Tylissos Beach Hotel

If you are looking for a relaxing, high-quality getaway, look elsewhere. This hotel is light-years away from its online promises. The photos on their website are clearly heavily edited to suggest a premium experience that simply does not exist.

Noisy, Dated, and Uncomfortable Rooms: The rooms are severely outdated and, at best, only partially renovated. Moldy grout in the shower made the bathroom feel unhygienic. The air conditioning was loud yet provided almost zero cooling. Opening the balcony door for fresh air was impossible due to speeding traffic night and day. To make matters worse, the loud, continuous humming of the soft-serve ice cream machine in the dining room buzzed non-stop—we could hear it clear as day in our room, even at night!

A "Beach" and "Bar" Experience That’s Almost Comical: The hotel is separated from an nearly unkept beach by a heavily trafficked main road. Slippery, hazardous rocks make entering the sea a chore. Because the beach is public, there was constant noise and screaming children—completely defeating the point of a booked "Adults-Only" resort. As for the "Beach Bar"? There isn't one. The poor waiter had to run across the dangerous main road to fetch drinks from the main building, often waiting 5 minutes just to cross traffic with a tray of beverages. Utterly absurd.

Canteen-Level Dining: Forget about promised show cooking or beautifully set tables. What you get is a noisy, depressing canteen atmosphere with mismatched placemats, dirty glasses, and lukewarm, tasteless food. Even basic breakfast juices were constantly empty. The non-stop drone of the ice cream machine ruined every meal.

Isolated Location: There is no bus stop nearby, and reaching Ierapetra requires walking through run-down, sketchy-feeling side streets that do not feel safe at night. Having traveled around Crete before, we have seen far better areas.

Verdict: Despondent staff, zero peace and quiet, and subpar facilities. Save your money and stay somewhere that actually respects its guests!

Very friendly hotel amazing staff and place in Ierapetra. Cheers to Rania and Angelous.

Unfortunately, our stay was a major disappointment. The hotel may formally claim to provide the features described in the offer, but in practice, they are so limited that it's difficult to call it an All-Inclusive experience.

The food is definitely one of the biggest drawbacks. The selection is limited, and dishes are often repetitive. For example, pasta bolognese was served for lunch and dinner throughout our week. For vegetarians, the selection is even more limited.

Another disappointment was the drinks. There are NO complimentary drinks at the hotel. ALL are charged extra. The only complimentary alcoholic beverages are wine/beer/local spirits (Raki, Ouzo, Cretan Brandy), which are simply of poor quality.

After 10:00 PM, ALL drinks are charged an additional fee.

The poolside snacks were essentially dry toast, without ketchup. There were no fresh, complimentary snacks, such as fruit. OF COURSE, other decent snacks are available on the PAID menu.

The "bar" on the beach is actually NOT a bar. There's a booth staffed by a person serving ONLY the PAID online menu. Food and drinks are ordered online and then brought to you from the hotel. So, you can practically forget about even going to the bar and just grabbing a water on the beach.

The beach itself is also a major disappointment. The hotel is intended for adults, but the hotel beach is NOT – visitors can rent hotel lounge chairs and bring their children. Furthermore, the beach is located between the hotel and the road, so you can constantly hear cars, buses, and trucks passing by, including honking trucks. It's hard to call it a quiet, relaxing place.

The drinks in the restaurant also leave much to be desired. It's impossible to pour your own drink in the restaurant – you have to ask a waiter every time. The "juices" served by the staff are very sweet. Only at breakfast can you squeeze fresh orange juice yourself, but the solution is ill-conceived – your hands are left very sticky during the meal.

Another issue is the lack of lunch boxes. If you need a snack, you can buy one from the PAID snack menu, but the All Inclusive plan doesn't offer the option of preparing a regular lunch box.

The entertainment program is mostly on paper. There is a schedule, but there's little point in following it, as the entertainers often don't stick to it anyway. Regarding the gym standards – I've attached photos.

A 15 euro deposit is required for pool towels, and there's no free exchange for a fresh one – only a paid towel wash for 3 euros.

There was also an incident that raised serious hygiene concerns. One guest scooped sauce with a shared spoon, licked it, and then put it back in the sauce. We brought this to the staff's attention. The staff only took and replaced the spoon, but not the sauce. We found this to be an inappropriate response to someone who had direct contact with the food.

The drive to the hotel takes about two hours.

On the plus side the pool was nice. The staff were generally friendly.

SUMMARY The biggest disappointment is that the hotel seems intent on fulfilling the offer on paper, but everything is kept to a BARE MIINIMUM.

I've attached photos of the paid drinks list, the paid snack menu, and the information card, which YOU MUST READ before deciding to stay – it lists exclusions from the All Inclusive offer.

"All Inclusive" is more like "All Exclusive" – everything is included, but only a little, and the rest you have to pay extra for.