Delos Tours — Local services in Municipality of Mykonos

I’ll start this review by saying that you must go to Delos. It’s an amazing place with incredible history.

From what I can gather with this tour company, there are three components to their offering to visit Delos: the ferry ride, the entrance into the archaeological site, and a guided tour. The first two are straight forward and I have no issue with these, but the experience of the third was very poor.

Before we left Mykonos we were given ear pieces to be able to listen to the tour guide’s commentary more clearly. When we arrived on the island we were met by our guide who escorted us into the site to commence the tour.

It was supposed to be a tour in English, but our guide’s proficiency in the language was not good. She started speaking to us but no one in the tour could properly hear or understand what she was saying, which was compounded by the fact that she was not using the transmitting device to the ear pieces. The machine was off because I could see the screen on the device she had. Quite a few of the 20 or so people on the tour advised her that they couldn’t hear her properly, so she turned the machine on for a few seconds, announced that it was not working, then turned it off. Now I should give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that the machine was not working, but she didn’t make any real effort to get it working, and they clearly had no form of redundancy should it not be working, apart from her using her own soft voice.

The result was still the same though, we could only understand 2 to three words in 10 she was saying, which meant we could not really get a decent understanding of the history of the site. Towards the end we just gave up and read the information boards which provided significantly more information than the tour guide did. We spoke with 6 other people on the tour after it finished and everyone said that it was a very poor experience.

We raised the issue with the tour office when we returned but the lady was not really interested in our concern, suggesting that we should have turned our receiving ear piece devices on.

So my recommendation is definitely go to Delos, buy your entry to the site when you get there, but don’t take the guided tour, just pick up information sheets once you get there.

For the record should Delos tours wish to investigate the issue further, we visited on Tuesday 14 May on the 10AM ferry and were in tour group 4.

I’m a massive history nerd, so I rated this with that in mind. If you love history, especially this timeframe, you’ll have a blast. If history isn’t your thing, you’re probably not gonna have too much fun unless you like petting feral cats.

Pros: The boat ride is 20-25 mins and gives you some great views of the islands as well as the ruins on the way in. The sites are pretty impressive and some of the mosaics on truly stunning and awe inspiring. I was almost in disbelief that they were still as intact as they are, not to mention the detail. The tour guides are great and relay some awesome information with a little bit of time to explore on your own. Some views from up high looking over the island are worth the hike up the big hill.

Cons: The ticket buying process is very odd and confusing. You buy both going and returning tickets. Why? Am I just gonna buy a one way ticket and just stay on Delos forever? Is that even allowed to stay on the island after the last tour leaves? My wife and I bought tickets and they gave us 8 tickets…they only ended up taking 4. Also, you buy tickets to enter the site on the island, which seems completely unnecessary because there’s literally no other reason you’d go there. Am I going to stand on the doc after a boat ride? It simply acts as a choke point and takes more time to get to the ruins. Time that could be spent exploring and learning more. Why wouldn’t they just include it in the boat ride fee or just have one price for the whole event itself? Finally, the museum was closed, although it looks like they’re renovating it so hopefully it’ll be nicer when they do reopen it.

With all that said, I think it’s worth the trip.

If I could give zero stars, I would.

I booked tickets for two people to visit the island of Delos. At 8:56 PM, I received a booking confirmation email. Then, at 9:03 PM, I received another email informing me that the payment had failed and that I could submit a new booking request.

In the meantime, we decided not to go anymore. Since the company had stated that the payment hadn’t gone through, we didn’t make a new booking and chose a different activity.

To my surprise, I later received an invoice and noticed a charge had been made to my bank account.

I immediately sent an email on June 17th to Delos Tour customer service to notify them of this error and to request a refund confirmation. On June 18th, they responded saying that their accounting department was reviewing my case. On June 19th, they claimed that I had made multiple booking requests and that one of them had been successful. They also provided a confirmation email as proof—but as I already explained, I received a follow-up email right after saying that the payment had failed.

That same day, I replied to point out their mistake and asked them to provide evidence of the supposed multiple booking attempts. It is now June 25th, and I have received no reply, no clarification, and no refund.

I strongly advise against using their services. They are dishonest and unprofessional.