Thea Studios

I booked a 12-night stay at Thea Luxury Resort after seeing what appeared to be a heavily discounted promotional rate on Booking.com - labeled as a Genius and mobile-only offer. The booking was confirmed and non-refundable, and I planned my entire trip around it, including purchasing flights and arranging time off from work. Over a week after the booking, the property contacted me claiming there had been a “technical error” in pricing and asked me to cancel it myself. When I refused, they pushed for a significantly higher price instead. Eventually, they escalated the case to Booking.com, who unilaterally cancelled my reservation, leaving me without accommodation despite my confirmed, prepaid booking. This is not how a professional property - especially one positioning itself as a luxury resort - should treat its guests. As a frequent traveler and loyal Genius member, I’ve seen many genuine promotions and offers before. This price did not seem absurd or accidental, and I booked in good faith. No reasonable compensation or comparable alternative was offered, and now I am left dealing with much higher accommodation prices for the same dates. Would not trust this property again. A confirmed booking should mean something - not just until the property changes its mind.

The hotel is nice and clean. The sofa beds and doble beds are comfortable. Location is about 15 - 20 minutes walk to Fira town with 3 young kids. It was too hot to walk during day time so we have asked the owner to drop us off at Fira Town with a fee. We enjoyed the little walk back to the hotel with our torches at night. We stayed at the family room but the wifi wasnt working inside the room so we had to sat outside our room. It wasn't a big problem as we could enjoy the view. The kids enjoyed sitting outside with their pads. The air conditioning is working fine. The last two days we stayed at the villa room and WiFi was working fine inside the room but there was a little problem with upstairs air condition. It switched itself off so the upstair room temperature stayed at 23 degree. All the rooms are nice and clean. Swimming pools were nice and we had the swimming pools ourselves as it was a quiet season. The swimming pools have painted black so you can't really see how deep the pools are. You will get the best view of sunrise. The owner is a nice guy and he has the patient to explain about their culture. He is always working around the hotel from 6am - 12am. We enjoyed our staying and it is a beautiful hotel.

Where to begin? let's start with the resort itself. The view is spectacular, app, 2-3 miles from the ocean. The rooms are comfortable with walk-thru patio doors. Pool is good; cold and with the black interior it will probably stay cold until really hot weather. Good security with sturdy gate and keypads. Grounds have been let go and there was a LOT of watering going on the whole time we were there. The neighborhood is really run down and the road to town is full of broken fences and garbage with the dumpsters for the modular homes that are all around. There were many dogs that barked a lot and the "resort" dog woke us 3 times barking in the wee hours. Not fun. The real sore spot were the listed amenities. There were none available. No breakfast, no shared kitchen, no coffee service. no BBQ, no toiletries, no bottled water. we were denied access to the ONLY microwave on the property (staff only). The owner, Dimitre simply told us "we don't do that anymore" when questioned. I looked in the drawers and found every utensil you could ask for, just not for guests to use. The kitchenette had no glasses and 2 coffee cups. Very little in the way of cooking gear ( also NOT available to guests). Now for the hard part. My wife went into the "staff" area to get some ice and was confronted by the owner, told to "stay out' and if we wanted anything we had to ask a staff member. He continued to abuse her until I saw the commotion and went in. In over 40 years of travel I have never had this happen before. He came up, put his finger in my face and told me he owned this resort not me. I tried to diffuse his anger by asking what we were doing wrong (we were told to make ourselves at home when we came in the previous evening). I finally had enough and started telling him what the Booking.com site listed for guest use to no avail. He just ignored me and acted very aggressive. He simply did not care and tried to intimidate and yes, bully would be a good term for his actions. I thought it best to withdraw and give him a chance to calm down. He seemed like a man under some very serious stress and his passive/aggressive behavior continued for the rest of our stay. He never gave us any real advice about the town of Fira, which we found to be a cool place with a lot of traffic and sidewalks that would rival Mexico for their layouts and condition. Grocery store was fairly priced and well stocked though always crowded (hate to see this place during season). I stayed in three properties in Greece, this was hands down the worst. NOTE: Staying here during Easter will subject you to fireworks that go all night and day during Fri-Wed. A lot of the store were closed Sat-Wed for Holy Week(?). The only reviews we found were older and they were excellent. I really never figured out what went wrong.