Daios Cove Resort & Luxury Villas

Daios Cove’s location and architecture are spectacular. All of the staff, from reception, waiters and waitresses, bellboys and bartenders to the cooks, were extremely helpful, friendly and well-trained. The food was delicious. We were there as a couple in early October, and the majority of the guests were families with (small) children, probably because of the autumn holidays somewhere in Europe. We booked a Deluxe Room with Sea View, which is probably one of the cheaper room categories at the resort. The view over the sea was amazing. The room was spacious, the bed was wonderful, and it had all the amenities you could wish for. Except for one thing: sun! The resort is built in such a way that hardly any of the rooms get any sun on their balconies. Only some of the larger villas do. This was very disappointing for us, as it meant that we had to leave our room and go to the public areas to enjoy the sun. The resort is located in a cove, which also means that the beach is quite small. In October, the sun sets around 16:30, so the lack of sun on the balconies was even more noticeable. The pools are very nice. However, the resort is not located next to a village, so if you don't have a car, you are a bit stuck there unless you book some of the activities offered by the hotel, which are quite expensive. The hotel has a large wellness department, but none of it is included in the room price, and it is quite expensive. We were disappointed that not even the sauna or jacuzzi was free to use. All in all, we enjoyed our stay, but for us, three nights were enough.

We had high hopes for this resort for our half term break with my husband and our 8 year old, based on past reviews and pictures on TA. However, after a very joined-up and smooth check-in experience, this resort is sadly let down by uninterested service at every turn. We are still here for a few more days as I write this review. The good: - Daios Cove is genuinely a beautiful property with well appointed rooms. - The food is really quite good and there were only a couple of instances where the food wasn’t up to standard. - The diving facility is great and we had positive interactions with Marius and his team. That’s where the good ends for us I’m afraid. The bad: - Housekeeping is shockingly bad and does not care about delivering a careful service. Even after we escalated things to George in Guest Relations (and he reassured us that things would be sorted) housekeeping as continued to be a source of major disappointment (think coffee cups not replaced, bed turned down but wrinkled, bedding not tucked in, ironing board not put away, pillow chocolates left in a heap on a table, curtains not drawn fully.). We’ve also walked by other rooms being cleaned with the housekeeping staff blasting music as they worked. Felt like what you’d get at a cheap motel. -The service at the restaurants is also shockingly indifferent. No one is looking to deliver a connected, thoughtful experience even as we ate there every day and encountered the same servers. For them you’re just a body and a box to check. - Kids club was too small and the activities geared towards smaller kids (ages 4-5 perhaps) so we couldn’t drop our 8 year old off there. There is a games room with ping pong tables, Xbox and PS3 but it’s unsupervised and when we weren’t there with him, my son had to negotiate with older kids who weren’t always the kindest. Oh and it’s also dirty, poorly maintained and dingy in there so not the nicest spot for the family. - Spa facilities are nice enough but extremely ungenerous in that even with a treatment booked, you get 1 hr to use the facilities (or you pay €35 to use the facilities for an hour and no more.) The service issues in particular took away from our overall enjoyment and honestly points to a total lack of thought and training around the experience they want to deliver.

