Kresten Palace

We had a lovely week treated like royalty by Rafael he made our holidays extra special thank you Rafael and lovely place to stay clean

dissatisfied with our stay. we payed a lot of money as a young couple for a swim up room to treat ourselves. we arrived at night and for the-next day did not have a single speck of sun on our terrace. shame as wasted our first day as couldn’t sunbathe. asked to switch rooms and we were able to the next day. in the new room sun was on our terrace until about 1pm which still doesn’t give too much time to sunbathe. the sun beds on our terrace were filthy and covered in children’s crayon wax. the room itself was okay although both bedside lampshades broken, little bits around the room that needed replacing. breakfast at the hotel was very bad too, cold and covered in grease, didn’t bother with it most days. there was two wasps nests in the corridor leading to our room which we found disgusting and unacceptable. “private beach” nice to snorkle at but not to sit at, i think the sunbeds are even older than me lol, seems a shame. drinks are okay, some of the food at the pool is okay some is overpriced. most of the staff friendly accept from one women in the mini mart. mini mark overpriced. beware the taxis will take multiple different trips at once, you may be sat with strangers a lot. disappointed considering price. all of the sunbeds around the big pool are broken or broken and glued back together. lots of chips of wood from the broken sunbeds all over the floor which is definitely a hazzard. sunbeds will break when you sit on them from it have been broken before already. this is supposed to be a 4* im not so sure how. wifi and safe you need to pay for if not in a swim up deluxe. wifi runs out after a week and you cannot log back on. swim up room pools are freezing which takes away from the romantic feel you were hoping for. makes you not even want to go in the pool it is so cold.

