had a great time at the island hotel last year, would have to disagreed with a lot of negatively said by others, the staff are all very helpful, when we arrived our sink didn't work one phone call to reception and it was fixed in 5 minutes so no complains there, the hotel is set out very well, clean and tidy all the time.
Gouves is very quiet, the sea front is fantastic to walk along and for runners its great, but you can hire a car very easily there, to see the island, the organised trip are very well organised, the spinaqloga island trip is very worthwhile. the evening entertainment by the English lads sing was good they tried to cater for all. the drinks are i little expensive.

gentlemen need to remember to take long trousers for the evening meal as shorts are not allowed.

we enjoyed it so much as two very busy professional people the quiet was a fantastic rest for us that we have already booked for June this year and can't wait to go back

this hotel was lovely! food! room! pool! location! staff friendly, we ate in every night, the hotel was so romantic, breakfast also lovely, right on the beach, would definitely stay there again, honestly i can't figure out all here bad reviews, some people are only happy when they are complaining!!

My husband and I stayed at The Island Hotel early October, all in all we had a very good holiday.
The hotel is really beautiful very modern and clean, we had no problem getting a sun bed and both pool areas were lovely and quiet and relaxing.
Our room was near the smaller pool and was great except for a lack of drawer space for your clothes.
The staff at the hotel were excellent very happy to please and very friendly especially Nicole in the Restaurant!
I agree with the previous reviewers that the hotel need to address the pricing of drinks as they are very expensive. Most people would rather have spent the evenings in one of the hotels very luxurious bars but we found that they were empty as they preferred to go to one of the lovely tavernas outside the hotel which served the same drinks (in some cases larger) for less than half the price!!
We did see a few people fall on steps around the hotel and we too found the tiles very slippy when wet-be careful.
The food served we found very good especially the choice at breakfast and the salads available in the evening, more traditional Greek I would say.
The weather was very mixed we had three and a half good days of sun, the rest were very wet and windy but this was October.
The reps were "ok" that’s all I would say.
The area is a bit rundown and a lot of places were closed for the winter already.You can walk the path all the way along the seafront which is lovely and there are some great little local tavernas on the way :)
This hotel is on the main flight path which no-one tells you on booking , after a while you get used to the planes but they do fly past very frequently from early morning to quite late in the evening.
The major downer to out holiday was the Greek air traffic controllers deciding to work to rule which caused us to sit for four hours on the plane on the runway of Manchester airport before they would give us a slot to fly and also on returning our return journey was also delayed by over two and a half hours!!-Not happy, with the troubles Greece is having at the moment they need to treat the tourists a bit better.
Thomson took us from our hotel to the airport for our return journey even though they knew that the plane to pick us up had not even left Manchester as it was delayed by two hours. Therefore on arrival at Heraklion airport there was people everywhere, no seats so people on floors just waiting, and waiting.The Thomson reps couldn’t wait to get us dropped off and off their hands was the feeling we got.
Overall we loved the hotel and staff, the area but would think twice about returning to Greece until things settle over there and the hotel addresses the bar costings.

Stayed at this hotel during the last week in October. Gouves itself isn't what could be described as sophisticated. It's basically a few cafe / bars stuck in the middle of nowhere. The last place I would want to take a vacation. What made it worse was that over half of the bars & shops were closed or in the process of shutting down for the season.
Now for the review of the hotel....

HOTEL AMENITIES
A lot of the facilities advertised in the hotel website and on the Thomson holiday's brochure were in fact either closed or in the process of closing. The indoor pool & spa were not operating. Two out of the three restaurants were closed. I was left with the impression that the hotel staff couldn't wait for us to leave so that they could closed the hotel for the winter.
It wasn't helped that the hotel only seemed to have about 25% occupancy the week we were there.
BEDROOM
The bedroom was O.K. but there were only two drawers in total which was no where near enough. Thank god we were there for only one week. The bathroom was too small (5ft x 6ft approx). Only one person could use it at any one time. The shower wasn't workinf when we arrives so we both had to have a bath instead. The sink plug got stuck all the time, so we couldn't drain the water out after shaving. The balcony was a bit on the small side, although I have to say that the sea view was excellent, so no complaints on that score.
RESTAURANT
There was no option of Bed & Breakfast, so we had evening dinner included. The dinner was served 'Buffet style'. Food was ordinary at best. Certainly not 5* standard. In fact we chose not to eat there the last 3 nights of the holiday, preferring to get a taxi to Heraklion and paying for a good restaurant. The wines at the hotel were way overpriced.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
Distinct lack of atmosphere at the hotel. My advice, avoid Gouves, it's awful & naff. Stay instead at Agios Nikolias further along the coast, it's sophisticated with plenty of bars & restaurants to choose from. Gouves is OK if you don't expect much from life.
I agree totally with the comments posted by Illustrious57