Ikos Olivia — Hotel in Polygyros Municipality

Food|Food is excellent - we’ve been really impressed with the food. We managed to get in a la carte every night but we were flexible with times. The buffet is excellent also, the only let down there was the service was slow. We could often eat and be out without being seen to for a drink.|We only had one ‘bad’ meal but the restaurant did try their best to sort this the following day - although I must admit not to their usual IKOS standard.|Provence was a strong favourite and so was Ouzo. At both their service was excellent - especially Alex, Nash & Jan in Ouzo, Francesca in The Garden and Anna in Provence. ||Pools|Lovely pools, lots of floats left behind by other guests which is handy. Children are not allowed to jump in. |We did like the pools though. The “big” pools adults can stand up all the way around. |The children’s splash pool has astroturf at the bottom which is a great idea! |At all pools too there is a shallow one which are all good sizes at 0.6m depth which again is brilliant for younger children. |Service was excellent around the pools albeit slow to clean up plates of food - they were often left out for while and tables not cleaned etc. found that mainly at the “main pool”.||Shout out to Jenny at the splash pool - she was absolutely excellent and worked so, so hard.||We never had a problem getting a sun lounger and the gentlemen who sort all the towels out are excellent around the pool and on the beach! They are on it! And extremely helpful. Bence in particular was so attentive. ||At the main pool there was heavy machinery next door which would woke my little one up if he was asleep next to the pool with the banging which was annoying, sounded like glass?||Rooms|Rooms were lovely but nothing special, have stayed in just as nice rooms in Greece before. Card key stopped working half way through our holiday which I know third world problems and all of that but was annoying with two babies in tow. ||Beach|Isn’t like the pictures it’s not white sand and blue sea in my opinion. Would suggest sea shoes for little ones.||Housekeeping|Only problem was for us around the resort and on our balcony was ants!! Everywhere. My youngest who is still crawling got bitten to death on his legs, just had to stop letting him crawl around (hard work!!)|There was a lot of ants round the tables at the poolside and this in my opinion is probably down to it not being clean enough. Tables were covered in ants some mornings round the pool. |The grounds were absolutely stunning, we loved walking around looking and smelling all the different plants! ||Communication|Personally didn’t have a problem. The guys on WhatsApp were always really quick and efficient to reply and help and did always try their best if ever had a “problem” - thank you all! ||Children facilities|We were travelling with under four year olds. They could use the main park which was really good and nicely done. A lot of people used it in the mornings and evenings as the equipment got so hot in the day.|We never used the kids club. I was hoping we could walk in under supervision and use some of the facilities but you could not enter. I understand this but also been in some fantastic hotels all round the world with them already and they’ve still had indoor facilities for children too where they can access different things so this was a shame there was nothing like that here especially given how hot the outdoor equipment gets.||Other|Little things like when we arrived we were not told about some of the dining options were actually off site. No offer of a welcome drink after a long travel. No show to your room, just left to find it was a bit strange for a 5* hotel in my opinion. Check in process felt very impersonal although it was quick! So I’ll take quick I guess over impersonal if I had to pick! ||The decor is stunning, it’s a very beautiful hotel.|The rooms / corridors are not very well sound insulated in my personal opinion.|We went with two small children - like most people there!! But would definitely suggest if you’re looking for a more adults/couple holiday I would maybe look elsewhere.|Entertainment was poor. We are not big entertainment people so it didn’t bother us too much.|I came on holiday really wanting to give it 5* but it’s just not quite there for me, especially given your paying big money for it. Maybe I was expecting too much as I was expecting exceptional, but it falls short of that. |||So would I return to IKOS? I’m not sure - I would say the only main stand out for me is the food. I think you can get everything else elsewhere. I personally think I’ll go back to trying something else of the...

So let’s begin with the headline - would I advise you to stay at Ikos Olivia? Following my own experience the answer would be a firm no and this is really due to consistent issues throughout our stay which essentially masked any plus points.

We booked Ikos Olivia on the strength of having a great time at Ikos Dassia last year. Olivia and Dassia are however quite literally like night and day respectively from my experience and have put serious doubt in my mind as to whether to bother with Ikos ever again.

We arrived at Ikos Olivia to celebrate our wedding anniversary and so were looking forward to a luxurious week of holiday. I was initially impressed that the staff had provided us with a bottle of sparkling wine in our room as an anniversary surprise but then was very quickly disappointed after a quick google search suggested the bottle was worth the princely sum of 4 EUROS. Ikos clearly didn’t value our wedding anniversary as much I might have hoped they would have done! As an aside, a quick google search of most of the wines that are on offer at Ikos might suggest that they are all on the cheap side and worth around that price point apart from the Tattinger (for deluxe guests I understand), therefore you are not getting luxury wines, they are largely bargain bucket £3.99 at Tescos bottles!

My wife is vegetarian and also gluten free, we had great difficulty obtaining any restaurant reservations for restaurants that would cater for this and the dialogue I had with the WhatsApp helpline provided by Ikos was ironically tremendously unhelpful in this regard. Eventually, the guest relations stepped in and tried to help with this assuring us that my wife’s dietary requirements would be catered for going forwards.