Excellent Food and Service, but a Major Let-Down on the Bedding Daios Cove has a lot going for it, particularly the food, service and childcare facilities. However, our experience was let down significantly by the quality of the sofa bed in our suite, which fell well below what I would expect from a hotel of this standard. The positives The food was excellent, and the quality of all the restaurants we visited was consistently very high, even by the standards of a luxury hotel. The staff were also consistently friendly and provided great service throughout our stay. We used the Scott Dunn crèche and thought it was excellent. The staff were lovely and took great care of our baby, which made us feel very comfortable leaving them there. The hotel is very baby-friendly without feeling as though it is exclusively geared towards families, which we particularly appreciated. The views are beautiful, and the pool area was a lovely place to spend time. The sofa bed: not what you expect from a luxury hotel Unfortunately, the bedding was a significant disappointment and had a real impact on our stay. I was travelling with my mother and my young baby, so we booked a suite specifically to have a separate bedroom where I could sleep with the baby while my mother slept in the main bedroom. The layout of the suite meant that the main bedroom was clearly the space intended for spending most of your time in. It had a king-size bed, dining area, sofa and coffee table, TV, drinks and glassware. The additional bedroom, by contrast, contained only a sofa bed and a coffee table pushed into the corner. It was essentially a room designed purely for sleeping. We understood when booking that it would have a sofa bed rather than a proper bed, but we expected it to be of a reasonable standard. Sadly, the sofa bed was genuinely very poor. It was awkward to get into, and the springs were so loose that you could easily trap your limbs in them when turning over during the night. This was not simply a case of the bed being less comfortable than a conventional bed; its design and condition made it difficult to sleep on properly. I would have been disappointed with it in a budget hotel, let alone a high-end resort. We raised the issue with the hotel, which offered a mattress topper. Unfortunately, this was poor quality and did not resolve the problem. It was not even the correct size for the sofa bed and would have hung over the edges considerably. We eventually resorted to sleeping on a camp bed. While the camp bed itself was perfectly adequate, it was clearly not what we had paid for when booking a suite at a luxury hotel. We also asked our Scott Dunn representative to try the sofa bed so that she could assess the issue for herself. Her reaction reinforced our view that the bed was well below an acceptable standard. Ultimately, my mother and I had to alternate every three nights so that we could each spend at least some of our stay sleeping in a reasonable bed. This was far from ideal and meant that a problem that should have been straightforward for the hotel to resolve affected our entire holiday. What frustrated us most was not just the poor quality of the bed, but the hotel’s response. The hotel maintained that the mattress topper was a satisfactory solution and refused to acknowledge that the bed itself was inadequate. We did not feel that our concerns were taken seriously. I appreciate that we had booked a suite with a sofa bed, rather than two conventional beds. However, when a hotel charges luxury prices for a suite with a separate bedroom, that bedroom should be fit for its intended purpose. We were not expecting the same bed as in the main room, but we did expect something on which an adult could sleep comfortably and safely. Having to resort to a camp bed, and then being told that the hotel’s solution was perfectly satisfactory, was particularly disappointing. Getting around with a baby The resort is very baby-friendly in terms of its facilities and staff, but the layout is not particularly practical if you rely on a pram. There are two separate funicular railways serving the different levels of the resort, but they do not provide access to all the same areas. This means that getting to some destinations involves going up one funicular and down another, which can make moving around quite time-consuming. The funiculars also do not go all the way to the beach. There are approximately 30 steps between the lowest level and the beach, so you need to take the baby out of the pram and carry them down while managing the pram separately. I would not have been able to do this on my own, so I would be cautious about recommending the resort to anyone travelling solo with a baby. The beach is relatively small, and the sunbeds are close together. When they are all in use, the area feels quite crowded, although the views are lovely. There is also nowhere at beach level to walk a baby in a pram. If, like us, you rely on walking your baby to help them fall asleep, you can only realistically spend around 45 minutes to an hour at the beach before needing to pack everything up and return to a higher level or your room, where there is enough space to walk around with the pram. As a result, we ended up spending most of our time around the pool rather than at the beach. This is worth bearing in mind if the beach is an important part of your holiday. Overall Daios Cove has many excellent qualities. The food is outstanding, the staff are friendly and attentive, and the Scott Dunn crèche was a real highlight. We also appreciated how comfortable the hotel felt for a family with a young baby. However, the experience with the sofa bed was a significant failing. The bed was of an unacceptable standard for a hotel of this calibre, the proposed solution did not resolve the issue, and the hotel’s unwillingness to recognise the problem was particularly frustrating. Having to use a camp bed and alternate sleeping arrangements during a luxury holiday was simply not what we expected. The resort’s layout also makes beach access more difficult than it should be for anyone using a pram. Overall, there is a great deal to like about Daios Cove, but I would strongly advise anyone considering a suite to establish exactly what the second bed is like before booking. The quality of the accommodation should match the standard of the food, service and facilities, and in our experience, it simply did not.

Stunning property. Fabulous dining. Professional, friendly staff.

Really enjoyed our stay overall. Staff very attentive. We were on bed and breakfast basis. The prices on the beach are extortionate, basic food but totally overpriced for what it is. Unfortunately, I mislaid my sunglasses on the beach, we reported it to the hotel, but unfortunately they weren't found. Pity that in a 5 star hotel somebody may have stolen them.