We booked a week half board at the Blue Horizon Hotel through Thomas Cook. The party consisted of ages 13-68.
The hotel is very pretty and welcoming and within easy walking distance of plenty of souvenir shops, small restaurants and sports/cocktail bars. Aside from this however, there is not much in the vicinity. The hotel is in an excellent location on the beach, especially for watersports (although you need to be a fairly strong swimmer if you are going to venture into the choppy sea).
The hotel building itself is well maintained, and the rooms clean yet basic. Of the 4 rooms we occupied, two had excellent sea views, whilst two had views of the road (which were extremely noisy). Whilst we were there, the weather was excellent and we managed to get a nice spot with a sunbed by the pool everyday, although you had to remember to take a towel down with you at breakfast.
The food at the hotel was excellent and never repeated. Despite having one of the smallest buffet areas we have seen, the food was all of an excellent quality with a range of pastries, toast, cereals and cooked breakfast at breakfast time. The waiters brought tea/coffee around frequently although not all waiters were pleasant. In fact, we found ourselves avoiding seats in one area of the restaurant to avoid being served by the head waiter who we found sometimes rude. Dinner was also excellent and the desserts were lovely. You had to get to dinner early to get a seat outside, which we did on our last day and it was lovely. At lunch, we sometimes ate at the snack bar nearer the beach, which was of excellent quality although very slow and slightly expensive. The drinks were also quite expensive throughout our stay.
We booked several excursions through Thomas Cook, including the water park in Faliraki, a trip around the island and a trip over to Turkey. The waterpark was excellent and well worth the trip. The trip around the island was cancelled the day before we were due to go due to not enough people signing up to go on it, which we were very disappointed about. It would have been nice to have been warned by Thomas Cook about this possibility beforehand so we could have booked through an independent company and got the full experience of Rhodes. The trip to Turkey was an extremely early start and the boat trip was way too long in the scorching heat. There were independent tour operators offering the same trip on a fast ferry, which would have cut the journey down by two hours. Once in Turkey, we were taken around Marmaris but after the extremely long journey and in the scorching heat, most of those on the trip could not be bothered. This was a long day and although we are glad we experienced it, we would definitely recommend getting a taxi to the harbour and booking independently to avoid the 4 hour journey there and back.
A few of us took the taxi into Rhodes Town on the one day. To be honest the souvenir shops are better nearer the hotel but if you want the more expensive goods and well-known retailers this is great (shops including Marks and Spencer and Zara). We then walked along to visit the ruins, which was nice and the harbour, which had some unique boats/trinket shops and a variety of excursions to offer.
Overall this was a great holiday and a great hotel. The pictures of this place do not really do it justice as it’s location on the beach is second to none and the pool area is fantastic. Also, the animation team should be commended for a range of excellent daytime activities for all ages. It was a shame this standard was not maintained for the evening entertainment but there was enough nearby to compensate for this. We would definitely recommend this hotel and Rhodes itself, which is beautiful. If you want a more lively holiday look towards Faliraki etc but for our needs this was lovely.
- Blue Horizon Palm Beach Hotel
- Blue Horizon Palm Beach Resort
- Blue Horizon Rhodes
