Platoni Elite — Hotel in Municipality of Rhodes

I spent a lot of time researching the perfect place for us to stay when visiting Rhodes and Platoni Elite seemed to tick every box before we booked and has absolutely ticked every box during our stay here. If you want a relaxing, authentic holiday that’s conveniently located with excellent hosts and food… then trust me and book this place. ||Location - Platoni Elite is 15 minutes on a bus from the airport and 15 minutes from the iconic Old Town. This was great for us because we didn’t want to have to travel too far once we’d been on a flight for four hours and we didn’t want to travel far for a day of exploring. The hotel/apartments itself are set back slightly from the main road which bodes well for peaceful sleeping! Directly opposite the hotel is a big supermarket so you can easily stock up on essentials and you can pack light and buy some stuff there. The bus network is reliable, cheap and quick so I’d recommend using buses rather than wasting money on taxis. You can pay €3 a journey in cash to the driver. ||Hotel itself - comprised of both rooms and apartments. Our apartment is beautifully presented and really clean (cleaner visits everyday and provides fresh towels). There is lots of space and a large balcony, powerful shower with essential toiletries and a very comfortable bed. Air con is great too!|The grounds have a large pool (always clean) and a small kids pool. Sun beds are plentiful and you’ll be given a pool towel when you arrive so no need to pack one! There is a small garden area too. The grounds are kept clean, tidy and there’s enough space for everyone staying without it being too “resorty” or generic. ||Restaurant - I can’t express greatly enough how amazing the food and service is here. For a start, portion sizes are so generous that it’s near impossible to eat an appropriate amount, unless you have a lot of willpower which I don’t! As we’ve learnt from one of our lovely hosts, Greek culture shows love and appreciation by serving big portions and lots of yummy food and by that standard, we felt a lot of love while we’ve been here. We opted for the bed and breakfast option for our booking and the breakfast was the best we’ve had anywhere in the world. We were treated everyday to fresh breads, jams, honey, chocolate spread, a fresh variety of cut fruit with either fluffy pancakes or French toast or loukoumades (Greek donuts) AND then any form of fresh eggs AND fresh pastries. The omelettes are delicious! We left the breakfast table everyday ready to burst and extremely satisfied. ||For lunch (which we only managed to have two days out of seven because of the breakfast keeping us full) - I highly recommend the gyros. Best quality gyros we’ve seen and eaten on the island - even the chips are fresh and homemade! The lunch salads are also massive and filling. ||Dinner - is served between 1700-2230 each day. Every single meal we ate was perfect. Each day, we were presented with fresh breads with a delicious homemade dip and then a homemade greek taster dessert after our main meal. The main meals were never disappointing. Fresh meat, fish, moussaka, pasta - all served with a tasty fresh salad and rice or homemade chips. The normal menu is extensive enough and they also have 2 or 3 specials each day too. ||The service on the whole is very friendly and relaxed. They find the perfect balance between good service but not over imposing. It’s seems fairly normal practice to keep food on the table for grazing instead of the UK style of clearing the plates as soon as you put your fork down. We preferred this so we could keep picking!||Hosts - ||The hotel is run by a Greek family and they all contribute towards making it a fantastic place to stay. ||There are three siblings - Marianthe, Yiannis and Stratos. I’m not sure that Marianthe ever sleeps! She is the breakfast queen and is responsible for making the best breakfast you’ll ever have. She also serves the evening dinner and makes sure you want for nothing. She even taught my partner how to correctly debone a fish when she saw that he was about to eat a mouthful of bones! She’s charming and engaging with an excellent sense of humour. |Yiannis is the head chef. He is insanely talented and obviously well educated in his trade. Again, his sense of humour is great and his lovely dog Kokonis is a great little assistant who keeps the animal loving guests happy. Stratos is always smiling and incredibly kind. Stratos serves breakfast every morning and nothing is too big of an ask. The siblings parents are frequent friendly visitors who always say hello and help out if the restaurant is busy. |We are so grateful to have been hosted by this wonderful family! It’s a good sign when everyone else in the hotel has been here before and people from other hotels were coming to Platoni during the day because “they prefer it here”. ||Animals - the hotel is animal friendly. Rhodes sadly has many stray cats and the hotel do their best to look after them. As such, expect to see lots of lovely cute kittens and cats wandering around. For us, it was a pleasure to see them being looked after and watch them play with each other. Kokonis the family dog is a small gentle boy who can also be seen occasionally wandering around. If you’re an animal lover then you’ll love this place. If you can tolerate animals then you’ll still enjoy it, just don’t engage with them and they will leave you alone. If you really hate animals then you probably don’t deserve to stay in such a beautiful place...

