camping Castello — Hotel in Municipality of Sithonia

This was our 3rd and last vacation in Castello due to unexpected lack of hospitality justified through an unacceptable and contradictory policy change on their end. Since this year they have a crazy rule 19 that I will put here:

Accommodations occupied by four or more guests are permitted only if all occupants belong to the same nuclear family— defined specifically as parents and their own children. Other group combinations, including extended family members (e.g., grandparents, cousins, uncles/aunts), friends, or multiple families, will not be accepted in any accommodation with four or more occupants.

It effectively means you can have 2 adults and their kids, but the platforms (their own and booking) will let you book 6 adults. This needs to be fixed, but the manager here prefers to keep causing troubles rather than accept that there is a problem in his new rule and the way it is announced.

They also changed their visitors policy to:

Visitors of the guests are not allowed in the accommodation for any reason. Entry is only permitted to Camping guests.

Up until last year vistors were accepted after a fee.

Now here is what happened to us:

We are coming here 3rd year 9 families with small children. Unfortunately I have messed up our reservation and only understood I failed to complete it couple of days prior our trip. Immediately contacted Castello to double check. They confirmed I have no reservation to them and pointed closest places around, but then they stated that I will not be allowed to visit the friend families pointing rule 7 above. I booked nearby at Petros Italos (totally recommend) and promised my very upset 8 year old that I will find a way for him to be with the rest of the kids. Few of the families have booked the biggest mobile homes for up to 6 adults and had an entire room free. Plan was to add us and have no restriction per rule 7. The friend asked reception on arrival and were fully denied to add even my son alone although they are 2 adults and 2 kids in the Lux mobile home, but it was then were rule 19 was pointed. The reception, however encouraged them that although they can't add us it will be okay. We've been anyways spending our stay at the beach bar, the beach and the restaurant until 4th day of the vacation when I brought food everyone ordered from Alcano (best gyros around!) for a bit of a change. Literally this was supposed to be first time we don't eat at the restaurant and we were not even sure we will stay, but planned so to not disrupt the kids time together. I was asked at reception where am I going - told them I will bring food to my friends and leave. They said several times I am not allowed at camp side, but let me go leave the food. Then they decided they will follow me - 3 guys on electric scooters. Made a big scene in front of all friends not even giving us the time to hand the food each one ordered before we leave. I don't think I've seen or heard of such behaviour anywhere in Greece for 20+ years.

I immediately communicated to manager, left my phone and so on to only get further rude attitude and I will put few quotes to get the idea: 'we would like to point out that our campsite is not a playground or public recreation area, and it is not permitted to bring your child to play with others staying here'

I asked what is the family configuration that complies to rule 19 and consists of 6 adults as you can book 6 adults in their biggest mobile homes both in their platform and in the major platforms, while it is clear they restrict you to 2 adults plus kids and got this as an answer:

'Nowhere is it stated that we only allow two adults per mobile home. A family may consist of two parents and three adult children — that is, five adults in total.'

Here is also the quotation of the definition per the manager of what a family that they will accommodate is and what it is not:

'Father, mother and kids. Not friends, grandparents, aunts etc..'

I am not sure how strict they are going to be on these new rules with everyone else, but that is what...

We chose Camping Castello for the second time because we liked it the first time. This time, however, we were totally disappointed. We made a reservation for a standard caravan because we wanted to experience of a real caravan in a camping. Before making the reservation, I requested more photos because there weren’t enough on the website, but the answer was: "couldn’t provide additional photos". I trusted, because our previous experience at the camping had been positive.

Our first impression upon arrival was disappointing. The caravan was in very poor condition: very old, worn out, dirty, and all the windows were boarded up and couldn’t be opened. We could only cool down with an air conditioner that was added to the caravan. The vorzelt of the caravan was poorly secured and later we found out it collected water. The floor in front of the caravan was dirty, torn, and there were ants crawling everywhere on the cabinets.

The last two days were awful. It started raining in the afternoon, and water leaked into the caravan. The caravan had signs of previous leaks, and the camping was certainly aware of this. I asked at the reception if they could do something because we have two small children and I was concerned about the upcoming night. They put a piece of plastic over the roof and weighed it down with bricks. They assured me they had checked the weather forecast and there wouldn’t be any more rain during the night and that it wouldn’t be convenient to move us for just one night. In midnight heavy downpour flooded the caravan. Water was pouring into the caravan, one of the bedrooms was soaked and the second bedroom also got wet at one end. We 2 adults and 2 small children had nowhere to sleep. Of course, this happened after midnight when there was no one at the reception and we couldn’t move anywhere. I have never waited so for the sunrise before. We left as quickly as possible in the morning and didn’t even receive an apology from the reception when we showed them the photos. We will definitely not return to Castello. The caravan might not be the most luxurious and expensive mobile home, but the attitude was extremely disrespectful, and we wouldn’t spend our money and time in this camping again. NOT recommended!

*EDIT after Camping ` reply

I agree that we booked a Classic, not a Standard caravan. However, I completely disagree with your claim that you offered us the option to change caravans. This is simply not true. We did not refuse to move — on the contrary, we expected you to suggest this. At 17:00, after the first rainfall, I went to reception and explained the issue. At 19:00, a man (who did not introduce himself) was checking the parcels nearby. When I approached him, he told me: "We checked the weather forecast, and it will be fine, no worries. We think it wouldn’t be comfortable for you to move just for one night." Your response is offensive because it includes false and misleading information. It does...

It used to be such a nice place but not anymore. We are a family with two children(7 and 3 years old) visiting the camping for third(and most likely last) consecutive year and staying in Mobile house B. The previous years we were amazed by the entire place and especially by its kind and helpful staff, which was always polite and doing their best to comply with our requests. But this year everything has changed in a bad way: Right after check in I have realized that the freezer compartment door was missing so I went to reception desk and reported it. The maintenance guy came really quick and assured me that he will try to fix it or simply replace the fridge with another one, but he didn't show up anymore during our 10 day stay. I have tried to set the fridge cooling to the maximum level in order to be able to store some ice cream for the kids without melting it, but that led to freezing the rest of the food which was in the fridge. I have informed again at the reception desk about the issue but didn't receive any support from their side, not even a simple excuse. During our previous 10 day stays the housekeeping were cleaning twice(every three days) but this year it was only once on our 5th day and on the 10th day the housekeeping supervisor came to tell us that they were not able to clean the previous days because "there was nobody in the room" and she used the same excuse for not cleaning the rooms of the rest of our group(we were a group of 6 families all of us in Mobile houses A,B and Lux). The beach in front of the restaurant and the beach bar(the niciest part of the beach) was occupied with "free" sunbeds and umbrellas which were set with a mimum consumption of 25 euro and that might be acceptable if it had been done at the beginning of the season, but they did it during our stay which was in the first two weeks of July. It was so annoying that they just occupied most of the free zone and all people(including our group) were urged to move to the outskirts of the beach where there wasn't enough room for all people that were using the free zone. For families with small kids like our group it was vital to use the free zone as the kids are having enough room to play and run around and that was one the main reasons we enjoyed that place so much.

There were many other unpleasant situations during our stay that would make this review endless... I will just briefly mention that it seems unacceptable to not have even one frying pan in a Mobile home Lux and the answer at the reception desk is simply "...we don't have any, try asking some of your...