Kairaba Sandy Villas

First time staying at this hotel, absolutely lovely, would definitely come again, stayed in the villas absolutely beautiful, just sat in the gyros restaurant and nadia was really kind and helpful

Booked the sandy villas as adult only 5 star, by the time I got there it was not an adults only and was not a 5 star experience . The room was 5 star but the food and drink were awful and meals were taken in the sister hotel the Sandy Beach which was lucky to be 3 star where it was pandemonium in the restaurant with kids running everywhere. I see you can no longer book the sandy villas it now comes under the sandy beach

We have just returned from a week at the Sandy Villas resort and to say we are disappointed is an understatement.  This season, it transpires that Sandy Villas is no longer operating as a standalone business and has been subsumed under the lower quality Sandy Beach umbrella.  Unfortunately, this simple fact is not mentioned on their website, which still shows the beautiful reception of the old Villa complex – now mothballed and inaccessible to guests.    We are a family of 6 (3 teenagers (14, 16 & 18), 1 x 6 year old, 2 adults) and stayed in the Villa part of the resort, paying just over £13,000 for a week including Ryanair flights from East Midlands to Corfu.  We had a double bungalow which came with a private pool.  The Villa itself was lovely (more on that later) but this resort is massively let down by its food offer and its bargain basement all inclusive ‘concept’.  Not a single British family we spoke to were happy with the food or drink and that really does speak volumes and is something that the resort either needs to rectify or lower their prices accordingly.   Most frustratingly, we had been sold a 5 star holiday at a 5 star price only to be met with a printed piece of A4 paper displayed at reception outlining their tourist tax policy but stating at the end, almost as an afterthought that ‘although Sandy Beach is graded as 5 star by the Greek Tourist board, it operates commercially as a 4 star.  Pardon, What?!?  Where is this information on their glamorous website making multiple references to their 5 star offer?!?.   That’s right, there is no mention of it at all when you book.  How convenient!   Before choosing Sandy Villas and having previously stayed in other ‘buffet style all inclusives’, we had asked our Travel Agent to find a resort that also offered a la carte options and had been sold on Sandy Villas after being told that the food was ‘amazing’.  This was seemingly endorsed by a classy website stating that the resort boasts “outstanding dining options’ and that “Sandy Villas offers classic yet relaxed dining spaces serving guests an array of cuisines. From specially curated buffets in Elia restaurant to à la carte options of IL Gusto, Mare Restaurant and Ermis Gyros, we hope you enjoy a culinary journey in our beautiful family resort”   What they don’t tell you when you book is you can only eat in the a la carte restaurants TWICE during a 7 day stay and they are certainly not outstanding. They do not guarantee availability either and some guests weren’t able to secure any tables at all during their stay.  We weren’t able to choose which restaurants we wanted to eat in, or the day/ time and were simply allocated two slots by Guest Services after I went to complain on the first day.  At the Speciality Restaurants you have to book and preorder your desired choice of food in the morning between 10am and 12pm,  which involves queuing up at the rear of the buffet restaurant.  Tough luck if you happen to be out on a day trip as you miss the slot which unfortunately happened to us and there is no obvious way around this.    The Italian restaurant “Il Gusto” included such gastronomic delights as ‘cheese and tomato pizza’ and tomato pasta whereas the Gyros restaurant served up Gyros and kebabs that were available on the main drag outside the resort for about 5 euros. Originally, we had wanted to eat at the Mediterranean (Mare) restaurant but were told it was fully booked and even closed on one of the evenings .   This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the menu was yet again wholly unexciting:  some salad options including the omnipresent ‘Greek Salad’ or the more exotic sounding ‘Corfu Salad’ (green leaves, apple, cheese, tomatoes, walnuts & mustard).  Main courses included such highlights as vegetable ratatouille , veal in tomato sauce, chicken with red pepper puree, grilled fish fillet and grilled vegetables (how exciting!) with either Greek Yoghurt, Chocolate Souffle or Ice Cream to finish.    It is an absolute joke to call the main buffet restaurant “Elia’ relaxed.  This place is an assault on every sense imaginable.  From the strange off-putting smell when you enter to the noise of crockery and cutlery being constantly cleared off tables by staff in long black rubber gloves who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making as much noise as possible whilst performing their job, you couldn’t hear yourself think let alone hold a conversation with those around the table.  Added to that the sheer scale and heat of the room, the half-eaten sampled food left on the serving counters and the decimated serving plates of food towards the end of service, altogether made mealtimes a most unpleasant experience.  So much so that after the first night we decided to eat outside the resort for the remaining six days, unfortunately at our own expense.   Other reviews have described this part of the resort as being like the Greek version of Butlins’ and I wouldn’t disagree with this statement.   