Matilda — Hotel in Zakynthos Municipality

Just my fair review on this hotel ... First of all the hotel is placed on a hill with great view to the sea, but without a rented car you cannot go to any beach (the near by one is at 500m by foot but you cannot call it a beach as there are only stones and garbage there). The closest "to-see" beach is at Porto Zorro and to go there one should go on the main highway where you need to be aware of the cars passing by you.

Regarding the accommodation:

1. the room with sea view is ok but it needs to be upgraded in the future. The bath is so small that the door is fully opened in the closet. The bed is ok, the pillows the same.
2. the pool is nice (from 1.5m to 2.5m), with nice sunbeds
3. the garden is nice and they take good care of it. You can even have a nice place for the children to play (but only during evening as in plain sun it is too hot)
4. I've returned to Greece for the great food and unfortunately I did not find it at this hotel: the food was served by the staff. You have to go and refill the plate and they have to ask how much food you want. This was a little distrubing for us. I mean I understand that they want to have zero food waste (and this was achieved during dinner), but in vacation I want to be relaxed... breakfast was almost the same every day and we had to make a plan on what to eat as not all the food was appealing (e.g. each day they served boiled eggs and omelette... And no fried eggs - which is most common in each hotel.. + the bacon and the sausages were poor in quality ). The only fruits available were watermelon and melon and that's it. Anyway I should mention that the staff was nice during breakfast. dinner... Here is the part where I was truly disappointed. 2-3 nights in a row they only served 3 kind of meat (pork and chicken and beef), potatoes and beans at main course..and some salads. Maybe this was because there were few tourist in hotel and they did not want to make waste. In other nights when more people joined they added 2 extra courses. The bad part is the dinner started at 19:30 and at 20:10 some courses were finished and they did not make any refill. You had to take what was left. There was only 1 type of cake every night at dinner. The bad part is the the staff who served the food was so tired and they almost rush you . I don't blame them since 2 of the ladies were doing also housekeeping during the day (but this is the problem of the hotel). Fish was available only in 1 day...and this was disappointing to see ...at least on an island with tradition in cooking fish.

I've read other comments and people were satisfied by the given food...but compared to previous experiences in Greece this was by far the worst culinary experience for us.

Overall I would rate good the hotel for the view and some of the stuff and accomodations, but for other (rooms and breakfast+ lunch) there is plenty of...

Sadly my experience with this hotel wasn't the best. I don't know what were the conditions to give this hotel 4 stars, when 2 stars would be the right fit. The room is ok, but the mattress of the bed is so hard, it feels like sleeping on a rock. They put some kind of blanket under the sheets, but is still the worse mattress I ever slept on. The bathroom is looking very old and when you are taking a shower, the water leaks everywhere and stays on the bathroom floor, because the drain system wasn't working too good. They didn't change the sheets in all 7 nights that we spent there and we had to insist for a change of towels which happened only once during our stay. We had to ask for toilet paper also. They don't have a vacuum cleaner, they only mop the floors. It all feels like they want to use the least they can, to make the tourists "comfortable". The food is very low quality, we had breakfast and dinner. The choices for dinner were very strange and they didn't felt like a dinner, more like a lunch. There were no tags to tell you what you were eating. No ingredients, no name of the meal, nothing. Also they don't separate the meat from the vegetables. It's like a stew of everything, the mini cakes were frozen and some nights we couldn't eat them. The dinner is served between 7.30 and 9.30. When we arrived at dinner after 8.30 pm, they didn't replace the food that was finished and when we asked for the food that was finished, they told us there are too many people and to choose something else. I guess the greek hospitality is almost lost at this hotel. The manager of the hotel was very rude and ruined our dinner one night, when all the guests were eating, he decided to make an announcement and starting yelling at us to stop bringing wine at the table and to stop taking sandwiches at breakfast. I know these are the hotel rules because they make sure to write them everywhere, but that is not a way to tell the tourists. Yelling and ruining everyone's dinner. If he saw some of the tourits do that, he should tell them kindly, not yelling to ruin our night. Also one morning at 7 am we woke up in very loud noise, because they were cleaning the room from above and they were moving the beds and throwing stuff all around, we had to wake up and tell them the noise was too loud. It's a pity because if you want a quiet place to stay, the hotel is situated in a nice place with a view that has the mountains and the sea, but be careful if you don't have a car or rent one, the picture with the beach, that is in the hotel gallery, is not close, it's a 20 minutes walk on the main road, where there is no sidewalk. You have to walk to the beach and be very careful...

The hotel is located on a hill, the beach is 1.2km away, you need to rent a car to be able to move on the island. Breakfast is ok, dinner is awful: even though there are several types of food (2 type of meat, 3/4 type of cooked vegetables), it is very bad, no greek cuisine at all, food with no taste. The dinner is a sort of buffet because the salad, the fruits (only watermelon) and the sweets ( 2/3 types of cookies similar cookies all the time) you cannot serve yourself but ask for the lady to give you in the plate. Everyday dinner food is almost the same, nothing to do with greek cuisine, no variety or taste and we stay there for One week. They have some unfriendly rules: the pool is opened until on 19.00, you are not allowed to take breakfast outside or go with the coffee on the terrace by the pool otherwise you should order by the bar from the pool, the prices from the bar and the restaurant are High and very High compared with the ones from Argassi or even Banana Beach. If you Need ice or plastic glasses to consume drinks from outside they tell you that they don't have even if you want to pay for it. The cleaning in the room is not made every day on all the rooms: in our rooms the lady was Daily but in the room of our Friends the cleaning was done only when we notify the reception hotel and then they argue with us that it is not true. The staff from the bar is haotic, slow and they are making mistakes with the orders even though there are few people who make consumption from there. If you are in the yard of the hotel or by the pool and you leave the Key in the room for some minutes to charge the phone or to cool the room because outside are 40degrees they take the key front your room and keep it on the reception until you ask for it. It is frustrating that they are friendly at all and they don't know how to appreciate tourists or take advantage by the position because the area is very nice but the management is a disaster. Another minus is the english: please don't count on the staff that they understand english because you will be very dissapointed; they don't understand, they ignore you or they argue with you. For the pool I will suggest to make some hours nice for tourists: open from 9-13 and then from 17-21.30. After 13 it is to hot to stay in the sun by the pool so it is anyhow unusable during that hours. For all the service and staff behaviour I will rate 1 star. The hotel is not a 4* hotel, but 3* or 2...