Ordering at the beach bar was a tremendously belaboured process, having had to ask the bar staff four or five times for the same thing, with everything being brought out piecemeal and sometimes to the wrong table. When we finally received our meal, my wife received a ham and cheese sandwich which is clearly not vegetarian. The bar staff were slow to deal with putting this right and the bar manager’s apology appeared insincere. All other experiences at the bar were just as poor, service was like similar to Fawlty Towers but without any comedy - disappointing examples of service I witnessed included a distressed couple with an ill child being turned away by the bar staff and another couple walk out of the bar having had to wait over half an hour for a cocktail.

Beach service was a slow drawn out affair with some food arriving an hour later after I had given up and tried to get food elsewhere.

Buffet service is chaotic at best, with long queues forming because of the rather odd system in place at the entrance to the buffet. There was normally one person at the entrance who took each person in turn to a table and so a long queue quickly built up. It would have surely been more sensible to have one person dedicated to be at the entrance and others showing people to their tables.

The evening buffet service we experienced involved wine being stored in random buckets, staff not being around to pour wine or water if they were even able to locate it! The buffet manager suggested that the wine was stored in buckets away from tables to provide a fine dining experience (I almost choked!)

After having voiced the above, the guest relations man came over to the beach to talk with me, the best he could do was to tell me that it made him feel very sad about my experience, he then just stared at me with sad eyes and a big sigh and when asked what he was going to do about it, he just said that it made him feel very sad, and then walked off into the distance. Unimpressive at best.

Checkout was equally challenging-not enough characters to cover this one!

The photo I have included as part of this review (which is of the “vegetarian” sandwich supplied to my wife) sums up the whole experience better than words, a rather sorry, disappointing and unappetising event which was not as advertised!

Ikos Olivia - you...

We would not come here again. If you have kids between 0-4 years and maybe have grandparents in tow, then this is definitely the place for you. It will be heavenly. If not, do not come here!

This is the demographic that Ikos Olivia caters to and we wish we had known this and that Ikos were transparent with this because we definitely would have gone elsewhere.

Reading other reviews that have pointed this out I now understand what they are getting at!

We have kids who were 10 and 13 and the resort definitely doesn’t cater to this sort of family- there was no teens club as advertised and we were told there was no demand but we chatted to other families with the same issue with teens with nothing much to do. Our 10 yr old valiantly kept going to kids club but got quite bored of being with babies or the activities for smaller kids.

There are adult areas but you can’t use them even if you have older kids that don’t have melt downs, scream and smear food. If you do ask to be seated away from little kids you are put in a dark corner inside.

It is the shear number of 0-4yr olds that was the problem. Every meal you will be surrounded by them on all sides in a cacophony of wails and tantrums- breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every time you go to the loo you will find a mother with the door open and a squatting child but our favorite memory was the porta potty that was used on the beach and then emptied directly into the sea!

It is daycare and we all have daycare viral infections as a parting reminder of the moist coughs that surrounded us.

Our room was fine. Smoking is allowed on balconies which means it wafts into your room if you leave the door open. I am not sure that I would call it a sea view which we booked. It looked straight over the pool and if you looked to the right you can see some sea.

The food is good but definitely not gourmet. The wine is generally 15Euro a bottle stuff- quite missable. The restaurant over booking thing is definitely an issue. We didn’t really care, as I think most of the food prep happens in a central kitchen, so it tastes almost the same wherever you eat!

There are cats, everywhere, including in the restaurants grazing on food that falls on the floor from the hundreds of small children. It’s quite a weird symbiotic scene!

As others have pointed out, our room was not ready when we arrived and we were sent for lunch and then sat in the lobby again waiting till 4pm- we did not want lunch and just wanted our room.

When asked for feedback, we raised these issues to management, instead of acceptance I felt that response was defensive and an attempt to tell us our observations were wrong - that our room was not late, that we had enjoyed a late lunch and got to our room late because of that, that there were not a million toddlers and kids club was fine etc etc just annoying. We deal with BS in real life and just do not want to deal with more of it, on holiday.

The rest of the service staff are amazing. It is obvious they have been militarily trained to a strict protocol. They are really really really good. Your room will be kept spotless by house keeping who were charming. We went to loads of exercise classes and the instructors Amelia and George were lovely and saved it for us! We also added on swimming lessons for stroke correction and Mariana the teacher is excellent. We sent the kids waterskiing which was ok but really very expensive 160 Euro for 40 minutes. The garden is beautiful with mature olive trees and the grounds are immaculately maintained.

They dish out 300ml boxes of water. It is an environmental disaster and undermines the green credentials that they claim.

We would not come back and we wish the resort had provided more upfront transparency on the demographic they cater too. We have been to luxury resorts before, we are happy to pay for that. But I don't really think Ikos Olivia is that. It is more a higher end package holiday resort, all inclusive, mass catering to families with little kids 0-4yrs, carried by lovely grounds and excellent...