Olympic Palace Resort Hotel and Convention Center

A special return to Ixia – a fantastic family holiday

This holiday carried a little extra meaning for me. I first visited Ixia as a nine-year-old during Italia ’90, and I clearly remember walking past the Olympic Palace. Its distinctive shape made it stand out, and the hotel stayed in my memory for all these years.

Although I hadn’t necessarily planned to return, when we started looking at Rhodes for our first family all-inclusive holiday, the Olympic Palace felt like the obvious choice. We normally stay in villas, but with four children aged 13, 11, 11 and three, we decided to take the plunge and make this holiday more about them.

We stayed in the Superior Maisonette with a sea view and hot tub, and the room was simply stunning. There was plenty of space for all six of us, and the large balcony and hot tub were fantastic additions. It is also the only room type at the hotel that can accommodate a family of six, and it was absolutely perfect for us.

The hotel itself is beautiful—luxurious and elegant without feeling overly formal. I would definitely return, although I would only stay in the same room when travelling with the whole family. If I returned with just my wife, I would probably choose one of the adults-only rooms with a private pool.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all served buffet-style, with plenty of different cuisines and options for the whole family. The snacks available around the pool throughout the day were also very good. Alcoholic drinks were included and, to be fair, they weren’t bad at all!

The entertainment was mixed. The violinist was fantastic and the saxophonists were also very good. However, the mini disco was a little cheesy, and the evening entertainment generally wasn’t the strongest part of the hotel.

The pool is open from 10am until 6pm. Personally, I think it could remain open slightly later, as I enjoy the quieter late-afternoon sunshine with a drink. At 6pm, the loungers are still available, but the pool is closed off with a large chain—so there is certainly no confusion about whether it is still open!

The sunbed policy worked well once we understood it. Towels are provided and can be exchanged for fresh ones, and you cannot simply reserve loungers and disappear. Before 9:30am, one person can hold two beds, but they must remain with them; unattended towels are removed. My son and I went down at around 8:30–8:45am each morning and stayed with our four loungers, tables and two parasols. We managed to get the same spot every day, so there was no ridiculous early-morning rush.

My only real negative was how busy the pool area became. If I could have magically lifted about 30% of the guests out, it would have been perfect! That said, we visited during the middle of August and the school holidays, so the hotel was always going to be extremely busy.

Complimentary access to the mini golf was another lovely touch and gave the children something different to do.

We booked directly through the hotel rather than as part of a package, which included complimentary airport transfers. This was an excellent addition and made our arrival much easier.

Overall, I cannot recommend the Olympic Palace highly enough. It is a beautiful hotel, a genuine landmark in Ixia and gave us a brilliant family holiday. Returning after remembering it so clearly from childhood made the experience even more special.

The hotel is stunning and we had lots to do. There’s a games room, pool, mini golf, massage chairs, fire pit, beautiful gardens, numerous hotel bars, padel, bingo. There’s Pilates, yoga, meditation and lots of activities in the day you can do if you don’t want to just sunbathe. They have a book shelf full on books to choose from.

The rooms were clean, and the views were excellent. We were on the 4th floor and never heard any noise. The rooms were cleaned everyday and water was given too. The cleaners were kind and friendly.

We enjoyed the food. Breakfast had a bit of everything including an omelet station. There was also a separate ‘American breakfast’ from 11:30am. At lunch you can have gyros and souvlaki at the Greek restaurant. They also had a lunch buffet. The snack bar was then open throughout the day and had fruit, ice creams and snacks like pizza and burgers. The buffet at dinner had something every night we wanted to eat. Again, the best was the Greek menu and the Italian night (they had a cheese wheel!). If you don’t like what they have, they do spaghetti every night which was really nice. The staff in the restaurant are accommodating and kind. Shoutout to Emil for excellent service. The drinks were great and you never had to wait long at the pool bar.

We went and had a spa day. I booked prior through email and they were amazing. I requested a man and a woman masseuse and they had an external man come in. Both were professional and fantastic! We had the romantic package, private jacuzzi for 30 minutes with choice of oils, with martinis and a platter of fruit, then a 70 minute massage and a 30 min facial straight after. We then got access to the spa for the rest of the day including heated beds, sauna, steam room, fire and ice experience, pool, iced tea, jacuzzi again, All for £140 each! The whole experience was out of the world and much better than any spa in England I have been to and I have been to many!

Massive cons/

Reception staff are unfriendly and need some training on a welcoming service.

I understand this is for adults and children which did not bother me booking, however the behaviour of children definitely did. Children are allowed to jump into the pool which got water everywhere. Children were then running up and jumping in, slipping over and hurting themselves . The life guard took no notice and sat on his phone with headphones in. I do think that there needs to be more rules in the pool purely for safety.

When you are chilling there’s children jumping in, wacking balls around, water guns, screaming etc. I do think for a 5 star hotel they need one of the 3 pools to be a child pool. They have a tiny baby pool but they need a separate space as it was dangerous and chaotic. Lots of guests including myself were getting annoyed and really did put the 5 star experience down.

Children were also allowed to do what they wanted in the bars. There was a lovely saxophone playing and children were in the lounge bar doing cartwheels, running around playing tag, jumping on the seats. The staff said nothing. I know this is a parenting issue but at a 5 star hotel I expected staff to tell the parents that children could not behave like this when alcohol is around and entertainment is on. We ended up going somewhere else as we couldn’t enjoy it. Some parents were even letting their babies crawl on the floor which again is dangerous when people are drinking. Nothing was said.

When we went up to the roof top bar, again children were running around playing tag inside the bar, falling over and crying. Nothing was said again!

If you want to be a 5 star hotel there needs to be some serious expectations of the behaviour of people staying there/ asked to leave and go to the children’s entertainment club discos. We previously went to a 3 star hotel and the children were told to be sensible. This was the main reason we could not return.

Just had an amazing meal at La Tonda the pizzas are out of this world and have to say the service from all the staff was brilliant especially from John Adam who made sure we was well looked after