Astir Beach Hotel

Great staff, amazing food. Good location. Hop to the beach and 20 mins drive to the airport. Shopping isn’t too far either.

Very good location. Comfortable hotel. Both pools very nice and clean. The sunbeds are very comfortable. All the staff was very friendly. Dinner buffets very good with a lot of local suggestions: we appreciated that !

-Some products at the breakfast should be of better quality: like orange juice, waffles, marmalades. -The quality of the wines at the buffet is too poor. I understand well these are simple wines that cannot be too expensive, but there is a minimum level of quality to propose !

The room was clean, and all areas were decent and clean. The reception operated without any issues. The hotel is about 20 minutes by car from Heraklion.

Classic spreads—such as fish or egg—were missing. The butter wasn't actually butter, despite the label; it was a mixture of margarine, water, and butter. The sweets were cloyingly sweet, and there was a complete lack of items like strudel or fruit cakes. On one hand, the hotel markets itself as "All Inclusive" yet charges half-board guests for drinks at dinner; on the other, they replace every single towel daily—a highly unecological practice. They didn't even replenish the shower foam after several days. The dinners were boring and repetitive on a weekly basis. Basically, there was always pasta, fish, and various types of meat—there were choices, but after a week, I no longer looked forward to dinner. Sweets were also available—mainly lots of sweet foam. That is certainly not my idea of ​​cake. The soups—whatever they were called—all tasted and looked the same (except for the tomato soup; that one was red). After breakfast, it was impossible to find an available sunbed by the pool—it wasn't crowded, but the loungers were all taken. Although signs around the pool warned of a two-hour limit on absence and the subsequent removal of towels, the staff never once enforced this. Consequently, whenever we returned from an excursion around 4 p.m., we were never able to get a spot by the pool. They have few parking spaces, only about 6-7. If you ask where else you can park, they will direct you to the street by the sea. The hotel is far from the waterfront promenades with silent cafes - in fact, apart from few bars there is nothing around - it is a village in the truest sense of the word. Anyone expecting some culture in the surroundings must realize that this is just a holiday resort for lazy families.

Swimming pools were very nice. Food was also good most of the time. The beach is very nice and clean, exactly in front of the hotel.

This is a "soft all inclusive" at best. I have never seen a hotel so stingy and frugal about EVERYTHING. The drinks are disgusting (both alcoholic and non alcoholic), the only drinkable beverage is the beer, which was okay. Even the water left an aftertaste in your mouth, suggesting that it was probably plain tap water.. The mattress on the beds gave back pain to my entire family of 8. The cleaning in the room is fair, but the towels are not changed to clean ones! If you throw your used towel on the floor, the cleaner picks it up, folds it, and puts it back! This is simply ridiculous and outright disgusting. Half of the staff is very rude. The receptionists especially have the attitude that gives you the creeps. The barists made faces every time you asked for more than one drink at a time. The cleaners on the other hand were kind and friendly. The AC also didn't work properly. It takes 30min for it to start blowing cold air, however it stops working if you leave the room or open the window. To solve this problem, we asked the hotel to give us an extra card for the electricity, and OMG they refused even this! We had to argue about a simple magnet card to use the faulty AC. Ridiculous. This hotel is simply not worth this much money overall.