Glyfada Riviera Hotel — Hotel in Municipality of Glyfada

Do Yourself a Favor and Book a Real 5-Star Hotel

The hotel is located in Glyfada, which offers access to many beaches and restaurants along the coast of Athens. My wife and I booked the penthouse suite for a couple of days after our wedding. Our room was on the 5th floor and had a balcony with a beautiful view of the Glyfada coast, along with a hot tub.

During our second night in the room, we decided to use the hot tub and relax in the evening. Little did we know, we weren’t the only guests on the patio, as three cockroaches were also present on our balcony.

I brought this to the staff's attention the following morning. They apologized, explained that it was a natural occurrence, and reassured me that the hotel maintains a high standard of cleanliness. However, based on their demeanor, it seemed our complaint was something they were far too used to hearing and had become desensitized to.

I told them that asking for a better room would be pointless since we supposedly had the best the hotel has to offer.

Despite being told that the matter would be brought to the attention of the hotel manager, there has still been no official communication or apology from their side.

The room also included a tablet device intended to access hotel services. However, after making several requests to cancel our room cleaning and order breakfast, it became clear that this system isn’t functional. Guest requests via the tablet were completely ignored, and there was no communication from the hotel staff to inform us that these services were non-functional.

I only realized this after calling to check the status of our breakfast, at which point I was told that our order hadn’t been received and that many items on the tablet menu were actually unavailable.

When breakfast finally arrived, one of the staff members casually mentioned, “By the way, half of your breakfast is free because of the incident.”

After breakfast, I asked the reception if there was a service to pick up our plates (another service that could be ordered via the tablet), to which they replied that the cleaners would pick them up the next day—after we had checked out.

To top it all off, on the morning of our checkout, we woke up to find our breakfast leftovers swarming with ants coming through the cracks in our room floor. I don’t think there’s any point in further commenting on the matter of cleanliness.

I honestly regret entrusting such an important moment in our lives to a hotel that can’t even...

I think it’s about time we bring this hotel’s ranking down to a more realistic level. I don’t know how it got up there in the first place, but it must have been a record of its heyday or when it was under more attentive management.

I give it one point for the excellent morning coffee and the reasonable breakfast spread.

I give it another point for the lovely staff working the front desk who desperately try to fill in the massive voids left by the contempt-full, rude manager.

My 3rd point is for it’s location adjacent to the Glyfada town centre, and ease of access to local hot spots.

But let’s be honest here. This is NOT a 5 star hotel. It is a 3 star at best. Even by Athens standards. The main problem here is that by pushing the envelope as a 5 star hotel (even the sign outside promotes this), the establishment is creating a false sense of its value and your expectations. By continuing to do this, it will subsequently be downgraded in its reviews.

It’s time to advertise the hotel properly and attract a clientele who truly appreciated the hotel for what it is- a middle of the road, 3 star city hotel with 3 star management.

I’ll leave you with this final story from our visit last week: We complained about our shoebox room with the view of a construction site- so they upgraded us to a bigger room (same view). The upgrade cost us $100 more per night. To reiterate- we PAID for the upgrade. When we arrived that afternoon to make the move down the hall, the hotel had thrown all our laundry, toiletries, personal effects, valuables etc. into our suitcases and plopped them into our new room without our permission. We had clearly told them this WAS NOT to be permitted! Manager’s response (and I paraphrase) “We couldn’t wait for you. You should be happy we upgraded you”. Are...

This hotel is infested with ants and even worse has sewer smell issues. The 1st room I stayed in had ants (see pics), they moved me to a 2nd room that the same issue. The 3rd room they moved me to smelled like sewer (see pic) and had ants. This is a harmful odor to my health, I complained to the hotel and they told me they would remedy it. After returning from the beach I spoke to the front desk they told me everything was fixed and the odor was gone. I went to my room only to find out they lied to me and it still smelled like sewage! They finally offered for me to move again to a 4th room, but only for 2 days and I would have to move again to a 5th room b/c they were booked and I had a "long stay," they said. Absolutely unacceptable and unheard of so I checked out 5 days early!

The rooms are very small, the stairs are dirty (see pic), room walls have holes (see pic) this hotel is nowhere near 5 stars. Noisy as it's next to the highway and there is construction noise from the building being built right next-door (see pic).

Save your money, time, health and mental well being and go somewhere else. Take pics/vids and document your issues b/c Expedia will not help you nor will the hotel admit fault. Call your credit card for a full refund!

Edit - the response from the owner is full of lies I stayed in 3 different rooms with several problems,ant infestations and lack of maintenance. The 3rd room smelling like sewage requiring to move again which is why I checked out early. I just uploaded proof of my 3 rooms, lying...