Lindos Royal Resort

Worst hotel I ever been in my life the Food and nasty the people are not good please I try to order this hotel that is far from the city so you need to pay €80 each time and you need to go to the city and there is no such activity due to in the hotel room so dirty and cockroaches in the room AC is are not working. There is so many things. I can’t tell everything in one message.

We stayed here as a family group of 10 — 7 adults and 3 children aged 7, 14 and 17. After reading the reviews before travelling, I was honestly quite worried about how bad the hotel would be, and unfortunately, a lot of what we had read turned out to be true.

When we arrived, there were already four different groups of guests complaining at reception, so we immediately felt that we might be in for a disappointing stay.

We were given our first room and, after walking in, immediately refused to stay in it. It was directly on the terrace, meaning that when we opened the balcony door, we were greeted by other guests sitting immediately outside looking straight back at us. To make matters worse, we discovered that the balcony door didn’t lock. We raised our concerns with reception, particularly regarding safety, and thankfully we were moved to a much better room.

There was plenty of choice in the buffet restaurant and you could always find something to eat, but unfortunately, we didn’t find the food particularly enjoyable or appetising. In fact, I think this is the first holiday I’ve ever been on where I actually lost weight because I simply wasn’t enjoying the food!

There was also a queue for drinks in the restaurant, which often meant that by the time you had managed to get your drinks and sat down, your food was already cold.

One of the biggest issues for us was the constant smell of sewage around the hotel. It was particularly bad around the lower pool, which we ended up nicknaming the “smelly pool”. At times the smell was genuinely unbearable, and I really felt sorry for the staff who had to work around it every day.

The drinks also tasted heavily of salt and you were only allowed two drinks per person at a time, meaning you were constantly having to get back up to the bar. At exactly 11pm, service stopped — shutters down and everything! On one occasion, watching the shutters come down while people were still waiting and some hadn’t even received their full order was almost comical.

We also spent quite a lot of money in the supermarket buying bottled water because the water provided was warm.

We booked all three à la carte restaurants but only ended up going to one. Unfortunately, this was another disappointment. The food was essentially the same as what was available in the buffet, just served to you, and you then had to pay extra for your drinks on top.

The situation around the sea was probably the worst part of our stay. We were told by other guests that they had seen what they believed to be raw sewage being pumped into the sea. I obviously cannot confirm that, but when we went down to the sea the following morning, we were absolutely horrified to find what appeared to be human waste floating in the water and on the shingle. It was disgusting and certainly not something you expect to see on holiday.

The entertainment was also very disappointing. There didn’t seem to be any clear information about what was happening each evening, and unless you happened to come across an activity, you had no idea what was going on. There were no clear signs or schedules showing what entertainment was taking place. Unfortunately, much of the evening entertainment was also held around the lower pool, which wasn’t somewhere we wanted to spend our evenings because of the smell.

There are some positives. The staff were all friendly and pleasant, and I genuinely felt sorry for them given some of the conditions they were working in. There was also absolutely no rush for sunbeds, which was a nice change! You could go down around 8:30am and still find plenty available.

Ultimately, we made the holiday enjoyable ourselves, mainly because of the company we were with and because the children made some lovely friends. We spent quite a lot of our evenings outside the hotel, which probably tells you everything you need to know.

The hotel has so much potential, but in our opinion it is let down badly by the way it is being managed. We would definitely not return and would not recommend it to others.

For us, this felt much more like a 2–3 star hotel rather than a 5-star resort. It’s such a shame because with better management, maintenance and standards, this hotel could be so much better.

We stayed at Lindos Royal Resort in June and, unfortunately, our experience was much more disappointing than we expected.

One of our biggest issues was the room. There was a noticeable damp/musty smell and signs of damp, which really wasn't what we expected from a hotel of this standard. It made the room feel unpleasant and was a significant disappointment.

We had also paid quite a bit extra specifically for a sea-view room, so this was something we were really looking forward to. We were told that our room had a sea view, but in reality the view of the sea was extremely limited. You could just about see it, but it certainly wasn't the sea view we had expected when paying the additional amount. Had we known what the view would actually be like, we would not have paid the extra.

The all-inclusive drinks were another disappointment. The quality was very poor in our experience. For example, the gin and tonic didn't really taste like gin and tonic at all — it had a strange, very salty taste and was not something we wanted to drink. We appreciate that all-inclusive drinks aren't going to be premium brands, but we still expected them to be reasonably enjoyable.

There are some lovely views around the property, but unfortunately the problems with our room, the disappointing sea view despite paying extra for it, the quality of the all-inclusive drinks and the uncomfortable feeling getting down to the beach really affected our stay.

The animation team seemed like they couldn't really be bothered and spent most of their time chatting amongst themselves.

The best thing about the hotel was the food, and the hotel manager was excellent at finding us a table, and catering for dietary requirements. The themed restaurants we ate at (Asian and Greek) were also good.

Overall, we felt that the hotel did not live up to the standard or expectations we had when booking. We paid extra for things that we felt were not delivered to the standard we had been led to expect, and for that reason we left feeling very disappointed.

Needless to say, we will not be going back to this resort!