Dimitra Beach Hotel & Suites

We thoroughly enjoyed our recent stay at The Dimitra Beach Resort and Suites in Kos. At first I thought there were a lot of steps and having suffered a recent episode of sciatica I thought I would struggle but the staff couldn't do enough especially the porters who gave us a lift up the hill back to our suite. Also we thought we would struggle with us both being gluten free but once we spoke with the chefs in each restaurant they were brilliant and we didn't feel we had missed out on any of the lovely cuisine that was on offer. We really enjoyed our time there and there were a few names that stuck in our minds that made us feel very welcome. Thanks to Alisa, Georgous, Ahmed, Dennis, Christina and Carlinjay and all the rest of the staff that we haven't mentioned. We would recommend a visit as Kos is a beautiful island.

Having had a few disasters, we are always apprehensive when we go on holiday until now. This gem has changed everything. All we want from a holiday is to be left alone to enjoy it, not bothered by adults getting together to get drunk and kids in turn running round the place like it's butlins. Well we have just had this and more. The food was great the service incredible and the views of the sea were breathtaking. A big thank you to ALL the staff especially Dennis and Kristins who run the top bar by the pool like it's their own with a smile and a laugh all day every day. But thank you to everyone including the guests who seem to understand the atmosphere and make it such a beautiful holiday. WE WILL BE BACK. Rob and Amanda

We have just spent a lovely week here and I have to say, I cannot fault the hotel in any way. I do have to mention one of our food & drink waiters, Anastas, he couldn’t do enough for us, and was a true gentleman at all times, he made our holiday. Perfect!

An excellent beach front hotel with plenty of space, great food & amazing staff. Special mention to Adina in the main bar who looked after us so well. Joanne & Ellena at the adult only beach bar & Mark at reception. George keeps the place running like a well oiled machine, he seems to work night & day ensuring that the guests get the best service. The hotel is on a hillside about 20 mins by bus to Kos Town, if you are planning on going out you would need to use taxi, hire a car or use the bus which stops outside the hotel. The beach is pebbly so beach shoes are essential if you want to swim in the lovely sea. There are 3 pools & an adult only area close to the beach, all the sunbeds have thick cushions and are very comfortable, the sunbeds on the beach also have cushions on making them very comfortable. It is very hilly with lots of stairs so although they have a golf buggy if you had mobility problems it could be difficult to get around. The hotel is spotlessly clean, rooms are cleaned daily with new towels & molton brown/rituals products, illy coffee machines in rooms & tv’s, the view is spectacular from every area of the hotel. Restaurants are well equipped and clean, we went to the Greek restaurant for breakfast, lunch and tea most days but the main restaurant is very nice, again staff can’t do enough for you. Coffees are excellent all freshly made in the morning. I would return to this hotel it’s perfect for a relaxing holiday you do not need to leave! We love exploring so hired a quad bike for 3 days which was easy to do from the local place about 30 mins walk from the hotel and we seen the whole island including a trip to Zia, which was very special. Kos is a beautiful island and like all the Greek islands the people are so welcoming and friendly. There is lots of things to see and do, we did a 3 islands boat trip from Kos town to Kalymnos, Persimesos and Platy. We explored the many archeological sites and beaches.

