Mythos Beach Resort — Hotel in Municipality of Rhodes

First things first - we liked our stay. We really did. However, does it mean we loved the hotel and will be back to it? I don't think so, unfortunately.||First, some basic info. The hotel is located on a beautiful, not so much polished and prettified, beach of Afandou. It's truly amazing with small (and not so small) stones, without much of the human intervention. If Venus wouldn't come out of water on Cyprus, she would have to do it right there on Afandou beach. And it's very easy to imagine it look at the clear, warm water. And the beach is the main reason we liked our stay here. There are free sun-beds and umbrellas provided by the hotel. But not necessarily enough for everybody willing to relax by the sea instead of the pool.||After talking about the best part - the beach, let's talk about the hotel and facilities. Again, let me start with the good things:| * very nice and friendly staff. Everywhere we experienced smiles, helpful attitude and relaxed overall atmosphere. In the restaurant, in the pool bar, at the reception. Everybody tries to help and make your stay better if possible.| * food quality - it's good. The variety (or the lack of one) is a bit dull, and can easily make you disappointed if you stay for 2 weeks, but the food served was good, nevertheless| * very good (even too much for my liking) cleaning. If you don't explicitly put "Do not disturb" tag on the door, you will get everything changed including the towels which are not on the floor, the bed linings, etc. I can't imagine anybody doing this at home and I would really like to avoid this in the hotels| * this one isn't a deal-breaker, of course, but I liked an opportunity to make my cup of greek coffee at breakfast. It's a nice exercise and even though the tooling (the kettle, in particular) isn't suitable for this it still produced a better coffee cup than the one from the machines. Which brings us to quite a few issues I had with our stay.| * the view from the Junior suites (the ones on the 1st floor without a pool) in the Olympia part is just stunning 😍||However, with those things listed, I was still surprised to see that this hotel has 5* plate on the reception desk. So yes, technically, it's a 5* hotel. However, I think this is the case when a hotel meets the criteria only formally, but that doesn't mean much.||Here are some things that I can't understand in the context of a 5* hotel:| * the highest tourist tax I've ever seen across Europe (and outside) - 15EUR per room per night. This automatically makes your 1 week stay 105EUR more expensive and 210EUR more expensive for 2 weeks, respectively. That's significant| * ants everywhere. If you manage to throw anything with food rests (even a packaging from a food) into the bin in the evening, you will get a lot of unexpected "guests" by morning. So you better move out and throw things like that into a bin outside to be on the safe side| * the dullest entertainment program I've seen in any resort. There's a place to set up a proper stage, I guess, closer to the sea (as it's done in the hotel nearby), but any performance (which are usually very short and simple) are held on the terrace of the hotel where there are no suitable seats or stage setup.| * the kids club. This one made me a bit furious to be honest. The kids club costs, again, 15EUR per day. And it's not like you deliver the kid in the morning and pick up in the evening - the working hours are really discreet still making you "attached" to the hotel no matter what. Have never seen a kids club in a 5* resort (or even 4* resort) for additional costs.| * because of the previous point - there's no animation for kids. There's one day with kids disco before supper (at 18:00) but otherwise parents have to either pay or entertain their kids themselves| * soft drinks (both sparkling and "juices") quality is horrible. The same level I've seen at much cheaper 3* hotels.| * You will be surprised to see this (check the photos), but the madrases on the beds are of the wrong size in some cases allowing you to see the dirty spots on those (because the linen is too short for those). Not a huge deal, but, 5? Really?| * even if you arrive on all-inclusive, you won't get any minibar. Specifically, because of the issue above with the soft drinks (they come only from the hose) and that there're no drinks served in bottles (I think only non-alcoholic beer is).| * The fridge in a room works only when you have the room card in the slot. This is very odd. So if you need to keep anything in the fridge (food for kids, medicine, anything), you have to leave the room with the card in the slot| * the mini golf made me really wonder about the hotel is caring at all about any level of entertainment for the guests - the course is so old and destroyed that playing on it you one can only because there's not so much else to do in the evenings (it's under the direct sun, so you don't want to play there during the daytime anyway) | * there's no beach bar. One has to go back to the pool bar to get the drinks. Not a big deal, but would make things more enjoyable with a bar on the beach.| * if you need to get to a doctor, you're nearly out of luck in the hotel and will have to drive elsewhere - the doctor is available only 1h a day from 16:30 to 17:30| * there are absolutely no toiletries in the bathroom apart from the regular soap dispenser. No shampoo, conditioner, body lotion or anything you would expect finding in a 5 beach resort anywhere else.| * this one is funny - if you check the hotel's website and check the contents of a Junior suite (that we stayed in), you will see remarkable things like "playstation 3, hi-fi audio system, slippers, etc." No, you don't get anything like that. Even the TV isn't smart enough to show you YouTube, so just regular old-school TV is your friend. When I asked reception about this, they answered that, apparently, the site wasn't updated for a while after corona. But I have really hard time believing this hotel offered anything like this ever, really.| * and, while we're on the lighter-side of the complains - if you're into good coffee, you will have to spend your stay without one, apparently. Because the coffee from the machines is of really low quality. The coffee machines in the restaurants are similar ones I've seen in 3 and 4* hotels, but never in a 5* one. However…| * if you check the website for the hotel you will see "coffee maker" as an equipment for a room! That's fine. And I was really surprised to see that that part of the description is, actually, true - there's a coffee maker (Nespresso-type) in the room indeed. However, there's a catch - there are no capsules. You have to buy those yourself in the local shop to get coffee in the room if you want that 🤷‍♂️||All in all, again, we liked our stay because of the sea, because of the friendly staff, good food and Greek sun. But this is not a 5* resort one would expect. The price one pays here is comparable to really good 5* experience in other neighboring...

