Marelen Hotel Zakynthos — Hotel in Zakynthos Municipality

We had a lovely vacation here. We stayed for a week and everything was excellent. We arrived 6 hours before the check in time, but we were able to eat breakfast, leave our luggage in a luggage room, take a shower, and enjoy the pool while waiting for our room, which was ready sooner than expected anyway. We got a pretty large room, with a spacious balcony. There is some distance between the rooms and the road or other hotels, so you rarely hear any noise.

However, Kalamaki is really close to the airport. Fortunately, the flights are quite rare so we actually enjoyed seeing the planes land and take off.

The hotel is really close to the beach.

We've taken breakfast here every day, and it is an open buffet. While the options are pretty much the same every day, there's a large number of things to try, with a healthy amount of variety so one can probably mix and match a different breakfast each day. Lunch is not served, but you can grab something to eat at the pool bar. The food here is ok, but better than most pool bars I've eaten at. Dinner is also served, but we preferred to try a different restaurant every night, so I can't say much about that. Each night has a special theme, and the restaurant seemed always full. In one of the nights we returned a bit early from our walks. It was Greek night, and while dinner was no longer served, the hotel staff was dancing and teaching people how to dance. We were invited to join the fun. There's also a pool bar where we've enjoyed some really good cocktails.

Bare in mind that this is a family-friendly hotel. As such, kids will be present. Fortunately, one of the pools is only for adults, in a nice quite place, so you can escape the agitation of the kids-friendly pool quite easy. The rooms are not perfectly sound proof, and one night we heard one kid cry for a few minutes. This hasn't impacted our stay in any way, but I feel like it is worth mentioning.

All pools close in the evening, but we enjoyed reading a book by the empty pool while drinking a cocktail.

While this isn't exactly under the hotel's control, they partner with Abba Tours Zante for tours, which is incompetent at best, or malicious at worst. If you want to book a tour with the hotel do some research on this tour...

The property itself is ok. Although, I would never stay here again. And here are the reasons why: We had a 1 bedroom suite. The one bedroom had air conditioning that worked however the main area where the other 2 beds were had no air conditioning. We asked several times to get it fixed or to move us and we were told that they will fix it. Unfortunately they never fixed it! The maintenance guy came and said it will get cold soon and it never did. It just blew warm air. We went to the front desk again and was promised it would be fixed and Never was fixed. The hotel fully understood what we were saying since my husband is 100% Greek and speaks Greek and told them in Greek the air conditioning was not working. This hotel definitely has water issues. The water was just HOT we had to flush the toilet or Hope others flushed toilet to get some cooler water. They provide pool towels BUT you can only exchange your towels for clean towels every 2 days and you can only exchange at the pool bar which only opens at 11am! Yes this property has multiple pools. I kids water park/ pool. However, the Main pool itself was not made for shorter people. The stairs led down to the pool, but as soon as you got off the stairs 3 steps later you are in 5ft plus feet of water, so all adults and kids hung out by the stairs because no one can reach the floor of the pool that was under 5.5 ft tall. I’m not sure how you could build a large pool without any shallow ends!! The adult pool is really not a pool as it’s more of a hot tub style pool without the hot tub. There is also no sleeping in at this resort the cleaning crew comes to your door by 9:30-10am to come clean your room! So if your jet lagged and want to sleep in...

We stayed here in August for 10 nights. We were B&B. Had a fantastic holiday! Here are the pros & cons:||Pros: ||✅️Spotlessly Clean|✅️ Aircon |✅️Fresh towels daily|✅️Pool towels provided which can be changed every 2 days|✅️Comfortable beds|✅️Quiet at night |✅️Beautiful food |✅️Adult pool|✅️Kids splash park |✅️Main pool|✅️Beach chairs around the pool if you don't or can't get a sunbed |✅️Friendly & attentive staff |✅️ Can see aeroplanes come and go throughout the day|✅️ A friendy white cat accompanies you throughout the day (not guaranteed)|✅️Close to the beach||Cons:||❎️ The room we stayed in as a family of 3 was far too small. The bathroom door opened up right onto the the toilet. So the glass door wound bang on the toilet. Could have only 1 person at a time in there.|❎️Water from the shower would come up the drain next to the toilet, causing a flood on the floor.|❎️Noise off the aircraft could be an issue for some people. Didn't bother us.|❎️With a 5 year old who struggledto walk in the heat, we found this hotel too far from the strip. |❎️The snack bar near the kids splash pool was never open, this would have been handy.||Overall we loved our stay! ||Would we stay here again? No. |Reasons for this is that we like to eat at the bars and restaurants on the strip. See the different entertainment. We felt like this hotel was too far out for us personally. However we would totally recommend it, it's a stunning...