We stayed at Dimitra Beach Hotel and Suites for 7 nights, from the 22nd of June, to the 29th of June for our Honeymoon. We booked this holiday (our first time doing this) with EasyJet Holidays. Upon arrival, the hotel at first glance appeared clean and tidy, and the reception area was well maintained. When we booked the holiday through EasyJet, we made it apparent that it was our Honeymoon, as anyone would. When checking in, the reception staff made no reference what-so-ever to the fact it was our Honeymoon, no congratulations, no acknowledgement, nothing at all. They were friendly but not particularly helpful. When checking in, they gave us an “allocated dinner time” of 20:30 until 21:30, which neither of us have ever experienced within an all-inclusive hotel but was far too late for us and so we requested a different slot. They gave us “18:30 – 20:00”, along with a card that we had to take down to dinner with us every night. We were told to wait in the seating area near reception whilst they waited for someone to help us with our bags to our room. He was very pleasant, helpful, and carried our bags from the moment greeted us until we had entered our room. The first room: This is what we can only describe as being one of the most unhygienic, unclean rooms we have stayed in. For a five star hotel, you expect pretty much perfection, little details noticed, everywhere spotless, and everything at a high standard. When exploring our room, there were multiple stains over the headboard of the bed, there were stains on counter tops and the coffee table, the coffee station quite clearly hadn’t been cleaned since the last guests, with there being dust built up and watermarks over the gloss, black plate it was kept on. There was huge gap below the door, where ants and other bugs were coming in and out of the room. The floor was covered in bits everywhere, including hair, dirt, and dust. No welcome gift, nothing special in the room for us, overall feeling deflated at this point as we had already been travelling around 10 hours at this point. We called reception, to have housekeeping reclean our room, with a forced apology, and a “someone will be at your room shortly” following. Whilst we waited for someone to come to our room, we went for a walk around the hotel. At this point we were both hungry (it was around 3/4 o’clock in the afternoon), and so we went to Thalassi bar (adults only area) and asked where could we get food. The staff member very abruptly said “there” and pointed to (what we later found out was the Greek restaurant) an area which was quite clearly not serving food (service finished at 2:30). And so we headed up to the swim up bar, that had a small amount of hotdogs. They were completely smothered in sauce, but thought there was not much else on offer. We then wandered down to the lowest point of the hotel before reaching the beach, walking towards Cucina restaurant as we wanted to see where everything was located. There was a small variety of snacks that looked like they had seen better days, with little birds on the countertops eating any food that hadn’t been covered over with a lid. We circled back to our room, and there was no sign that housekeeping had been, so we made the decision to go to reception and speak to them in person. We told them about how unhappy we were, said again that we were here on our Honeymoon, and that we had been travelling for a sustained period of time, and did not need this stress as soon as we arrived to the hotel. They radioed to housekeeping and told us to sit in the bar whilst housekeeping went in to tidy up the room. Going to the bar, we started talking to another couple that had arrived the same day as us and spent around an hour/hour and a half there, before making the decision to go back to our room. We checked with the desk to see if they were complete with our room before going back as we did not want to disturb them. The desk told us yes and so we started walking back to our room (321). It was quite clear they hadn’t finished with our room, and so we took another lap around the hotel to pass some more time. When entering back into our room, it was clear that the only thing they had done was mop the floor. With hair and dust still being areas around the room and none of the stains gone from any of the furniture, the only other thing that had changed was a paper plate with some fruit had been placed on the top with a bottle of red wine there too. At this point, we were both extremely disappointed already with the lack of hospitality and service we had received, especially as we had book this hotel due to the reviews on how amazing of a hotel it was. Anyway, we grit our teeth, and just decided to try and enjoy our holiday as it was meant to be a time of us being able to relax after the stress of planning a wedding for over a year and a half. We both got ready to go down for dinner. When arriving, the restaurant overall looked clean, but with it being open (both indoor and outdoor dining available), the amount of flies was extraordinary. They were all over the desserts, flying around people whilst eating, and just seemed to be everywhere within the food area. As well as the small birds flying in, and landing near dessert area, and we even seen one eating from one of the options. It is quite clear there is no where near enough staff within this restaurant to maintain hygienic working standards and make sure that the food is being monitored closely. Following onto the next day, we both made our way down to the “activity pools”. The only thing we witnessed during the course of 9am till 2pm was darts, and