Labranda Marine Aquapark Resort

We had a great week here may half term. We didn't know what to expect as it's just been taken over. The rooms were spacious and cleaned every day. There are 3 pools one is adults only but the wave pool and children's pool with slides was great fun. We always managed to get a sunbed any time of day. The food was nice, not always hot. Pizzas were great, freshly made and very popular so there always seemed to be a queue for those. Food hall got very busy at peak times. Would be good to have an over flow restaurant or keep snack bar open all day. There was a ice cream shop which done waffles and crepes but not included in the all inclusive, only a small charge though and we were happy to pay. Standard all inclusive drinks, served in plastic cups at the pool bar but inside bar they use glasses. There is also an additional cocktail menu for the indoor bar which were very nice but an additional €4 each. Entertainment do a great great job. There is a bus stop just outside the hotel on the main road which takes you to Kos town. Only €2 each, children free. There is also a taxi service from the hotel which takes you to Kos town or tigaki for €15. The only negatives for us is the all inclusive are only served until 11pm so nowhere to get a drink after. Drinks machines at pool bar often empty so need to be replenished more often. I also feel the lifeguards need to be in uniform so everyone knows who the life guards are. One was wearing all black one day so wouldn't have known until he blow his whistle. Overall a great holiday, would return.

We have recently returned from a fantastic 10 day stay at this hotel! Please do not be put off by the bad reviews! I was nervous about the holiday due to the negative reviews so wanted to write a review to put people’s mind to rest. The hotel is impeccably clean with our room being cleaned every day for the 10 days that we stayed. I even think the facilities look better in person than online! We stayed half term week into the following week and although there were slight queues for dinner, we never queued longer than 10 minutes and once in the restaurant there was plenty of food choices that were continuously being replenished. The snack bar had beautiful pizzas that were freshly made! The facilities are perfect for children and I cannot count how many times my 5 year old went on the slides. There are two organised football games a day along with two dart tournaments that include adults and children and the entertainment staff are extremely friendly! We didn’t use the kids club however I seen plenty of children happily leaving with arts and crafts. The park area is new and they seem to be adding more facilities to it. The kids disco every night was full of energy and all the children absolutely loved it including both my 1 year old and 5 year old. We didn’t watch the shows so I cannot comment on those. The beach is quite stoney however if you walk 400m along the path there is a more sandy beach which is great for swimming! With regards to sunbeds, we never went down before 8.30am but ALWAYS managed to find space! There is little around the hotel however car hire is pretty cheap so I would definite recommend doing this to explore the beautiful island. Honestly, I would consider us quite ‘picky’ travellers and we had a great time and couldn’t fault the hotel!

Where to begin? We arrived during lunch around 1400 and the reception team were happy to give us our wrist bands so we could go and get some food before we officially checked in. Some of our family were a bit fussy and didn’t like many of the options in the restaurant. So we headed back, got ourselves checked in, and headed to the pool snack bar for some pizza and chips. (The freshly cooked pizzas are 10/10 and not to be missed) We had a double family room as our children are older. Rooms are clean and comfortable with A/C that works wonders (if you fiddle and get the settings right) the TVs have a lot of Greek and German channels, you can find some English ones but you may need to search a little. If you have an android phone you can stream to the TVs sorry Apple users not compatible :( The all inclusive measures at the bars are just what you expect from an all inclusive holiday, weaker alcohol by volume but they make up by pouring half a glass of alcohol before the mixer! Over 13 cocktails to choose from and loads of alcohol free ones for the children. A lovely local Greek beer which I must say was very nice and refreshing! The bar staff were extremely attentive, despite having over 1000 guests they would remember your drink choice and made good conversation as they were serving. The Albanian guys in the evening were hilarious and really made my holiday!! The entertainment group were great too, outsourced to a franchise company but with several different activities throughout the day! Yoga, volleyball, aqua gym/Zoomba, kids club, table tennis & darts (I am tempted to send the hotel a proper dart board as theirs was a fully wooden) but it was still a great laugh!! The evening entertainment always started with the children’s disco where Shannon & Betti stole the stage followed by the adult bits, our first night was a Tuesday and this was who wants to be a millionaire great fun and loads of guests got to have a go! We also had a karaoke night which saw many guests getting up and singing a variety of songs. One of the highlights was the Friday evening when the entertainment manager and his crew did a Michael Jackson tribute night with some fantastic dancing(not to be missed) Sunday is the entertainers night off but they get different acts in, we were lucky enough to see some acerbates and fire dancing!! Despite other reviews the pools and slides are great fun for all ages! Our older children loved the bigger slides as did I! The smaller ones are good for the younger children too. If you forget to bring your limo/ floats the onsite shop sells these at an extremely fair price!