When I raised how terrible the main restaurant was with guest services on the first morning of our stay, their convenient solution was for us all to ‘call in on the way back from the beach as soon as it opens at 630pm, then the food and room will be at its best, with less people’.    They seemed to miss the point entirely that when you have paid £13,000 for a 5 star experience, food is a key element of the overall experience and as such, we don’t want to be ‘calling in’ to refuel covered in sand, hot, sweaty and bothered and still in our beach wear.  We want to go out to dinner having showered, put on some appropriate clothing and be able to sit down and talk whilst food is brought to us so we are not constantly getting up and down individually to help ourselves which kills any sort of conversation around the table.    The daytime snack options were pitiful (American style pizza – think thick, tasteless, ultra processed bread with smearing of tomato sauce, chips and hot dogs) and these were only served at the main pool area involving a reasonable walk from the villas.  My 16-year-old son picked up a couple of slices of pizza , took one bite and it went straight in the bin, never to return.  At the Villa Pool where we spent most of the time, the food options were just fruit, chocolate cake and cheese and ham wraps.  The Adults only pool bar and café fared slightly better – the club sandwich and chicken Caesar salad were acceptable, but unadventurous.    As my children said ‘ In Greece the national food is Gyros’ so why on earth can’t they serve Gyros at lunch.. these cost around 4 and 5 euros from the takeaways on the main street.  Gyros are cheap, easy and delicious, and it wouldn’t be difficult to offer this instead of pizza and hotdogs.  But I guess the reason they don’t is because then it would scupper one of their evening ‘Speciality’ restaurant options.   Ice cream was also not included in the All-Inclusive Concept, so if children wanted ice creams outside of meal times or anything other than the basic vanilla, strawberry or chocolate options offered in the buffet, this incurred a supplemental charge.  Once again, we have never been to an AI resort where this is the case.  Last year in Mallorca, children could help themselves to ice cream and have free milkshakes throughout the day and at dinner there were several bottles of wine you could pick from which were all good quality and above all, pleasant.    Now onto the drinks…. An ‘All Inclusive Resort’ should not have a menu of supplemental options longer than those included in the AI package.  Neither should it have an inflexible token system which involves having to remember to bring the single token given to you at check- in or return a used plastic cup in exchange for a drink.  If you were down at the beach and had forgotten the blasted token, you would need to walk 30 minutes to the villa and back in order to get a drink!   As I said to guest services, when you book an ‘All Inclusive’, the clue is in the name; everything is included.  I had asked our Travel Agent to check out what was included before travelling as I had read a review on Trip Advisor a few days before traveling stating that classic holiday cocktails such as pina colada, mojitos and daiquiris’ required supplements for AI guests.  I asked her to verify this and was sent a pdf outlining their ‘AI concept’, I suppose I should have been warned what to expect at that point, but how AI is anything other than that is beyond me.  The pdf states that house cocktails are included but ‘classic’ cocktails are not yet does not give any indication of which are which! So, I asked our Travel Agent to verify this with the resort and eventually was assured that I can ‘definitely have a Pina Colada!’   On arrival at the bar however, I found that the only ‘house cocktails were Blue Lagoon (vile – like mouthwash mixed with lemonade, although my older kids seemed to enjoy the occasional one), Gin Fizz, Cuba Libre, Tequila Sunrise, Ionian Sea, Aculpulco, Planters Punch, Negronito). Even Aperol Spritz was considered a ‘Classic” and involved a supplement of 8.5 euros for a plastic 200ml glass!  All other cocktails required a supplement of 7.5 euros for AI guests and were limited in size to the 200ml ish glass.   All gins were listed as premium brands so you couldn’t even have a gin and tonic without paying extra either, although on the penultimate day of the holiday one family I was talking to told me that you could get a free GnT if you asked for local gin.  This was not mentioned on the menu and I believe it was therefore intentionally not advertised to guests.    Other than those cocktails, only local beer and local (red, white, rose and sparkling) wine were available on the AI and the wine is among some of the worst I have ever tasted.  The red wine was light in colour (see picture), lacking in any sort of definable taste and the beer appeared to have been watered down, since it lost both its fizz and head quickly after pouring.  Glasses in the Buffet restaurant were constantly hot so drinks just ended up warm.  On the first evening there seemed to be a problem with the coke dispensed in the main restaurant and it came out like light brown fizzy water (see picture).  Clearly undrinkable.  No fresh fruit Juices available at Breakfast or at any of the bars (there was a 3 euro surcharge for this privilege) and if you wanted proper bean to cup coffee you had to go to the Gelateria where once again, it could be purchased for an extra price. For 13K I can’t even get an orange juice or decent cup of coffee!!! When I complained on the second day to Guest Services that we had been assured that Pina Coladas were part of the All-Inclusive, they reluctantly gave me 12 free Pina Colada vouchers, one per remaining day per adult.  