Mitsis Summer Palace

Our honest experience at Mitsis Summer Palace – unfortunately, not a 5-star experience

I want to start by being fair: the fact that we were initially placed in an older room was not the hotel’s fault. Our travel agency had unfortunately booked the wrong room category. We completely understand that mistakes happen.

What we found extremely disappointing, however, was the way the situation was handled by reception.

We went to reception hoping to find a solution. We would have been completely willing to pay extra for a different room if one was available. Instead, we were basically told that they would call us “if something became available”. When we asked when this might be, the answers were simply “later”, “I don’t know”, etc. We were also repeatedly told that we would have to pay extra for another room, which, again, was not an issue for us.

The problem is that nobody ever called us.

This was particularly frustrating because we were not asking for anything unreasonable. We simply wanted some help finding a solution.

Unfortunately, the attitude of one of the receptionists was especially disappointing. We never felt that she was genuinely trying to help us. Whenever we had a question, she would go into the manager’s office and repeat our question to him instead of properly communicating with us herself. As guests, this felt extremely uncomfortable and, honestly, quite disrespectful.

The room

Because we stayed in the older section, I cannot give the room 5 stars. The furniture and overall condition were clearly dated.

However, we could have accepted an older room if it had been properly cleaned.

Unfortunately, the cleanliness was simply not acceptable for a 5-star hotel.

We showered every day, yet the bathtub was repeatedly left with sand in it. The sink was also not properly cleaned. The bed was made, but even the standard of making the bed was not what we would expect from a 5-star property.

An old room can still be clean, comfortable and welcoming. Unfortunately, ours was not.

Food – the main restaurant

This was another major disappointment.

The main restaurant in the old section was, for us, by far the weakest part of the hotel experience. We tried it several times, but the quality of the food was simply not what we expected from a 5-star resort.

We even tried the à la carte option, hoping for a better experience, but the meat we were served was extremely dry and the overall food quality was very disappointing.

The service did not improve the experience either. We ordered wine and it was served in a soft-drink glass. On another occasion, we asked for water twice and the waiters still did not understand what we were asking for, even though we were speaking English.

One evening, the same receptionist also directed us to dinner but would not allow us to sit on the terrace, even though the terrace was completely empty.

At this point, we honestly had to ask ourselves: is this really the level of service expected from a 5-star hotel?

The good news: Med Restaurant

Thankfully, there was a completely different side to the hotel.

The Med Restaurant was excellent – both the food and the service were on a completely different level.

Unfortunately, we were not properly informed at check-in that reservations should be made in advance. This is something guests should definitely be told when they arrive.

After being so disappointed with the main restaurant, we tried to get into the Med Restaurant several times. Thankfully, the head waiter/manager there was incredibly kind, understanding and helpful and managed to find a place for us.

We are genuinely grateful to him. His attitude showed us exactly how guests should be treated.

If you are staying at this hotel, my advice is: ask about the Med Restaurant immediately and make your reservation as early as possible. It can make a huge difference to your experience.

The pool and beach areas

The infinity pool and the beach area were actually very enjoyable.

The staff working around the pool and beach were friendly and professional, the food was good, the pizza at the pool was delicious, and the cocktails were excellent. The kebab by the sea was also very good, as were the cocktails there.

The thick, comfortable sunbeds were another great touch and made relaxing by the sea and pool very pleasant.

Final thoughts

I am giving this review because I genuinely believe the hotel has a lot of potential, but unfortunately, our experience did not consistently feel like a 5-star experience.

And to be clear: the room issue itself was not the reason we were disappointed. We understand that this was caused by our travel agency.

What really upset us was the lack of communication and the attitude we experienced when we tried to find a solution.

A 5-star hotel is not only about beautiful pools, a great location and nice facilities. The way guests are treated when they have a problem matters just as much.

There were moments during our stay when we genuinely felt frustrated and ignored, and that is not something we expected from a hotel of this category.

At the same time, we also experienced excellent service at the Med Restaurant, the pool and the beach, which proves that the hotel is capable of delivering a very high standard.

So this is not a review saying that everything was bad – far from it. There were some really great parts of our stay.

But when you pay for a 5-star resort, you expect the entire experience to feel like 5 stars, not only certain areas.

I hope the hotel takes this as honest and constructive feedback, because with better communication at reception, more consistent housekeeping and a more guest-focused approach, the experience could be significantly better.

It is really difficult to rate this hotel out of 5 as some things about it have been incredible, some are terrible, and the rest falls somewhere in between. We must say that overall from our experience we would have recommend this hotel to others, as the pros do outweigh the cons and overall despite the cons we had a great experience. Our final day in the hotel however left a sour taste which, from a safety/security perspective, would make us hesitate in recommending the hotel to others. ———————————————

Pros -

Hotel complex/amenities:

• Beautiful views, basically from every angle in the hotel. Stunning!
• So many pools to choose from. We loved being able to spend different days at beach, infinity pools, and fresco pool with the in-pool water beds. It felt like a different hotel experience each day.
• Easy to get / exchange beach towels.
• You do need to be up early to get sunbeds at the infinity pools or near the front of the beach, but there are generally always some beds available at one of the fresco pools if you have a long lie.
• Buggies are available to drive you around to eg the supermarket or spa which is situated in a different mitsis hotel on site.
• Gym has good equipment to cover a full body workout, but recommend using early in the morning (before 9am) as it can get busy in the afternoon.
• Ideal atmosphere for a slow and relaxing holiday. If you are looking for a more buzzing / party atmosphere, this hotel probably isn’t for you. The music played at the pool gives ‘animal crossing’ vibes and the occasional entertainment eg DJ/saxophone is very quiet and chill.

