Parīlio, a Member of Design Hotels, Paros — Hotel in Paros Municipality

Note this is the first time in my life I’ve taken the time to write a bad review online. ||||Parilio Hotel has the potential to be one of the best hotels on Paros but fell way short of our expectations because of the service. Management needs to invest significant money and time into training its very inexperienced staff if it wants to continue to command luxury hotel pricing. The staff are all extremely welcoming and nice but simply lack experience in all aspects of hospitality operations and customer service. ||||I’ll provide a few examples. ||||At a five star property there should be a dedicated concierge to help guests plan their vacation (dining and activities). We went weeks without receiving a response from the hotel - I had to continually call and message the corporate office in Athens so they could nudge the hotel to respond. It was important to us to have a well planned trip given we were traveling with a nine month old. Our itinerary was not finalized until we arrived to the property and discussed it in person. We were told by hotel staff that they couldn’t contact a beach club that we were able to contact within five minutes to make a reservation. Our boat charter captain made a reservation for us at a restaurant before the hotel was able to. ||||At a five star property the staff should take notes of specific requests. My wife and I booked massages with female therapists months prior to arriving to the hotel (and reconfirmed the massages multiple times). On the day of the massage we were greeted by a male therapist. ||||At a five star property (at this price point) there should be service by the pool. I should not have to set-up my own lounge chairs for my family and wait for extended periods of time for towels and service. There is no poolside service and no one walks around to check in on you or take drink or food orders. You need to continually walk to the bar to get any attention. The food takes far too long to prepare. We waited over 90 minutes for lunch one day. ||||When we first booked the trip we immediately messaged the hotel to let them know we’d be traveling with a nine month old. When we arrived to the property we were informed that the entire resort only had one high chair which was being used by another family while we were eating lunch. This issue was rectified by the second day but this should not happen at a five star property. ||||Our room (which was beautiful) was at the very end of the resort (the last possible building you could be in on the property) - this proved to be extremely inconvenient with a stroller and the many bags we needed at all times for the baby. At a five star property the front desk staff should be more attentive and arranged for a more convenient room given the little one. ||||The water on Paros is not drinkable (which we didn’t know prior to arriving and certainly not the hotel’s fault). This gave us some concern given we needed to wash and sterilize bottles and pump parts. The workaround the first day was limiting us to a few water bottles to wash the bottles and pump parts and charging me for water bottles over the daily allotment (unacceptable at a hotel charging these room rates). We finally discussed the issue in more detail with the front desk - they recommended having the bottles washed by the kitchen in a commercial washer that would steam them (we were told by themselves). This proved to be a disaster. Multiple parts (including parts critical to pumping) were lost, we were given another baby’s spoon, and on multiple occasions the parts were not washed and milk remained in the bottles. ||||At a five star property there shouldn’t be incorrect charges on the bill that require multiple hours to rectify (we’re lucky we asked for a bill the day before we checked out). ||||At a five star hotel staff should be knowledgable about where amenities are located on the property. My wife asked two staff members where the spa was and they didn’t know. ||||Breakfast was complete and utter chaos - there is only one knowledgeable waitress and she is responsible for the entire dining room. Simple requests (like coffee) took far too long. ||||The hotel’s response time on WhatsApp (their system for communication while on property) was flawed and took too much time to see any action. We waited 30 minutes for hot water (for a bottle) on multiple occasions. Multiple nights we received no turn down service and we needed to continue to request towels and restocking of certain bathroom items. We were told at one point we could only be given two towels since we are two guests (note we were two adults and a nine month old). Unacceptable given the price point. ||||The hotel manager (who didn’t speak to us once) spends his days walking around the property vaping (and his nights at the bar drinking). You’d think given all the issues (and the fact we were there for nine days he would have tried to reach out to us). This doesn’t set a good example for staff and is again another example of falling well short in the service category. In my experience issues start at the top. ||||I was shocked by our experiences given the reviews and press the hotel has received from various travel outlets (which is why we booked Parilio). Service is the most important component of success in hospitality. My advice to the hotel is to spend less time and money on marketing and more time and money on training and retaining staff - and giving them the tools they need to provide guests with a service level that is more correlated to the room rate. ||||Certain staff members (Veroni, Christian, and all of the drivers) stood out to us as staff members that management should reward and work hard to retain. ||||I don’t blame the staff - management has failed them. It will be impossible to continue to provide the service we experienced and continue referring to the property as a luxury five star hotel (and charge five star pricing). My prediction is that unless management makes significant investments and improvements their complacency will ultimately...

