was meant to be a relaxing day ended up being stressful as we had to be out the room by 11 and then had nowhere to really rest.

Now onto the positives because there are some. Sun beds / beach etc is accessible and you can get a bed even later in the day. There were sunbed warriors out hogging beds but it never bothered us as we used the beach or went out.

Second positive is breakfast is good - decent variety and really tasty food. Evening meals not as good aside from dessert which was outstanding. There are no halal options however vegetarian food not great either. We ended up ordering food from our or dining out once we realised evening meal is not good. Our waitress Nata I think her name was lovely and always provided service with a smile. Spa is also good and Elena the massage therapist was very good.

Overall a nice hotel but I wouldn’t return for the reasons stated above. Golden beach resort / akasha - to really improve this establishment you need better front of house staff who are friendly and not rude. They could learn a lesson or two from the waitresses and waiters who had far better customer service skills than your front desk staff. Also teach your staff not to be dishonest with guests - especially when it takes a few seconds for the lie to be revealed. Hotel is a...

I will start with the positives by saying that Akasha hotel is absolutely beautiful, everything about the hotel looked stunning. Everything was very clean and well maintained so I have no complaints regarding the look or maintenance of the hotel. The food in the buffet restaurant was really nice, the staff in the buffet restaurant were lovely. The staff around the outside pool bar were also very nice.

However, from the moment we stepped into the hotel, the reception staff made us feel very uncomfortable. They couldn’t have made it any more obvious that for whatever reason, they were talking about us and laughing. Throughout the whole duration of our stay, the reception staff were incredibly rude and judgemental and it did make us all very uncomfortable. We had booked an ‘urban chic’ room in which a picture of that room is displayed on all booking websites - the tv’s in the room also display a description of that particular room stating what the rooms include. Again, this is not the room we were initially put in. The room we had booked on the photos and on the description on the hotel tv system said that all urban chic rooms consist of a bed, sofa, seating area, double sink, separate shower etc. The room we was put in on arrival was tiny, there was a single sink in the middle of the room between the bathroom and bed and a small desk area behind the sink, there was barely enough room to even open your suitcase. Don’t get me wrong the room was still decorated beautifully and well maintained but it was nothing like what was advertised and we was left very confused. We went to reception and tried explaining and the lady on reception with brown hair and glasses literally shushed me mid sentence and turned her back telling us to come back tomorrow. The next morning we went back to reception and again the same lady said ‘I told you come back at 11.30 today, look at the time it is not time yet’ then carried on with whatever it was she was doing - she had not told us a time to come back at all. We went back at 11.30 and they did find some better rooms to put us in, they were still not the rooms that were advertised but they were much better than the first ones we were put in. I believe Akasha make a habit of putting people in these tiny little rooms that are nothing like the rooms advertised anywhere as there were at least 3 other groups of people that we had met, complaining about their rooms not being what was advertised and asking to move rooms.

The staff at the beach restaurant/bar were also very rude and seemed miserable.

I’ll be honest the hotel vibe was great if you love to do nothing, if you’re the type of person that likes to get up in the morning and just lay there in the sun all day then it’s the perfect place for you, there was some ‘fake’ music coming out of speakers going on in the background each day - basically somebody singing their own version of well known chilled songs. We had one day where a saxophone player was round the pool that was really good but apart from that there was just nothing going on, besides some people playing the piano or violin outside the restaurant during dinner time - our group of friends found the hotel very boring but that’s just because we like a bit of entertainment and don’t enjoy just laying doing nothing all day so that is just personal preference, I’m sure people who like to do that would really enjoy.

The location was good and there was lots to do outside the hotel. However with the amount we paid (5.5k for 4 people for 7 nights) we begrudged spending lots of time outside the hotel to find things to do and spend even more money.

The all inclusive was okay but they did not like you going up to get your own drinks, everytime I went up to the bar to get a drink they told me to take a seat and wait & sometimes it was quite a long wait and in the heat wasn’t ideal. The long wait wasn’t all the time though.

A beautiful hotel but the service in some areas really let the hotel down. I would not return...

gorgeous hotel, very aesthetic. we were there for 9 nights all inclusive. we enjoyed our stay and would visit the hotel again however there were some negatives. a big thing was that the wifi was incredibly bad - i work from my phone and i couldn’t do that here, nothing would load , 90% of the time the wifi wouldn’t connect so that was not fun. the food was not enjoyable - it gave us upset stomachs every time we ate there so even though we paid for all inclusive we still had to go out for food and spend more money, the breakfast was decent though. The a la carte restaurant was really disappointing, you can only go there once with all inclusive and it’s only open twice a week so you’re stuck with the buffet every other night. the food was really low quality, cold and unflavoured. also just to note - some drinks aren’t included too, neither is room service or lunch by the pool so that was disappointing. another negative is the pool situation. something needs to be done about the sunbed wars, i personally didn’t take part as i don’t care about getting “the best” sunbed however it’s all everyone was talking about and there was even a physical fight. i think people shouldn’t be allowed to reserve sunbeds especially not for more than 30 minutes. also i think stricter pool rules are needed - i was expecting this to be a relaxed holiday spent by the pool however there were kids jumping in continuously, people were arguing about inflatables, people were throwing balls across the whole pool splashing and hitting other people. maybe keep the main pool as the “fun pool” and keep the other two as relaxing pools. the staff were friendly however i do think at times they needed to be more attentive - many times we were left waiting for someone to come over to take a drinks order - most the time we had to go over to the bar to do it ourselves which isn’t a problem but if you’ve got staff walking around they should take orders. finally the spa - lovely spa with lovely treatments, a bit pricey and they say that you’re going to get 20% off and then don’t follow through with it. in total i spent £215 in the spa and i had 4 treatments on top of paying to use the spa facilities - the indoor pool was amazing however i paid to use the steam room and sauna and they weren’t even warm which was a waste of my money. another negative is that you send spa staff members around the hotel every day to try get bookings, bearing in mind i’d already booked with them twice they were still coming over to me acting as if they’d never seen my face trying to get me to book even more. it felt a bit disrespectful knowing i’d spent £215 and they’re still trying to get me to book even more and it was just annoying to have them approach every single day. it was just excessive. Overall my experience was nice - the crowd was a bit different than i was expecting (young couples), there were families, couples, large friendship groups which unfortunately brought noise, older couples, older friendship groups etc so it’s nice that they can cater to everyone. the area is fairly nice, it’s along the coast so there’s lots of restaurants to try which are all more or less the same but it’s fun to go out for dinner. In conclusion it’s a lovely looking hotel and has the potential to be amazing - i think working on a target audience would make sense moving forward - i honestly think it should be an adult only hotel, food could do with improving for sure also however the rooms are lovely and so were the staff. in total this cost us £2k each through love holidays which if not for the food making us ill meaning we had to eat out i would say the price...