Arina Beach Resort

Hotel and rooms were excellent. Meal in the restaurant and drinks in bar were great and delicious. Personal was attentive and friendly. Everything was excellent!

Good price versus quality

Settle in, this is a bit of a long one I'm afraid. Note, we went in middle of August, I've taken ages to get round to writing it! When we were looking for a hotel, we had narrowed it down to 3 hotels, with this one in the mix. Because of the 5 "blobs" on Tripadvisor, this convinced us eventually to go for this hotel, however, we did not find it to this standard. I will be honest, I have questioned myself many, many times. I must be missing something, am I having totally different drinks to all these other people….am I seeing different sunbeds not being reserved in the early hours of the morning? Am I the only one finding the main inside lobby bar room unbearable with heat at night time? Trust me, I'm not a negative person, I just found this place a bit "Meh" and not what I would expect from a claimed 4 * hotel. We haven't stayed at many All Inclusive, we have done years of villas in many countries, but last year we had a last minute AI to Grecotel Luxme Resort in Corfu last year, which is the nearest I can compare it to for this, and that was significantly nicer and better than this. I will give some positives Easy to book a restaurant on the app, no issues there. There was always room to book in which was great, gave you really good variation on meals. Before we've had experience where you turn up and people have booked all the restaurants and so you have slim pickings, not here. You can’t book more than 3 days in advance and you can’t book before you arrive. That was excellent. Dutch Mitchell deserves a shout out along with Theodor who mainly worked in Ariana Restaurant. We spoke to these guys quite a bit, and they really seem over worked if I'm honest, but it's probably the nature of Crete where everything is open and then shuts down in winter. Irini at the kids pool bar was great, made great drinks. Adonis at the pool bar by the evening entertainment was also good, I liked his sense of humour. I would recommend upgrading if you can, we really liked the quietness to Ariana restaurant and the friendly staff in there. They were great with my son, joking with him every morning, that was a much more pleasant experience dining in there. Upgrading gives you unlimited in that restaurant. Do that. I found it odd that all the bars and restaurants had little boxes for "Tips" for the staff. Just to clarify, I don't have an issue with this per say, I just found it a little odd when people are coming to the types of hotels because "everything" is paid for and for the ease. You aren't expecting to be then tipping when you had paid significant amounts in the school holidays for a holiday here. We usually tip the cleaners on exit. The wife disagrees with me on this, fair enough. When I have "upgraded" to a Penthouse, I don't then expect to have to pay extra for a "top brand" drink. Again, I'm not an AI expert, but when I'm paying £300 a night, I would expect the drinks to be better than they are. To compare to Grecotel, that was all top brands li

We had a lovely family holiday, and will definitely be keen to return. The cleanliness, food/drink service, and care from staff is very impressive. Our toddler has a number of severe food allergies which the staff were always so understanding and helpful with - in particular Giorgios who was a great help in the restaurants throughout each day. To all of the Arina Beach team - thank you so much for such a lovely week :)

Perfect hotel It was absolutely incredible easily the best hotel on the island So relaxing food is incredible everything is 10/10