This Holliday was booked as a late, relatively low cost holiday to supplement our main family holiday booked for later in the year, so going into this holiday I already had reasonable expectations - i.e not expecting the world. However, I would say that coming away from the holiday I was disappointed overall with the experience and would not come back again. Cleanliness - The hotel is fairly clean, however I would say that it can do better. The general area is well kept and maintained well enough, but they miss the smaller details. For example coming down in the morning to reserve a sun bed has all of the beds reset into their positions but they are not cleaned down and the side tables still have the stains from spilt drinks from the day before. Considering the pool closes at 18:00 and I didn't reserve the loungers until 06:00 the following day, that 12-hour window for cleaning seems to have been misused. The steps to the hotel room has a couple of disused plastic cups sat on them, and they have been there for four days and counting, meaning that the room cleaners have walked passed these cups four times and left them alone. On the first day the pool was very clean, but after several days of use there was an obvious amount of stuff (old plasters, sand, debris, lots of dead bugs sat on the bottom and I didn't see any member of staff cleaning the pool for the duration of the holiday (save for the time a lifeguard had to fish out a human turd with a net). The room cleaners do a great job of cleaning the rooms down and resetting every day, and the restaurant staff are really quick to clean and reset tables meaning there was never a wait for space to sit in the restaurant. There is a staff member in the reception bar who collects old glasses and cleans tables (glasses are only allowed in the reception bar), but at the pool bar (where the evening 'entertainment' is) you are only allowed plastic cups and I saw no staff member taking away old cups and cleaning tables, so we had to clean down our own tables and deposit other peoples waste in the bins ourselves. Rooms - The rooms are spacious and from what I can see all include two separate areas - one bedroom area and one lounge/spare bed leading to the bathroom. The bathrooms are clean and modern however as with all Labranda (or ex Labranda) hotels I have seen they are looking a bit tired. We had a cable tie tightened around the pipework of our rainfall shower to stop the whole thing sliding down in its holders. The beds are comfortable enough, but I would say are below the quality of a Premier Inn. It's not a double bed, despite what you order, it's just two single beds pushed together, so the middle is uncomfortable to sleep on. We paid for the slightly better room with a partial sea view, but all of the rooms are side on to the sea, so I believe all of the rooms only have a partial sea view. I wouldn't waste the money and pay extra for that. When we arrived they put us in the wrong rooms so our first night was a bit all over the place. I think this was a mix up between TUI and the hotel as we paid extra for upgraded rooms - No offer of refund or reduced rate from TUI and no offer of compensation or acknowledgement from the hotel. The you enter the room and put the key card in the holder to turn power on, the TV's automatically come on swell. I've never had this in any hotel before, so if you take the key card with you every day, expect to go around and turn off the TV's at the same time. Air conditioning in each room, which works very well albeit slightly noisy - not sleep disturbing noise but you can hear it and you know it's there. Our room had obviously had the air con module replaced recently so we had large runs of white filler where the electric cables & pipework had been recessed into the walls - Quite the contrast against the pale blue paint colour (not). Its just looked unfinished and rushed. We had a top floor room so the roof was a little higher than ground floor rooms, but there is no sound deadening from the outside. Pidgeons like to walk around on the roof and coo loudly throughout the morning. This noise travels and does disturb sleep. Not the hotels fault, but worth considering. Facilities - The hotel is severely lacking in facilities. There is a very basic kids club which included s play park for very young children. There is a single volleyball court with a gravel base (not sand) so shoes are required, two small very twisted 5-a-side goals with torn and broken nets, a very expensive mini arcade with air hockey, table football and some grabber machines. The main wave pool which waves every hour for approx 10 minutes, and the water park with slides. If you have younger children, say up to 9 years old this will suffice, but for older children and teenagers this is not friendly for them at all. My youngest loved the water park, but my eldest 11 year old found herself very bored after day 5 into a 10-day holiday. The beach is very small and riddled with sea weed, so it's nice for an evening look and a photo, but I wouldn't swim in it. My kids took one look and said 'no'. If you want to head into Kos town, there is a very unreliable bus service (not the hotels fault!) or there is a 'VIP shuttle service' which takes you into town a lot quicker, but is significantly more expensive. We paid 15 Euro's for one trip, and then 30 Euro's for another trip with the same company. The first trip we had a Mercedes minibus all to ourselves, and the second trip we had to share with several other families. I think they make up the pricing as they go along, but as you'll hear a lot when you come here and question things which aren't quite right...."This is Greece!". There is a shop on site which sells all the basics you need - some of the things we bought while here: 1. Sweets, crisps, chocolates 2. Swim shoes 3. Superglue 4. Shot glass 5. Toothbrush So you can see It has all the basics you need if you don't want to go into Kos. Coming out of the hotel and heading left there is a bigger shop about a 10 minute walk away with