Galini Sea View

Our experience at this resort was appalling. It was advertised as a 5-star resort, but in our opinion it was barely worthy of 2 stars. The service, cleanliness, food and hospitality fell well below expectations.

I’m going to start off by saying that we are usually not the ones to complain. I work in hospitality myself, so I completely understand that things can occasionally go wrong and that not everything is within a hotel’s control.

However, Galini Sea View is genuinely the worst hotel I have ever stayed in. I honestly cannot understand how this property is advertised as a 5-star hotel. In my experience, it falls nowhere near a 5-star standard, it would struggle to meet the standard I would expect from a 3-star hotel.

We have visited Crete many times and have always had an amazing time, which is exactly why we decided to try Chania side.

What an awful decision. The hotel is dirty, tired, poorly maintained and incredibly disappointing.

There is nothing to do here. No animation. No music. No atmosphere. No entertainment. No activities. Other than sitting around the pool or staying in your room, there is genuinely nothing. It feels completely dead.

And before anyone says that we should have checked, WE DID! We specifically contacted the hotel before booking and asked about the entertainment because it was important to us. We received an email from the hotel specifically confirming that there would be an animation team operating throughout the day and into the evening, with themed nights, water activities, yoga, bingo, music quizzes, disco nights, karaoke, darts and more.

None of this existed during our stay.

Even worse, the information advertised on the Thomas Cook website also described daytime activities and evening entertainment at the hotel.

So we didn’t simply arrive with unrealistic expectations. We were specifically told these things would be available.

The food is absolutely appalling. Every single day it is basically the same food over and over again. The choice is extremely limited, particularly when it comes to meat. The food is bland, dry and often hard. The pizza was hard, and the breakfast potatoes were so dry that they tasted like they had been sitting there since the night before. We even saw staff just reheating old fries in the oil whenever someone wanted them just to make them warm.

There is so little variety that we reached the point where we didn’t even want to eat at our own all-inclusive hotel anymore. We had to go elsewhere and spend our own money on food because we couldn’t face eating the same thing again.

How this is acceptable for a hotel advertised as 5-star is beyond me.

Then there was our room.

We walked into our room and found a massive blood stain on the mattress.

Not a tiny mark. A large, obvious stain.

And when we looked at the mattress itself, it was covered in further stains and was clearly extremely old and worn.

The hotel changed the mattress protector, but the actual mattress remained in the same disgusting condition.

As someone who works in hospitality, I know exactly what standard should be expected from accommodation. This is not acceptable. Full stop. I would be embarrassed to provide this standard to a guest even in a much lower-rated property.

And then the pool. The pool water looked green and dirty, which obviously did not exactly encourage us to use it.

The staff and customer service were another disappointment.

Whenever we tried to ask questions or get help, we were met with an attitude that made us feel like we were inconveniencing them.

At one point, we went to reception to ask what was actually happening with the entertainment and what was available at the hotel.

We were told everything was closed.

We even asked about the restaurant and were told that the staff member didn’t even know what was going to be served and couldn’t provide us with a menu.

Imagine being an all-inclusive guest and having to ask reception what food is available because everyday you were served the same old pasta, dry pizza, and meat with more bones than meat.

And now, to make matters even worse, both of us have developed a rash during our stay. Obviously, we cannot claim with certainty what has caused it, but considering the cleanliness issues we have experienced, including the condition of the mattress and the general standard of the hotel, it is extremely concerning.

We came to Crete expecting a relaxing all-inclusive holiday.

Instead, we have spent our holiday looking for somewhere else to eat, sitting around because there is nothing to do, dealing with poor food, dealing with an unacceptable room, and repeatedly trying to get basic information and assistance from staff.

We did not simply sit back and complain online either. We contacted our travel agent while we were still at the hotel to try to resolve the situation.

Following this, the hotel offered us a room upgrade to a maisonette with a private pool, but by this point we had only two nights remaining of our holiday. Moving rooms at that stage would have been practically pointless and would not have resolved the fact that the majority of our holiday had already been affected. Given the time of year and the weather, we also had no reason to believe that we would even be able to make meaningful use of the private pool.

We have therefore asked for appropriate compensation for the experience we have received. Unfortunately, the hotel’s response has been extremely dismissive, despite the fact that we have raised genuine concerns and provided evidence of the issues we have experienced.

The most frustrating part is that we specifically checked everything before booking.

We asked about the entertainment.

We were given assurances.

We booked based on those assurances.

And then we arrived to find that the reality was completely different.

I genuinely cannot understand how this hotel has a 5-star rating or how it is being marketed in the way it is.

If you’re considering booking Galini Sea View, DONT.

Don’t be fooled by the photographs or the 5-star label. This is not the 5-star all-inclusive experience you might expect.

We have been to Crete many times and absolutely love the island. This hotel, however, has been the biggest disappointment of any holiday we have ever had.

Dirty. Run-down. Boring. Poor food. Poor service. No entertainment. Unacceptable room standards.

Never again, and we absolutely will not be recommending this hotel to anyone.