The Syntopia Hotel

“8/10/24-18/10/24”

Stayed at this hotel 8th October for 10 nights weather was great except last 2 days really cloudy temperature dropped to 20 Celsius. Absolutely outstanding hotel drinks excellent food excellent customer service excellent spotless hotel favourite location in hotel was rooftop pool and bar the staff … more

Stayed at this hotel 8th October for 10 nights weather was great except last 2 days really cloudy temperature dropped to 20 Celsius. Absolutely outstanding hotel drinks excellent food excellent customer service excellent spotless hotel favourite location in hotel was rooftop pool and bar the staff were brilliant they made our stay even better had a great time with all the great friends we made all the staff are great just to name some staff who made the holiday one to remember was George Andreas and Danny thank you guys it was great to meet you all 👍

less

“Great staff, great food, few others areas not so great”

Recently stayed at The Syntopia Hotel, two couples aged 40-50yrs. We arrived late at night and we were very welcomed with a drink fresh from the bar and some food in the mini fridge in our rooms. There are two outstanding reasons to visit this hotel; first one is the staff, Everyone we came int… more

Recently stayed at The Syntopia Hotel, two couples aged 40-50yrs. We arrived late at night and we were very welcomed with a drink fresh from the bar and some food in the mini fridge in our rooms. There are two outstanding reasons to visit this hotel; first one is the staff, Everyone we came into contact with was extremely helpful, friendly, efficient at their job and willing to assist you in any way possible to enjoy your stay. (Except an emailed request for a quiet room sent before our stay). The second outstanding area was the food. We have stayed at many all inclusive hotels across Europe and the food is usually ok, perfectly edible but not exciting, not seasoned and the desserts usually do not have flavour, at The Syntopia we found the food to be the opposite to the norm, the food was lovely at the buffet restaurant, there was always a good choice and it was plentiful and extremely tasty, a couple of themed nights in the week we stayed Asian and Italian were great. However, I would say the hotel literature oversells The Canteen (pool side cafe). The food was mediocre and I would not describe the pre-packed toasted sandwiches as fresh street food. Not all the drinks were available until after 5.30pm on the all inclusive stay (mostly cocktails) but there was more than enough availability to keep us happy and the majority of the drinks were top shelf alcohol. All inclusive drinks stop at 11pm and area chargeable after that. The hotel is being promoted a certain way, very geared up to a bohemian "gypset" image, very "instagramable" which includes a lot of plants, wicker and wood furniture and sunbed mattresses, cushions on the floor. I would say the public areas of the hotel look lovely, but the theme is carried on into the rooms with big dark lampshades over low lighting and made for a very dark experience, not suitable for putting on make up etc. Our room was very small it had a separate toilet but the shower opened into the room a meter away from the bed and the sink was next to the bed, I joked that we were staying in a bathroom with a bed in it, our balcony (third floor) faced inland and was very shaded by large unkempt trees over the cinema area (although no one used the cinema), also faced a busy main road and we could hear the traffic all night. I had specifically emailed the hotel before our stay requesting quiet rooms as had read a review about the busy road. However, the rooms were clean and the bed was very comfortable. We did not spend more time than sleeping and getting changed in the room so wasn't really a huge issue but thought it was worth a mention in a review for people looking to book. Later in the week we did pop into a couple of other rooms to have a look, which were much bigger, some with jacuzzi tubs but I guess you would pay a premium for a bigger room (definitely the jacuzzi rooms); I would say it looked like our room had been a much bigger room at some point and a dividing wall had made it into two rooms, you would not be happy paying a premium price for the room position facing inland with the busy road. We visited in early October, the main swimming pool area was half in a shade all day, which made the sunbed dash in the morning a very early one (some people from 6am) if you wanted any sun. Also as mentioned before a lot of the sunbeds were mattresses on the floor and not really suitable for people with any mobility issues (or just middle aged stiff bodies) to get up from, so this made the dash for the bali-beds in the sun even more stressful. There is a beautiful rooftop bar and small swimming pool which doesn't open until 10.30am, but this meant queueing in the stair well from 10ish to get premium sunbeds up here. Also both the main pool and this pool were very cold. There is a third pool which is slightly heated in October, we were never able to get sunbeds in the sun around here as very overlooked with the hotel and blocking out the sun, so just made the "journey" from our beds to this pool for afternoon swims. Again, as with a lot of hotels people reserve the sunbeds and often don't use them for most of the day, there are signs up saying please don't do this, but it would be more helpful if staff cleared the beds not used regularly. Plenty of serving staff constantly coming around the pool areas to get your drink orders all day. This hotel is positioned behind a beach front hotel with a road in between, but it only took about 5-10 minutes to walk to the beach. There wasn't much day time activities to join in, only yoga; the evening entertainment was musical, some nights better than others. There was a DJ who does a six hour set on the Sunday around the pool, this dragged on a bit. Some of the music played around the pool areas was strange, it was people talking over music. This "background" music could have been a bit more varied across the week as it was quite loud. I won't return to this hotel, but would recommend it to friends / family if you could choose a better positioned room than the one we had. All in all we had a great relaxing week spent with friends, plenty to eat and drink and the Crete weather was amazing.

less