I had to point out that we had paid for 3 adults as the eldest child is now 18, and so they begrudgingly handed over another 6.  We found that some vouchers could only be used at certain bars, some seemed to be valid for a mojito or sex on the beach as well, but we couldn’t use them on any other drinks, despite them all being the same price (excluding the Aperol Spritz).  Quite unbelievable really when you have paid £13k for a week.    When I pointed out that I was giving them the opportunity to rectify the situation whilst we were still there rather than just coming home and leaving a bad Trip Advisor review , they simply didn’t care, telling me that was my prerogative!!      Now onto the villa itself.  This was spacious, clean and well serviced by a team of housekeeping staff who were very accommodating.  Infuriatingly there was no hot water on the day of arrival and this was only fixed on the second day so we all had cold showers that evening. For the rest of the week the water was lukewarm at best.  Unfortunately, despite the patio doors all having blackout curtains, the second bedroom of each villa had an uncovered window letting light stream in early morning, so the children sleeping in that room were woken up early which also meant we were up woken up earlier than we wanted to be too.   One single bottle of red wine was left as a welcome gift between 3 adults across 2 villas.  You would have thought they could at least have stretched to two considering there was an adult in the second interconnecting bungalow…  However, like the wine at the bars, it was quite unpleasant and on the day of departure there was still half a bottle left!   There was no iron in the room but I was told that I could use the laundry service (for an extra fee).  Generally, those staying in 5 star hotels want to look presentable and being able to iron clothes after they have been squashed up in a suitcase is a pretty basic requirement.   Eventually after I had spent the morning complaining, an iron along with a board were delivered to the villa but I was told to keep it quiet?!?   The air conditioning in the main bedroom of one villa made an irritating tapping noise each time the vent moved downwards.  This seemed to be a setting that we couldn’t figure out as the vent on the other AC units was in a fixed position. Not a problem for me as I sleep with ear plugs but it disturbed my husband periodically overnight.  Ironically it seemed to resolve itself sometime during  the last night!! There was also periodically a smell of drains emanating from the sinks and toilets, which intensified after the room had been closed up during the day whilst we were out.  Not the best of welcomes back to the room!    Having a private pool was lovely, but as one pool is shared between two villas, if you didn’t have both villas (like we did), it would be a bit bizarre sharing a small, intimate space with another family you didn’t know.  The pool was spotlessly clean and constantly filtered so there were hardly any bugs or leaves in it.    Other than our own pool, we used the Pool at the Villas most afternoons.  This was quiet, no problems finding loungers and a lovely open and relaxing space.  The staff at the Villa Pool bar were exceptional.  We gave them both tips as they were friendly, fun and seemed very welcoming to everyone.       There is quite a walk between the Villa area and the main complex (5-6 minutes to reception), 10 minutes to the main buffet restaurant and 12 minutes or so to the beachfront at a reasonable walking pace.  The solution to this if you are tired of walking in the heat or simply don’t want to is to order a golf buggy from guest services but on quite a few evenings we found that they just didn’t arrive.  Once you managed to get one however, the drivers were all lovely and great fun.  My kids enjoyed hailing the buggies like taxis if we were out and about on the complex and if the driver couldn’t take you straightaway they would come straight back for you.    So all in all if you are looking for and paying for a 5 star experience, I’m sorry to say that this isn’t it!  I would consider it 4 star at most but the food is not even that.

We stayed in a private Sandy Villa with its own pool and it was amazing – our son even learned to swim within hours, and swimming at night was magical for the kids. The villa itself was spotless, spacious, and the housekeeping and buggy drivers were brilliant. Can’t say the same about the reception staff - very rude. Sadly, the rest of the resort didn’t live up to the same standard. Part of our villa smelled awful with a sewage type smell and took four days to “fix”, though the problem never fully went away. Food in the main restaurant was average at best and the whole dining experience was stressful with sensory overload, while the drinks were terrible – no branded soft drinks, which feels like such an easy fix. Dining, pools (less Sandy Villas’s pool), and the beach were all over crowded with too many guests for the amount of facilities. Good luck trying to get into one of the a la carte restaurants! The Sandy Villas are 5-star quality, but being tied to the sister hotel drags the whole experience down. If food and drinks were offered at the villa side, we’d go back in a heartbeat. Until then, it’s a holiday of two halves – 5-star villa, 3-star resort.

Food and service was lovely at gyros restaurant. Nadia and her team made our evening very special. Highly recommend you to come and visit for the food and experience.