I’ll start with the long review, and end it with the key bullet points.

We had originally booked to stay somewhere else, having not seen this place originally, but saw the reviews for Platoni Elite and changed our booking quite last-minute. That was the best decision we made, and we had the best holiday we’ve ever had. Take note: they don’t have a single bad review, and for good reason. Pretty much every other person we saw that stayed there while we were there were returners - people come back time and time again, and we can truly understand why.

As a family, the owners of Platoni Elite are just wonderful. They are kind, have a brilliant sense of humour, great to talk to (and know a lot about the world!), and are a family of excellent cooks too! They are receptive to their guests, attentive, and pay great attention to detail from great food, cleanliness and hygiene, and the personal touches that really matter and go above and beyond what you might expect from “a hotel”. They are so much more than that.

We stayed at a 5* hotel in Rhodes 2 years ago, and their standards in absolutely everything fell so far short of what Platoni provide - we will certainly come back to Platoni in the future and join their long list of returners. If you get a chance, read into star rating systems - 2* in terms of facilities is not the same as a 2* customer review; in terms of food standards, hygiene standards, levels of service, etc, they get 5*, hands down. They are real people, providing a great service to real people.

They work so hard, and clearly take a lot of pride and care in what they do, and yet at the same time you see that they offer such a personalised experience to every one of their guests.

In summary: Why choose to stay at Platoni Elite? As a family, they are wonderful. It was a privilege to have met them. The rooms are exceptionally clean and tidy and this is maintained every day (we check everything, and have very high cleaning standards - they well and truly passed, and it’s clear they have high standards too.) Spacious rooms with everything you could need. They make your stay personal. They go out of their way to meet your requests. They are amazing cooks, and every meal was cooked beautifully - flavoursome, and so much food that the value for money was phenomenal. If you like dogs, they have two beautiful fur-babies who regularly come to visit. It is so tranquil and peaceful there, and somewhere you can genuinely relax. You don’t have to do the holiday fight for sun loungers at 4am thing, there’s enough for everyone! It feels like such a safe, respectful environment, and yet they can have a laugh too! It is a 2-minute walk to the bus stop that takes you into Rhodes Town (15/20 min journey, €3 each way pp, €6 day ticket) It is about a 10 minute walk to the beach. It’s about a 5 minute walk from the main strip of restaurants, but we would definitely recommend eating dinner at Platoni when you can - we usually like going out for dinner and trying out different restaurants, but their food was just too good, and we wanted to spend money where we know we will have great food and they care about the service they provide. There’s a huge supermarket directly across the road.

In all, it was just perfect. We can’t wait to go back. Thank you for having such a big part in making our...

This is not a moan, more of constructive criticism to enable the owners/guests to make there own decisions on whether this is the place for you to stay, it's our ( 4 quests) opinion rightly or wrongly,||This villa was lovely albeit a tad over marketed on the website as I/we thought it gives an impression of a 5 star experience ( Elite villas) ie from photo's swans on bed made from towels, walk in showers etc ||The main bedroom was large with plenty of storage & a small table & mirror overlooking a major building work going on starting at 8am every morning ( been nice to have been told) the other rooms had no mirrors or bedside tables which make the girls doing makeup difficult, & nowhere to put a cuppa in bed other than the floor, no Biggie but it is for some I guess, ||The bathroom had a very very basic shower/bath which personally was very disappointed with tbh, there was a few small mixed complimentary shower gels etc & there was no room service unless they meant if you call them they would come to empty bins & change towels & bed linen, I think they did once in the week we stayed ( towels that is) but hey we might have read the description wrong! |Cannot fault the kitchen as had everything you would need plus more tbh,||The roof terrace was I think could of been an amazing place if some furniture was up there ie sunbeds/ chairs/table other than a washing line & a disused unplumbed metal sink as it had views even sea glimpses oh & building site lol, I did actually ask for a small table up there but was told for health & safety ( what if I stood on it & fell off) was the reason, No I'm not joking! We took the chair's from bottom floor up there anyways & returned when left! Planes can be regularly seen clearly close by as close to airport but not a nuisance & not overhead, ||The food in the restaurant area did certainly look delicious but for us being on holiday would of preferred a little atmosphere ie some music ... Even background music but not silence & the restaurant could of been a little more Greeky, just wasn't our thing & never busy busy, ||To sum up we enjoyed our stay & hopefully this doesn't come across as a winge just some helpful tips for those of thinking of staying here because if we all agreed that if we had seen a review stating what I have written here we possibly may have thought different that's all folks! ... We all like & expect...