This hotel was a huge disappointment and I fault myself for not having done some digging into the reviews, location, and other options prior to - so I encourage you to do the same. This hotel is priced as a luxury hotel in Paros and it just does not deliver.

The most important thing this hotel lacks is service. There’s no pool service to your chair, turndown service is mediocre AG best, meal service is understaffed, and the concierge provides minimal support. At a luxury hotel these are bare minimums you’d expect, and frankly, this hotel just doesn’t deliver. It has a feeling of being understaffed and if you want something you’ll likely need to get it yourself.

A few things that were particularly unusual for a luxury hotel: Location is inconvenient to the ocean and town - hard to believe you’re paying this much money for no view and being isolated. Getting into town, or anywhere for that matter, is highly inconvenient. The desk will happily arrange transportation, but it won’t be on time, and it will cost an additional fee. I think it’s important to keep in mind, if you want a beach day, that’s not happening at your hotel - you’re paying to go to a public beach club. If you want to walk anywhere, you can’t. You are fully isolated. Construction at the site next door, awful noise during pool time. Some times even construction or repairs at the pool - no reason this should be done before noon. Hotel echo - if you’re in the main building, you’ll definitely hear breakfast in the morning and returning guests at night. No doubt you can hear your neighbors as well. So much for privacy on your vacation. Cheap: ingredients on the table are being reused such as honey and jam and the shampoos in our shower were leftover from the previous guest instead of replaced. Same goes for basics like water - seemed nearly impossible to get our hands on more than one bottle a day or get more served at the table. The “luxury spa and gym” is leftover gym equipment from the 1990’s with fluorescent lights covered with sheets. They’ve also pooped a free standing sauna into this room. No water and towels are paper towels. Doesn’t scream luxury. Spa: We booked spa appointments for a Thursday and the desk booked them for a Tuesday. Can’t say whether the spa is good or bad because their clerical inabilities didn’t get us to the spa… Adults only: not the hotels fault, but worth noting, this place is not adults only. Prepare to be listening to a lot of Marco Polo. Awesome if you’re on your honeymoon or ready for some relaxation.

This hotel was overpriced, and there’s no value for the money. The hotel can’t fix its location, but turning around its service would be a good...

We were looking forward to our stay at Parilio, in Paros. We had emailed ahead to make sure the room type we ordered had two outside Sun Lounges, so we could sit outside and enjoy with our feet up. Upon checking, late in the afternoon, we were shown to our room. We had dinner at the restaurant, that evening, which was very good. The next morning we realised we did not have any sun lounges as we had been given a 1st floor room. We went to reception to advise we had been given the wrong room and were told the room they gave us was an upgrade. |That may have seemed nice for them, but we especially asked for a room with sun lounges. The lady at reception acknowledged this fact, only to say they didn’t have a room for us with a sun lounge until the next day. So, two nights and not what we had ordered!! |The next day we had to move rooms, a nuisance but we did it. We had the new room, which was extremely comfortable for 3 nights only to have the air conditioning break down and was not able to be repaired before the evening. So, again we had to move rooms, and we understand it was not the teams fault, but nevertheless, it was annoying to have to move, yet again.|The next room was not as nice, but was acceptable EXCEPT, to have staff walking past our private area to and from the car park, was not what we would have expected.|What was more interesting this morning was the reception staff did not even bother to ask, “how is your new room, we are sorry to have inconvenienced you twice”, just nothing. We would have thought that an acknowledgment was the correct thing and even to say, please “have a drink on us” Just nothing, very unprofessional and it has left us with a bad taste in our mouth for this property and any others in the Empiria Group. |A shame as the majority of the team are fantastic, but clearly lack some extra good training.|With this bad taste, we would not recommend...