Staff - The staff are welcoming and very friendly, very homely feel. Family run business, the barmen is great, Mario!!

Room - It is not the plush, modern and contemporary hotel, if that is what you are after, this is not your place. This hotel is very relaxed, laid back, blocks are split out so you are not always bumping into the other holiday makers. Showers are not great, but do the job, avoid having showers at peak time! Room was cleaned every afternoon without fail.

Food/Bar – we went all in, food was lovely and well prepared Greek food, did get rather repetitive after two weeks, but that is expected with the length of our stay. Bar atmosphere was good, very relaxed and not rowdy, the occasional chatter and banter. The bar man will play your own music if you ask politely!

Beach/Strip – Hotel is 10 minutes away from the beach, main strip with bars and tourist attraction. Also only a short taxi ride away from clubbing scene… defiantly worth a visit, maybe even an evening stroll, takes about half and hour. Also note that this hotel is on a hill, so walking down hill to the beach is no problem, walking up hill home…

If you want a feel for real Greece/Crete then this is the place to stay…

Booked this hotel through lastminute.com on a half-board basis. It was sold as a 3* hotel, but certainly wasn't 3* or cheap. On arrival, early in the morning, we were directed to our room where we discovered 2 single beds. Unfortunately, they were made of stone, so we could not even move them together. We ended up sharing a single bed for 3 nights before they could find us a double room.

Rooms are in a number of typical whitewashed buildings with 'balconies' looking out in various directions, set in quite attractive grounds. Ours had a good view of the crane where people were bungee-jumping from - lovely at sunset! They weren't very private, but that was too our advantage as we met another couple from London in the next room. The shower room was dingy, poorly lit and had minimal water pressure. The rooms were simple and rustic with an old-fashioned two-band radio set in the wall next to the bed. We amused ourselves by trying to find a good radio station once or twice.

The hotel facilities were average with a medium-sized swimming pool and bar next to the hotel restaurant and reception.

As we were looking forward to the authentic Greek cuisine, the food at the hotel was a disappointment to say the least, with breakfast being the most bizarre. Tinned fruit with yoghurt was followed by a mixture of whatever was left in the kitchen, for example baked beans with sweet pastries. There was quite a good selection at dinner, but it was pretty greasy and featured chips every day.

The management weren't that friendly, unless you were buying lots of overpriced drinks from their bar, although they were helpful with arranging a hire car. The waiter was very friendly and once gave me a lift up the hill on the back of his scooter. The location was a good 20-minute walk from central Hersonissos, which was probably a good thing if you wanted to sleep!

The most annoying thing about our visit was a German guy, who had obviously been there a number of times before, and seemed to be the guest of honour, at a different level to the other paying guests. I honestly don't think that is good practice for any hotel.

Finally, not about the hotel, general advice - only stay in Hersonissos if you're interested purely in drinking lots of cheap alcohol, watching football in an english, german or dutch bar and bungee-jumping, much like Malia up the road.

The other reviews I've read are pretty accurate - the bad ones anyway.

Excellent enjoyed every minute of our stay a well run family business - rooms basic but very clean staff excellent and not just one or two of the staff i mean all the staff - we where there when xl went t*ts up glad to say not us. We went half board basis must say a lot better than last year in turkey went full board and ate out every day.

We booked as part of a package. The location wasn't bad, a short walk into town, though you really need a car to stay here. The staff was friendly and helpful, for instance made scrambled eggs one day on request when the breakfast buffet didn't have anything we liked. The dinner buffet was great- decent selection, fairly authentic Cretan food freshly prepared. Although there was no TV in the room, they have a TV area with cable, a large DVD selection and a small library. The room, however, was bare-bones and full of mosquitoes. The first night we hardly slept, had to keep hunting bugs and got bitten all over our faces. Even when we paid extra for AC (not normally needed in October), closed the windows and sealed every opening with tape, they still got in. We also had to watch for them in the common areas (dining room, TV room, internet area). I would only recommend it if you're one of those lucky people that don't get bitten.