Food/drinks:

• Staff shout out: Mohammed & breakfast and Ange @ the med bar - friendly, quick and attentive staff.
• The buffet-style breakfast wasn’t bad overall, there is something for everyone.
• We always managed to get a a seat in the restaurant no problem.
• Coffees, mocktails and cocktails from all bars were really nice and there was a decent selection (we would have liked the option to order slushies too).
• Pizza and gyros stations & fresco food were highlights - yum!
• The salad bar at lunch/dinner in the a la carte restaurant was good.

Rooms:

• Air con in bedrooms is really powerful.
• Stocked mini fridge (free branded cans of juice, beer, wine, and water replenished daily).
• Cleaning staff were flexible with timings and happy to come back later if you had a long lie.
• With 4 days to go of our 2 week holiday we were offered a free upgrade to a different room with its’ own pool. Both rooms we stayed in were lovely.

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Cons -

The frustrating thing about the number of cons for this hotel is that most of them on their own are small, and would be incredibly easy to improve. However we can see from past reviews that there are themes coming up time and time again that are clearly not being addressed.

Hotel complex/amenities:

• The complex is large with lots of staircases, fine as long as no mobility issues but walking eg straight from beach to rooms without stopping for a drink in the heat half way is tough.
• Drainage in our first bathroom wasn’t great and we could sometimes smell drainage/dampness when moving around the hotel at certain areas.
• Entertainment limited and v average - advertised for certain times then late.
• You can wait a while for a lift from a buggy and sometimes they drive past you / refuse to take you despite being empty (unclear why).

Food/drinks:

• We used the breakfast buffet on approx 10 days, and every single day they had run out of fried eggs. There was clearly demand and queueing for these, which blocked up the rest of the room. The egg man seemed to be much more focused on cooking a surplus of omelette and pancakes every day, despite there being trays of these already available.
• Ridiculous queues at times across the board, but particularly for food and drink at the beach (not enough staff at times, other times just extremely slow at taking orders, bringing food, pouring drinks etc).
• The queues at the fresco bar and snack bar were much better, but their poolside table service was very slow - significantly quicker to walk to the bar yourself.
• Service in the bookable restaurants was painfully slow, and they regularly forgot parts of our/others’ ordered food/drinks. There was never an apology for this when raised. We cancelled 3 of our reservations during our 2 week holiday after experiencing lengthy delays and forgotten food/drinks in the japanese, med restaurant, and med brunch restaurant. The food in the japanese and med wasn’t bad when it came, but the brunch food was below average on both occasions used.
• Pizza station says open from 12 but really means they start making the pizzas from scratch at 12. Sometimes up to a 20 minute wait for them to replenish.
• Lunch and dinner is a la carte and the ordered food was very average at best, definitely not what you would expect from 5 star. We avoided these altogether most days and instead ate from fresco/pizza/gyros stalls, or went into kardamena and bought food.
• The late night food on offer after dinner in the panorama restaurant is very very limited and quite poor - basically stale bread and cheese and maybe some stuffed courgettes or meat.
• Gyros station had no chips in the gyros? Unusual. They provide gyros / greek salads but won’t let you order the salad with some gyros meat added.
• No dips at pizza station.

Safety/security concerns

• During our stay we misplaced a room card. We had asked for a new one at reception. They just asked for the room number and happily handed over another card (we were not asked to provide our name / ID or anything to prove this was our room). It is a worry that anyone could provide your room number and be given a key to your room.

• On our final day we were told we could no longer have our requested late checkout as there was no availability. Instead, reception agreed to have our suitcases and hand luggage collected and stored for us whilst we went to the pool. Several hours later we went to reception and requested our hand luggage bags. We provided the room number they’d be linked to - the woman behind the desk proceeded to bring out multiple bags that were not ours and would not have been linked to our room number. It’s a concern they could be offering your belongings out to anyone. She couldn’t find any of our luggage and proceeded to phone a few people. Eventually another staff member came over and pointed to the bar area of the hotel lobby, behind the ATM, and advised us that all of our luggage had been left there. I raised my concerns at the time that these had been left unsupervised for hours in a busy hotel foyer, rather than in the secure luggage storage room behind reception as agreed. I asked the staff member if she thought this was safe and she was silent. I reiterated that this was nor safe nor appropriate and she shrugged. I asked her to take our cases and put them in the secure luggage storage room and she did so, so clearly it wasn’t a space issue. Again, no apology or explanation whatsoever. Anyone could have taken our belongings due to this negligence - bare in mind our passports etc were also in our hand luggage. I thought this was a big enough issue before being handled so terribly.

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Additional considerations Just to be aware that the infinity pools are deep if you are not a swimmer (155cm) with no shallow end. However, the pools at the fresco side are not as deep.

Buses to kardamena and kos are nowhere near as frequent as we had anticipated and also have a small fee per person ( €2pp for Kardamena each way )

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Spa Experience: We booked this through Mitsis but it is technically separate to summer palace, located in the nearby blue domes complex. Again, not the level of luxury you would expect from this brand and for the price.

On arrival we were shown straight into the pool area, in our outside shoes and clothes. No gowns or slippers were provided. Changing facilities consist of 1 shower and 1 toilet per sex. We were not asked our preferences for firmness etc before the massage. Relaxing music in room was so quiet you could hardly hear it, and the massage oil used didn’t smell scented at all. The “eye mask” used was a face towel, and the “pillow” used was a folded up towel. The massage in itself wasn’t bad, but we have had much better for the price tag (£110pp for 60 minutes). No tea or water was offered at end of massage, and there is no relaxation room - just the generic pool area.

Stunning views from the hotel! Our room was clean, modern and super spacious we couldn’t fault it. The infinity pool was lovely but sun beds were reserved super early in the morning so was hard to get a space. All the restaurants were delicious especially the asian à la carte.