iThoughts

This summer (2012) my girlfriend and myself flew to the greek island Kos for 14 days. We visited three ★★★★★ hotels and I want to quickly present here what we liked or didn’t like about the hotels and what you wouldn’t find on the official websites, in case you find this page via Google or plan to go there.

We spent 5 days in the Grecotel. It’s located near Kos city, the only interesting city on the island (btw. if you come there, try the milkshake in the ice shop by the big market place – best milk shake ever, made of selfmade, delicious ice). The Grecotel beach is stones, otherwise the hotel’s beach is done nicely.

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Let’s begin with the Pro list:

• The giant pool-landscape including two big pools connected through two swimmable lanes are very nice. Additionally there are two more big pools and one child’s pool.
• Free internet in the lobby
• Cat café – a small wooden hut for cats is a nice detail for cat lovers like myself
• The mattresses in the room were very hard and very good – extremely nice for the back.
• The food was extremely good and the service personal was very quick and very obliging.
• Our booking went through Airtours – and they reserved a free aroma massage in the spa and a free à la carte dinner for us – which was a very nice experience.

Con list Grecotel:

• The water in the pools is pretty salty.
• It’s pretty family friendly – which I didn’t like for my relaxing holidays.
• There were pretty many ants and other insects on the terrace – and sadly also about 10-20 ants, 2-3 lizards and some flies and mosquitoes on the room.
• We didn’t book a nice view, and we also didn’t get one.
• I didn’t like the bath a lot, no separate shower from the bath tub.
• There was an explosion at the pool bar – accompanied by a fire and a lot of black smoke. You could argue that this is an accident that could have happened anywhere, but what was especially bad was the information politics after the incident: the personel was instructed to tell us that there wasn’t an explosion and that only some garbage caught fire – which wasn’t the case. Believe me, I was near enough the hear the explosion and I got a glimpse at the fire.

We stood in the Double Tree Hilton for 4 days.

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The Pro list begins like this:

• The beach is fantastic and it’s a sand beach with sun loungers. We nearly only went to the beach instead of using the pool.
• There are many pools, but only one is used by everybody. So if you didn’t reserve a room with pool access, you only have the big pool. This big’s pool water is very good, but it’s not too big.
• The Hilton’s rooms are very nice, bette than the other two hotels.Especially the bathroom has everything you need. We didn’t book sea view, so we didn’t get it. But the outside terrace was pretty nice also.
• They had freshly made orange juice for breakfast.
• One table-tennis table is ready to use for everybody.
• The hotel is bird-friendly. There were some nests on the terrace that first worried us, but when we learned that it’s the nests of the small birds flying around everywhere

Double Tree Hilton con list:

• The water from the tap is chlorinated
• The food in general wasn’t too bad, but it just wasn’t as good as in the Grecotel. And very few choices for vegetarians.
• The service staff was working pretty slow.
• 2 hours of free WiFi only if you got a username/password at the reception – didn’t bother to do so.

In the Sensimar Michelangelo we stood for the final 5 days of our holidays.

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The Pro list:

• The biggest infinity-pool of Greece. Perfect pool, perfect water.
• The sunshades at the pool left some bit of sunlight through so you could also tan in the shade.
• The poolbar featured it’s own pool on the backside where you have small seats in the water and can be at the bar and in the pool at the same time.
• We liked the modern design a lot.
• It wasn’t too family-friendly, which was very relaxing.
• This time was booked a sea view room, and the terrace and the view were worth the small upgrade fee.
• Around the terrace, there were curry-plants – which made a very nice curry smell on the terrace that I enjoyed a lot. Oftentimes, it’s the details that count.
• The plants were very accurate, and you could always see gardeners working somewhere.
• Here you could also play table-tennis for free.
• Free WiFi in the lobby, the restaurant and the pool-bar.