My wife and I had done a lot of research before we finally booked this hotel. Our requirements were that we wanted a hotel on the water, a room with a seaview balcony and aricondition, and walking distance to local resturants and beach. In that respecet, the Mastichari Bay Hotel was almost perfect.
It is 5 minutes to walk to the little downtown area of Mastichari, which consists of resturants and souvernirshops. The hotel had both a nice pool, and a little beach, but the Mastichari beach was much nicer. The Mastichari beach was also only a five minute walk. As far as the rooms, the one we ended up in was very nice with big balcony and view to the ocean and surrounding islands. We had booked our hotel thourgh expedia, where they offer a few different kind of rooms. What we booked was called a Superior Double Seaview Room, but that is not what we got when we arrived. We got a room with a small balcony and "seaview" only through other buildings and trees. It seemed that the hotel didn`t differentiate between the rooms the same way as expedia(not sure, just got that impression). When we brought this issue to the hotel personnel, they were still very polite and accomodating. The following day we got the room we had booked and payed for. We were very happy with that room. It was big, nice, clean with a great balcony. The only gripe was the airconditioner. It had a very poor output, and would only be on between 1500 and midnight (and only then if you were IN the room).

Overall we were very very happy with our hotel experience. When we were on Kos, we traveld over the enitre island, but we saw no other place or hotel that we would have rather stayed at.

The hotel rooms were lovely, we had a beautiful sea view from our balcony (room 826) and the buildings were typical Greek white and blue with bourganvilla everywhere.. Could not fault the staff and the night reception man was particularly helpful when we needed him. The food was buffet style with quite a wide range and was ok. The pools and pool bar were great, except that the Germans put their towels on the sunbeds so you had no chance. However, from the minute we arrived we realised that we were the only English staying there, and we were made to feel it. We said 'good morning' to several guests on our first morning but found that they never smiled and were quite off, to the point of being rude. The day of the England/Germany game the hotel played the German national anthem at around 11.00 in the morning, very loudly, and the entertainments organiser was shouting a lot about Deutschland and put up a German flag - no mention about England at all (as far as I could understand - probably a good thing) He then said that he would do the same for Holland the next day - still no mention of England - You can imagine how we felt after England's appalling display!!! I would certainly recommend this hotel if you don't mind being surrounded by Germans - probably better than a load of English larger louts - at least they were quiet apart from the day of the England/Germany game, and we did get used to it eventually. The hotel is only a short walk from the restaurants and bars, and there are regular buses to Kos, Kardemena and Kefalos. We also took boat rides to Turkey (from Kos) and Kalymnos (from Mastichari). We had to go to the Tourist Information in Kos to find out anything about the island though, as anything in the hotel was in German. Will probably go back to the hotel again - but will learn to speak German first.

On arrival in our sea view room, the first thing we did was to open the curtains and sliding door to admire the view....which was trees and no sea! I mentioned this to reception who said that it would be a sea view room if the trees werent there and that they didnt have any other rooms without trees in front of them. The rooms are basic with pretty drab decorations and to say we were self catering we didnt get a kettle, chopping board, sharp knife, teaspoon and a whole host of other things that you might need to make a sandwich or a cuppa. Anyway, it was a very warm evening so we switched on the air con and went out into the village for our evening meal. On our return we discovered that the room was not the cool haven we expected, and that the aircon was not working. I went to reception to tell them about the fault. The receptionist advised me that the aircon only worked from 3pm until midnight and given that it was 1.30am the room had probably just 'warmed up' and that we should just open a window. I explained that we'd paid for it and that it should be turned on. She explained that it couldnt be just turned on for us and that they would have to make the change for the whole complex. When I eventually spoke to the manager four days into the 7 day holiday he said that he would be able to turn it on for our studios and apologised for the lack of sleep we might have had. The rest of the stay was pretty uneventful with the repitition of 'agadoo' and 'I am the music man' each and every night. Surely English and German children have more up to date taste in music? I know I've gone on a bit but this last bit was the final insult....
When we came to pay for the rooms on the last night, I handed the receptionist my Amex card. He also asked for a card to pay for the other room, so another member of our party handed him their card too. He gave me the slip to sign which I did. He then bought the second slip for my friend to sign and I noticed my card details we on the slip. I pointed out the mistake and the man on reception started to ask 'why I mess him about'. I explained that he'd simply swiped the wrong card twice and that he should just refund my card and the drama would be over. Anyway, he tried the refund which he did incorrectly and debited my card for the third time. He couldnt get the machine to work with refunds so I said I would go to bed and that we would sort in the morning when reception were back. I was woken up at 2am with him knocking on the door asking me to come to reception to 'enter my PIN'. I explained that we'd sort it in the morning. After lots of shouting and trying to reason with the staff the day after, we still didnt get anywhere and to this day I don't have my money back. The hotel promised that they would transfer the money into my account on my return to the UK however once I called them on my return they explained that they werent willing to do this. I've had to leave this with Amex to try and resolve on my behalf. So.....long story I know but all I can say is there are lots and lots of apartments in the village many with sea views and many that are of nicer quality than this hotel so please don't waste your money.

In many ways staying at the Mastichari is a bit like trying to buy a BMW. You kind of know what you're going to get before you drive it; you are surprised by how little you get in the base package without shelling out on some options and you have to put up with an awful lot of German standards. The good points for me were the service at the restaurant, where the food was of generally good quality and easily available via the buffet service, and the extremely helpful staff. The bad points were all around the blatant penny pinching by the management. We stayed half board which was a good deal - but although the food was free we had to pay for our drinks separately. Want internet access or the key to your rooms security safe ? More money required. But by far the worse offender was the A/C system. Despite being the height of the summer, the Air Con was only available between 15:00 and Midnight. In addition it switched off when you were out of the room or if the balcony doors weren't securely shut. if you came back a bit late from the bar then you often had less than half an hour of cool air before you found yourself waking up in an oven in the early hours.

In general the other guests were mostly German and the Kids club is basically for them only (unless your child is fluent in the language). But to be honest the other guests were very polite and the anticipated stereotypical fight for sun-beds around the pool did not occur.

The location of the hotel near the village (and more importantly the village public beach) is excellent which was just as well since the hotels beach again was done on the cheap with the sand stabilised by a screen of rocks and seaweed.