I booked this hotel as part of a package holiday with Jet2. My first package holiday in about 10 years. But it was only about £320 each for a week Half board. I travelled with my 3 children. CHECK IN - we arrived at the hotel at around 11pm and we were second in the queue. There was one old man on reception. Who was incredibly slow. He wasn’t very friendly or welcoming. There was a long queue and even second in line, it took almost 30 minutes to get checked in. It was probably the worst check in experience I have had. We had to find our own way to the room in the dark no map, just vague directions. There was no water in our room or anything, even though it was late and there was nowhere to get any. Even just one small bottle of water would have been nice and what would be expected of a 4 star hotel. Greek tourist tax was 10 euro per room per night & 3 euro from 1st November to march. This adds a significant cost to your holiday. ROOM - we were given room 643 which was in a separate block to the main hotel. We had booked a family garden view room with Jet2. Which on the website looked like a large room with a divider down the middle for privacy. It was the only room available to book, because we booked late. The room we were given was a promotional room for a maximum of 3 people, as stated on Jet2 website! This was despite the fact there was 4 of us! 3 single beds with a put up camp bed crammed into a very small room. I felt very claustrophobic in it. We did go back to reception, but there was still a huge line of people wanting to check in, so we stayed there the first night. We barely slept, because the room was so hot with 4 of us in it. The air con was incredibly noisy and old. It randomly started rattling and banging at times, so we had to turn it off. There was also a huge gap down the side of the balcony wall, where a toddler would have quite easily been able to get through & fall off! There was only one pillow per bed and the pillows were just lumps of fluff and should have been thrown out! I complained to reception about our room the next morning and was told to come back after 11am. I was then given room 750 which was 2 bedrooms, with 2 balconies and a sea view. This was much better, but was just an inconvenience having to waste all morning sorting rooms and moving all our luggage. The room had tea/coffee and a kettle. A tv with only 2 English speaking news channels. The rest were Greek, German and French. The bathroom had a large walk in shower, but it all just seemed a bit shabby…definitely not 4 star. We only got replacement coffee twice in the whole week and never got any tea. There was a small fridge and a safe, but this needed paying for. No WiFi in the room, this cost 8 euro per device for a week. Again this is supposed to be a 4 star hotel, WiFi should be included. There was hardly any storage at all in any of the rooms we had. Some days we got 2 towels to share between 4 of us, one day no towels at all! I asked at reception and they said housekeeping would bring some. After an hour of sat in the room all sandy, I went back to reception. They were extremely rude and told me to have some patience! I think waiting an hour was fairly patient!!! After nearly 2 hours we eventually got towels! There are swim up rooms at this hotel, but the pools don’t hardly get any sun and are in the shade most of the day. Also children’ can stay in them, so it did seem noisy and not at all relaxing. POOL - the pool is lovely! It’s big, spacious and had lots of sun beds. I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough in higher season. There is a pool bar and also a take away food place. We found the food good value for money and the food was tasty. The water in the pool was ice cold, but the kids loved it. There was also a small splash pad area, with small slides and fountains. Also a small play park was near the pool area. The pool area was clean and did look like it was in a 4 star hotel. LOCATION- the location of this hotel is not the best. It isn’t really near anywhere, there was a cocktail bar and a shop at the bottom of the hill. But otherwise you need to drive or get the bus places. There is a bus stop right outside the hotel that goes to Rhodes town, faliraki and Lindos. 2.50 euro to Rhodes town and 2 euro to faliraki, each way. There is access to the sea from the hotel, down a steepish path. There are some sunbeds there on a rocky area. There’s a small pebbly beach and a rocky harbour area. There were a few tavernas in this area, but they weren’t open much at this time of year. If you use the sea here, you need water shoes, due to the rocks. FOOD - the food here is very poor and I would say 2 star quality. Every single thing is just lukewarm. There are no microwaves available to warm it up either. No live cooking or quality food that you would expect of a 4 star hotel. Very similar foods most evenings. Breakfast was also the same every morning. Not much choice at dinner, about 4 different meals and a salad area. So many kids struggled to find food to eat. They had things like mussels, white fish in sauce, beef stew, stewed chicken, etc. one night they had gyros meat and they also have feta cheese, stuffed vine leaves and tsatsiki…that’s as Greek as it gets. The restaurant was always busy even at the end of the season. Staff didn’t seem to be able to cope. We always had to wait for cutlery and one night we didn’t even get drinks, it’s not a relaxing place to eat. Every morning we had almost finished our breakfast before there were glasses or cups for us to have a drink. There is a cocktail bar in the how that looks quite modern, but it just didn’t seem inviting and the drinks were expensive. There was nowhere else to eat or drink in the hotel on an evening. I had an upset stomach after eating Luke warm rice one night, something needs to get done about the food quality and temperature. The pool snack bar food was hot, tasty, huge portions and reasonably priced. ENTERTAINMENT- at this time of year there was only one guy who tried hard to entertain guests with darts, crazy golf etc in the day. Evening in the cocktail bar was bingo, karaoke, Halloween disco etc. night time was very low key and not very interesting. But we knew this due to it being low season. OVERALL - we had a nice holiday, but if I’d have paid a lot of money I would not have been happy. I would not stay at this hotel again mainly due to the Luke warm poor quality food. I loved the sea view from our room and the pool was lovely. Late check out is 10 euro an hour after checkout time which is 11am. We needed our room until 9pm, so that would have been 100 euro for a late check out! Instead, I booked another room online for £36! So we checked out at 11am, spent the day at the pool and then checked back into another room at 3pm, so we could relax and have a shower before our late flight. Reception were not happy and tried charging me more money, saying the room was only booked for 1 person. When I showed them my booking confirmation they backed down!! They were not friendly at reception at all!! The room we got 227, was over the main entrance of the hotel. It was extremely noisy with the main road to Rhodes outside. The corridor was also loud and echoey. The shower was luke warm and didn’t work very well and the air con didn’t work at all. If you get a cheap deal this hotel is okay, but there are definitely better hotels which are actually 4 star. I would not stay here again, even if it was cheap.

We had an excellent stay at the Kresten Palace. The staff were so friendly, the room we had was a deluxe swim up pool room and this was clean, comfortable and very quiet. We went bed and breakfast and there was a huge choice of different items each morning. Food was sometime luke warm but overall very tasty. Pool facilities are brilliant and the kiosk which served the food was outstanding. Overall we really enjoyed our stay and will be back.