a bar. Downstairs next to the shop is the Hamam Spa. We opted for the treatment in their Kos Spa and they offer free transport to and from the Spa. Well worth a look in my opinion. Entertainment - Repetitive. Very, very repetitive. The kids disco is exactly the same every single night. There is only one stage at the pool bar and it is very small. The entertainment staff are clearly doing the best they can with the limited space and budget they have, but quite frankly it's not good enough. The music system is always set to maximum volume too, and the entertainment goes on til 23:00. My youngest had to wear ear plugs just to sleep and she could still hear the music. There is some activities to do during he day at the wave pool (aqua aerobics, aqua dancing etc), which is good. The entertainment staff come round every day and speak to the customers at the pool which is a nice touch, but I wish there were more options for the kids. There is almost nothing for children above 8-9 years old. Staff - Very friendly in general. The male staff at the pool bar are really fun and engaging, cracking jokes with you etc, and everyone is very polite. The staff will always try to help if they can considering the language barriers. I will say very clearly here that if it wasn't for the lovely bar lady at the reception bar (who makes a much, much better cocktail than the pool bar lot) and if it wasn't for Connie at guest relations, this review would put the hotel at a firm 2 out of 5. Food - Bland, flavourless and limited in selection. This was by far the biggest complaint from my children who really struggled to find something to eat. The kids menu was always only three options, with one option always being chips. The deserts look amazing, but I can't understand how a dessert which looks so good can taste like nothing. There has been n themed food nights so far, so it's generally always the same offerings. The restaurant is very spacious for seating, but the food area is quite small so they are frequently running out of food which means you have to queue and wait. The chef's and cooks are whizzing about all the time replacing empty food trays, so the wait is not like 10-15 minutes etc, but there is still a wait. There is an a la carte restaurant upstairs which you have to book to get into, and a bar next to it but this isn't manned and you can't get drinks there. This in my opinion is a wasted opportunity because the space is massive and the view is the best at the hotel - you just can't really use it. Local area - Greece. What can I say. Everything is expensive. The local town of Kos is nice with a lot of shops selling handbags, clothing etc but they are very expensive. I had to buy three swimming tops as my children were starting to burn in the sun and I had to pay 30 Euro's each. The eating and drinking in Kos is top notch, and there are boat trips available at the harbour. Old Town is a nice walk through, but it's really small and you can do the whole town in a day. The bus stop is a 5-minute walk up the driveway and to the right at the junction (its a green pole on the side of the road) and the busses are supposed to come quite regularly. We got the bus back twice and both times it was free (the bus drive also announces the hotel drop off via a microphone so you can't miss your stop), but the buses are unreliable and sometimes just don't come at all. When you consider its a hour between busses, the wait in the hat can be a it much. Conclusions - All in, My wife and I booked this holiday cheaper as an additional holiday to our main holiday later in the year. June is the very start of the season, so the hotel are probably still ironing out some of the kinks from the Labranda takeover which should be considered before making a decision however, you can only make a first impression once and this first impression was not great. I have enjoyed my time here because I'm not at work in the UK, but I could have enjoyed it a lot more. The hotel just doesn't have the finesse of its counterparts in other countries. I should caveat that I have been to Greece before (Rhodes, Faliraki) and I was left with a similar feeling about that holiday. Maybe it's just something about the way of life and mentality in Greece which I don't get on with? Alternatively, I have been to Turkey many times and it is now firmly cemented as my preferred destination. The worst bit about this holiday is that you can see Turkey from the hotel. Every day, Turkey is just sitting there, staring at you, and it is so much better in every possible way than Greece. I will not be coming back to Greece again, but if I was I would not be coming back to this hotel. And if you managed to make it to the end of this review then I would suggest you look for a comparable cost holiday in Turkey (Oludeniz, Fethiye, Sarigerme, Marmaris etc) because for the same price you will get a whole lot more.

The holiday overall was amazing, but this was mainly due to the lovely island and its people. The hotel has much more room for improvement though. Good points Room cleaned every day to a decent standard Pool good fun with the slides Staff worked hard with the resources that they had on hand Selection of food was good Not so good points Food sometimes cold, with the exception of the fresh pizzas which were great. The whole dining experience was a let down due to it being overcrowded. Pool slides were closed early on an occasion, lifeguard seemed to want to finish early. Drinks machines often empty Pool closed once some rain appeared The owner seemed to be unhappy with her staff at one stage on reception and they looked like they were getting a bit of telling off, surely you could have done this in private, it was a bit uncomfortable seeing this. Some of the negatives in isolation didn’t really matter, but it was more of an accumulation of things that gave it a 3 star review. This is no reflection of the staff and their efforts though. I think the hotel will improve as it has just opened, I would happily visit again with this in mind. Thank you