Silver Sands Beach Hotel

This hotel has one good thing, location. It is just perfect - you can easily go swimming in the sea, while having your sunbed (if you manage to get one) at the hotel pool. The walk to the beach is like 10 meters. That is about it. The rest of the hotel - acceptable at best.

When we arrived, it all started going sideways fast. The receptionist told us at 1PM - not that the room is not ready - but that we cannot check in before 2PM. Fine, headed to the pool and came back at 2PM. Receptionist insisted that the time is 1:40 and only after a longish talk agreed that it is actually 2PM and we can check-in. Of course she made clear that the beach towels can be changed only once in 3 days(!) and as we later found out, the same applied for the towels in the room!

Well, found our room after a loooong wait for the elevator (constant problem), we found it to be quite small - taking into account that we were 2 adults and a kid in a "extra bed". Dated room, but sort of OK anyways.

The cleaning service was daily (not every 3 days as everything else), but the quality was not up to par. On the first evening we noticed our sheets were probably washed, but were so old that stains were visible. Also the cleaning service did not change the mentioned towels, but took them off from chairs etc where they were hanging, and folded them nicely into the bathroom. Well, which towel is/was used by who?? Also every day, the cleaning service turned the AC from "cooling mode" to "warming mode". Balcony was cleaned maybe 50% of the days. Ash tray emptied 3 times, hidden in the room on one of the times it was emptied. Water pressure was fine. But we all know how nice it is to have a shower in a slippery bath-tub. Curtains did not reach all the way across the window, so you sort of automatically woke up around 7 AM to the bright light of the sun.

Then for the restaurant - we got two dinners (we had half board) at once - first and the last. It was "Mexican night" and well the food was horrific as was the logistics in the buffet area. 4 queues to get your tortilla filled. Cold cheese filling "sauce" was a first. Was seated inside, where chairs were basically from the 80s, leather parts of the chairs partly torn on most of them. Ordered some white wine, and well you know things are not good when wine is warm - and especially when they know it too and bring ice-cubes! So we ended up changing dinner to lunch every day. And I mean every day. You cannot do it for one week at a time, you need to do it every day for the next day. Forget it and you are out of luck! The lunches were mostly eatable. Funnily, once ordered red wine with the meaty lunch, and guess what - it was COLD! Also for the restaurant, I think it is not cool that you have to sign on the room what you ordered, but prices are nowhere to be seen.

The hotel does a very lousy job at making sunbeds available for everyone. Most of them are taken around 8 AM. No restrictions. Drop your towel there when going for breakfast and nothing will happen if you actually never use the reserved sunbeds. Well to you that is, someone else will be without one. In theory there is service at the pool/sunbeds, but in practice not. Workers spent their day looking at their phones. No one is going to ask you if you want a drink.

Overall it felt like a hotel that has once been great, but has been let down. No effort on service. Everything sort of works, but not in a nice, automatic way - reminds me of hotels in russia... You have to have your "beach towel exchange card" with you. They check that you are not trying to be sneaky and change only after 2 days of use and so on... when entering the restaurant, you are randomly picked to tell your room number. No one is smiling - everyone is just working there it seems.

Pool closes at 6PM, which is a tad early. Of course the lifeguard is waiting to get her time off, so actually they start asking you to exit the pool at 5:45-5:50..

So to conclude, if a 2 star hotel and a 1 start half-board restaurant is OK for you in order to have a great location choose this one. If you like some quality, choose for example lantiana garden, which is a bit "up the hill" but acceptable walk to the beach.

The hotel is in an excellent location, right on one of the most beautiful beaches in Protaras. Check-in was quick and the girls at reception were extremely polite and very helpful. There is practically everything you could need within walking distance of the hotel: restaurants, cafés, a pharmacy and shops, all just a stone’s throw away. Makis at the bar, during the evening, was also very friendly and helpful.

Breakfast offered a good variety of choices, including scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, beans, vegetables, as well as a good selection of cold cuts and cheeses. There were also croissants, savoury pastries and other options. Unfortunately, the coffee was not good at all. We also had the option of having lunch at the hotel, but when we tried it on our first day, we were unfortunately very disappointed. Although there was variety, the quality of the food was quite poor and did not meet our expectations.

Another significant issue is that there are only two small lifts serving around 200 rooms. The swimming pool, beach and restaurant are located on level -2, so there were several occasions when we had to wait up to five minutes just to get from the 3rd floor down to the lower level.

The rooms are quite old and urgently need renovation. The bed was moving so much that I felt as if I were sleeping on an inflatable boat! The bathroom was also very outdated. In general, this is a very old hotel that is long overdue for a major renovation. Even the towels were old.

As for housekeeping, during our four-day stay, the service was essentially limited to making the bed and removing the rubbish. At one point we ran out of toilet paper and it was not replaced, so I had to ask for it. After the second day, the floor clearly needed sweeping, but it was never cleaned. The towels were also never changed during our entire stay.

Overall, apart from the excellent location and some of the friendly staff, we did not find much else that stood out positively.

If the hotel undergoes a major renovation, both in the rooms and in the common areas, I believe it could become a very good choice because of its fantastic location.