We stayed there as a part of a 9 person travel one week all inclusive.

For one of the couples they had to wait an hour or to for the room to be ready. Rest of us could move in right away.

The reception has been the most friendly and service minded part of the hotel.

I've been to to the Mediterranean and Greece countless of times. I did expect more of an apartment since that is what we booked. But there was few pictures on beforehand.

What we got was two rooms. So twice up with beds. TV and bathroom. And one of the rroolms had a tiny corner kitchen.

The kitchen was useful despite being small.

Bathrooms were really nice, balcones too. We were not ground level.

The pool areas are this hotel's strong points. It's clean and has something for everyone. Our toddlers loved it.

The snackbar is useful but you can't go and help yourself. You have to order. I can easily drink 10 soft drinks or beer on a hot day so this makes it more cumbersome. I also asked the bartender about a tray to help get drinks for my group - he wasn't helpful.

All the included meals take place in the restaurant. I think they mixed up our drink order for dinner every day. I'm not exaggerating. Every day. It was difficult for the waiters to understand us. Their English was not as good as you'd expect from an island that basically only has tourism. They were not super friendly but neutral. Expect the guy that greeted us for dinner every day he was very friendly and nice.

But it bugged us that we had to wait in line every day for dinner to be seated.

Food is quite good. It's not the best but good and they mix things up. Beers were excellent and not watered out like on many other all inclusive resorts.

I got covid with complications and benefitted from the doctor who stops by at normal times. Maybe the Greeks are a bit neutral but I rarely find them super warm and smiling.

Especially true for the small super market. The guy barely bothers to look up and put away his phone when I showed up. But then again he gave me some useful advice. So maybe this is how they are. They don't say hello or bye bye either. Has to be said though. The selection in the supermarket is superb!

A guy in the bar that has an indoor and outdoor section next to the reception was not friendly and I felt I disturbed him when I ordered a drink. After he made my drink he went around the corner to sit on his phone. Again this is a 5 star resort and people pay money to stay here. It's not a budget option.

When we were there temps actually rose just over 40 c. Our ac aircondition couldn't keep up. I lied in our room with fever in 27c with the termostat sat to 20. Our other room was a bit chiller but no where near good enough. Our other travel companions had 27 c in their room too. From where we are from we don't sleep well in 27c. I didn't bother complaining since many of our rooms struggled with the same.

In my opinion the beach is very nice and clean despite having some rocks in the sand and in the ocean. We had lots of fun snorkeling and swimming. The distance to the beach is barely 50 m and the way there is convenient and nice.

They say don't leave your towels on the beds if you're not there. But then does nothing about it. So we started doing it too.

All in all a good but not great hotel. it has nice swimming pools and closeness to beach and the good food I'd say, but service is not great. I'd say mediocre. And the rooms arent really an apartment. One of the rooms has a TV with smart TV function and that was useful. Internet was good too. I do expect more in terms of service though from a hotel which on Google is a 5 star hotel and fix those f. Airconditions, you can't be surprised by...

So lets start with the positive. Apollo was great at giving information right outside the airport, easy to find transfer bus and find your hotel. Staff at the hotel were very friendly and helpful. ||Food was mostly OK but fried foods were almost never crispy but rather soggy (unless you started eating as soon as they opened). ||What surprised me most was their "All-inclusive" collection. We calculated and in total I think around 30-40% of the food/snacks/drinks was included into "All-inclusive" which kind of defeats the purpose of All-inclusive. We have never been to a hotel where we had to ask on every item "Is this included in all-inclusive?" just to make sure we weren't going to be billed. ||Some information on Apollos website are also false. For example, they stated that one bar serves "snacks and desserts" until midnight, but this bar did not have any snacks at all. One bar said they "serves sandwhiches from 22 - 23". These "sandwhiches" were old food from the regular buffé and they were not sandwhiches, but small finger food. It was also stated that they have a bar serving drinks at the beach, which is also not correct. The only hotel with a bar at the beach was another hotel which was next to Mythos Beach Resort. The closest bar was inside the hotel area and if you wanted snacks you had to go even further into the hotel area. Nothing was actually served by the beach. They also had a "A la carte" restaurant, and this was not included at all. So very disappointed with the package and I would not recommend choosing it because you could get better Greek food in the city only 5 minutes away. ||We had booked the "apartment" room. Upon arriving we realize that there is only a single unlocked door that separates the next room. The door did not have a handle but the door was unlocked since we accidentally opened it at one point. There was no isolation between the rooms, since this is a family hotel there is obviously kids/babies here. However, since no isolation it was literally as if we suddenly had a screaming/crying baby with us which cried all night. We told the Hotel staff this and they said they will try help us get a new room but we had to wait until tomorrow. So we return later and they tell us Apollo have to change our room type in order to change our room. We talk to Apollo and they promise us they will text us the same day with a solution. The day passes and no text message. Next day we have to talk to them again (new staff) and they tell us exactly the same as previous day. But now I tell them we need help immediately because we have already waited 3 nights with no sleep. Later we get a phone call saying they can upgrade our room but we have to pay €95. We accept this because obviously we need sleep in order to enjoy our vacation. Apollo was very slow with their help and they were only available (at the hotel) for like 1-2 hours each day.||We still had a good time outside of the hotel, but we would not recommend this hotel if you are looking for a genuine "all-inclusive"...