We took our 2010 summer holiday at the Marmari Beach Hotel in Kos.
We flew from Zürich on Viking Airlines (not bad but take your own sandwiches and drinks!).
A short bus journey from the airport to the hotel was quite enjoyable.
Efficient staff at reception checked us in and within 20 minutes of arrival we were in our room.
The room was in the western wing on the second floor of a small building. A large master bedroom and the "lounge/kitchen" had two beds and a third was added (our children are aged 8, 13 and 16). A small but sufficient bathroom and a nice terasse. Very clean. Air conditionning worked well (maybe a bit too cold at times but you cannot not use it). The room was well kept during our stay. The cleaning lady would often put a flower in the bathroom and lay one on the beds from time to time. Very efficient and good!
As for the mosquitoes, well, there are plenty but if you organise yourself then no problem. 1. Keep the windows shut in the rooms at night, curtains drawn during the day. Buy anti-mosquito plugs for the rooms and some fly spray. When out and about in the evening spary anti-mosquito spray on yourself.
There are 320 rooms, so on average there must be close to 1000 residents. Well, it is so well spread out that you would not realise that so many people are sharing the same hotel. Very well planned and organised.
The restaurant area is very nice. The food was good. They try to cater for all tastes (pasta for the Italians, plenty of potatoes and saussages for the Germans, salads meats and fish for others). There would be some Greek specialities almost every day, but I would have liked there to be more Greek food than there was. But the quality was excellent. The breakfast buffet was excellent.
The personnel throughout the hotel are very very good. There are some Greeks but quite a few non-Greeks (mainly very friendly Romanian students making some money to finance their studies back home).
There are three main swimming pools and then the beach which is a very short walk from the main complexe. The pools are well kept and clean (the water was a bit on the hot side). There are pool bars to refresh yourself !
The hotel has a policy not to reserve your deck chairs at the pools, but they do not implement it (a difficult task I admit). So of course by 8am all the Germans and Italians have put their towels and other paraphernalia on "their" chairs so by the time you have had your breakfast and head for the pools there are no free places. Of course the chairs are "reserved" all day even if they are only used a few hours. After a few days we thoght we would "reserve" some chairs before heading for breakfast. If you can't beat them, join them. Well guess what, by the time we got their a group of Italians had thrown our towels on the floor and had taken possession of the chairs with a big smile on their faces.
Anyhow, we prefered the beach - why stay around a pool all day when you're on a Greek island? There things were much better because you had to pay for the chairs (very cheap, €3 per chair per day) so there was always plenty of room.
The beach is nice and the water clean and quite warm. It is very windy on the north side of the island. The wind keeps you from boiling, but some days it was so strong that you really needed to protect yourself from the sand. But all in all the beach is nice.
Activities were either in German or Italian. The evening animation was in German. About 60% of the guests are German and 30% Italian. 10% are "other nationalities". It is a pitty that they do not cater for the "other nationalities" by doing some of the shows or activities in English or French (there were quite a few Swiss French and Swiss Germans.
All in all a very nice holiday.