Virginia Family Resort

We visited Virgina family resort for our honeymoon/ babies first holiday.

Overall, the hotel is lovely, the staff are lovely and kind and the rooms are very clean! Fresh towels and bedding provided every other day.

The only downside to our stay was the food. If you are like my partner and can eat everything then this hotel will be perfect for you. However, I have coeliac disease (gluten free) and unfortunately basically couldn’t eat anything. Which is very disappointing when I have paid for an all inclusive service and clearly the hotel isn’t inclusive for all dietary requirement.

Breakfast - probably the best I could have omelette, beans and bacon.

Lunch - pretty much no options, everything is labelled but one day the chips has no allergen then the next day a new sign popped up saying contains cereals? A lot of the signs were inconsistent and changed daily leaving me worried about what I had already consumed.

Dinner - again pretty much no options so we had to go out for tea every night just so I could manage to eat. None of the desserts were gluten free either and there was no one around to ask for help.

The only exception was the themed night where we booked the Italian and was promised I could eat pizza or pasta. However, when we arrived I was told there is no pizza and none of the pasta sauces are gluten free 🤣 so I ended up with pasta and Mediterranean veg (which was nice but a shame not to be involved in the 3 course menu)

As I say if you don’t have any allergy issues then this hotel is perfect but it’s such a shame in 2026 a 4* hotel isn’t able to cater for everyone even though they state upon booking that there are options.

Ou vacation was great, rooms were clean, food was good too and barman Tasos and Despoina were best barmans .

We visited this hotel at the end of July, leaving at the beginning of August and were relatively disappointed.

Pool areas

These were unpleasant at best, dangerous at worst. There were no lifeguards on duty and the majority of parents appeared to be more interested in topping up their tan than supervising their children and monitoring their behaviour.

Members of our family were kicked by children coming down the slide immediately after them, children were pitting lilos on the slide and then having children climb on their backs to go down, children were stopping mid way on the slide etc …, it made for a nerve wracking experience. Some children would visit the quieter pool completely unsupervised, climb on top of the wall and flip/somersault off near people swimming below. I’m sure a nasty accident will occur if these issues are not addressed.

Sun loungers - these are reserved in the middle of the night. One party took to reserving 24 beds a time, presumably on their way back to their rooms at night (I looked out one morning before 6am). They were not alone…. The majority of beds were taken before 7.30am. I can only assume the people reporting there are no issues with beds are the ones reserving them in the middle of the night. It’s an easy fix ….. any towels on beds before breakfast opens should be removed.

Entertainment

The men on the entertainment team were absolutely brilliant and are a credit to the hotel. The circus act and singers were also brilliant.

Location /Public Transport

I booked this hotel as it was close to Rhodes town and had a beach.

In reality, getting to Rhodes Town (or anywhere else) felt almost impossible. The buses were often full at the peak times. We never saw a taxi at the taxi rank at the top of the road and none stopped whilst we were standing at the bus stop.

It appears a suspicious arrangement is in place at the hotel. There are no ‘standard taxis’ anywhere near the hotel. Those taxis have to charge a set fee to particular towns, ie €11 to town. The hotel however offer a ‘transfer service’ which literally costs more than double the amount - €25 to town! Moreover, the service offered is appalling.

We booked a taxi to collect us for a pre paid boat trip. Fortunately I had allowed time for error. The transfer cancelled! Then the next ‘taxi’ contacted cancelled. Eventually the transfer did actually end up being able to take us but after much panic that we would miss our trip!

The next trip we had, we took the 7am bus to ensure we could get to town in time for our boat. At that time, the service had space for us to get on.

My daughter unfortunately became unwell (as did other members of our family) during our stay and required medical attention. The was an extremely helpful lady on reception who called one of the hotel transfers … she left her shift unfortunately whist were waiting. Following her departure, there was no communication from the reception staff. My husband had to chase them and in total it was over an hour before my sick daughter and I were collected and taken to the hospital. Upon leaving the vehicle, I was handed a business card. The driver said it would be unlikely we would be able to get a taxi back from there (the hospital was quite remote)… after coming out of the hospital ( very impressed with the care given), I called the driver who said he would take 40 minutes to reach us, which I understood and accepted, only for him to cancel 10 minutes later! Someone at the hospital suggested I visit the security stand. Fortunately they were very helpful and provided me with an actual taxi company number. Whilst we had to wait some time, a taxi collected us an we eventually got home, no thanks to transfer company provided by the hotel. At one point I feared we would have a sleep on a bench outside.

Beach across the road isn’t connected to the hotel but is nice. Beach shoes recommend though.

Food / Drinks

Overall, they were ok however it felt that whilst the majority of the staff were working incredibly hard, there simply weren’t enough to keep up with demand, resulting in large queues at every turn.

Breakfast - plenty of choice. The omelettes from the station were good however the queues were normally too long and I opted to eat something else.

Lunch - Gyros option was excellent and we had these daily but again, not enough staff/large queues.

Dinner - there were a couple of occasions we had to wait to be seated at a table. The hotel struggles to cater for the volume of people it accommodates. Also, we noticed that items aren’t replenished, despite dinner being listed as open until 9.30pm.

Bar areas - The queues were too long, especially in an evening. There was a rule brought in of only 2 drinks per person which meant my husband had to take one our children with him when ordering drinks! I have never been to a bar and had to send 2 people for a family of 4. My husband always goes to get our drinks so this was, albeit minor, an irritation. If we were out in a bar, I wouldn’t expect this poor service. The root issue was lack of staff which was evident all around the hotel. We found a couple of the main bar staff unpleasant also. Jo at the pool bar however was amazing.

Rooms

Our room was clean, very spacious and had a great balcony.

There were issues with the air con however. It seemed to work intermittently and did not go below 21 degrees although seemed to vary in temperature- sometimes the room would be freezing and at other times we would be too hot, despite the temperature being set the same. We did ask reception to get someone to look at it, which apparently they did but nothing changed.

The bathroom was dated and the hairdryer was not fit for purpose. It would overheat after a very short time and then stop working until it had cooled down. I would recommend bringing your own hairdryer unless you want to embrace the ‘slick back’ look like i did all holiday.

Overall

What we still managed to have a nice holiday, I definitely wouldn’t return or recommend it to others. There are few quiet areas and the hotel in general is noisy. We found the pool areas to be dangerous due to the lack of lifeguards. The sun beds issue is a huge issue and needs addressing.

Our experience has made us reconsider the ‘all inclusive’ approach and we probably will revert to a quieter b and b option next time.

We really enjoyed our boat trips, especially the one to Symi and would highly recommend those.