aqua aerobics. There is 110% not enough entertainment to keep everyone occupied throughout the day. There’s other pools that are more a relaxing vibe, and are an area to be able to chill in, but the activity pool, you expect a little more to be going on. The positive of this day was that the hotel seemed relatively quiet, with us being able to get two sunbeds no problem, and being relatively close to the bar to be able to get drinks. When going back into the room to get ready for our dinner, we started to both have showers and get ourselves ready. We had the aircon on from about 3pm and at 4:25 we had noticed that there was a constant flow of water coming out of the aircon, leaking all over the electrical socket where our phones had been plugged in and charging! At this point, we had both had enough, and so we called down to reception, where they didn’t seem overally concerned and said that someone from maintenance would be up “shortly”. 15 minutes go by, and so we both said we need to go down to the desk. We told reception how disappointed we were with all this, the receptionist not really offering much sympathy, and just “I’ll speak to the manager”. We were told that we could be given another room and one of the other reception team came up with us to make sure that the room was “up to our standard”. The way this was said to us did feel slightly patronising, but for a five star hotel, we were expecting A LOT better than what we had already experienced. This room was not much cleaner than the other, with there being the same issues as the first room in terms of cleanliness, but the air-con was not above any electrical outlets, and that was our main concern at that point. We said yes to the room, and so had to go back to the other room to bundle up our belongings (which was a good job we were living out of our suitcases, as the wardrobe area was far too small), and called down to reception to see if we could have assistance with our bags. There were steps EVERYWHERE in this hotel, up to rooms, down to pool areas, in the reception area, everywhere, and so we wanted help with our luggage to make sure we were keeping ourselves safe (with the way our luck was going on this holiday, we were expecting one of us to fall and end up needing medical attention). This took around 10 minutes. The gentleman that came to help us was the same from the day before, and he was a genuinely kind, and polite man. We didn’t catch his name, but he was great. Our New Room - The front door handle was completely loose, and after the first time housekeeping cleaned our room, they left our door unlocked. This was especially and issue because the safe was completely unusable. We had been leaving all our belongings in this room, our rings, the engagement ring, money, passports, purse and wallet, everything had been left in this room. The room was left open because the keys for the room are still keys, not like a key card. The curtains were stained in this room, the coffee area filthy, bedding not clean some days (visible hairs after housekeeping had changed the beds). We could go on, but the pictures and videos will explain for themselves. Our holiday was only made better by the other guests we met on this holiday. They made this experience more enjoyable than it would have been if we hadn’t of met them. The pool areas: seemingly clean and generally maintained well. The view from the Cabana was the only thing that made this hotel a 5 star. The Buffet Restaurant: It needs to have the doors shut to minimise the amount of flies around the food. There needs to be more staff around in these restaurants. Our other criticism on this, is that we had a later dinner the one night in this restaurant (after we realised that they don’t check the cards we had been given at check in), visiting around 9pm. Staff were quite clearly shutting down areas, mopping heavy traffic areas when there was still a lot of people within the restaurant. The Italian Restaurant (Cucina): We had our visit to this restaurant on the Thursday of our visit. After the difficulties on the first day (arrival day), we had contacted EasyJet for support (they were no use apart from agreeing the cleanliness wasn’t up to standard), they told the hotel that it was a special occasion, and so we were given a bottle of sparkling for the table, and a cake for our dessert, which did make our stay feel slightly more special. At this point, it did almost feel like it was too little, too late. The Bars: Lili in the reception bar/entertainment veranda was incredible. Such a wonderful woman, and was why we kept going back to this one bar in particular. She remembered our orders every single night, and was rapid with making sure everyone was content with their drinks. The other bar areas are struggling a lot. There needs to be more staff in this hotel in general. By the end of our stay, the hotel was completely full, and having one bar worker on the bar during the day was nowhere near enough to serve all these people. We had started to settle on this trip, until we had spoken to another couple who were there for a shorter, regular holiday, and had been upgraded to a suite, bottle of fizz in their room and a fully stocked minibar. The lady of the couple had said this hotel grade the guests upon checking in, with a likelihood of who they should and shouldn’t upgrade. This is genuinely outrageous if this is how this hotel is operated, if you treat all guests the same way, they would be more likely to recommend your place to stay, and even revisit in the further. When talking to others whilst visiting this hotel, there were multiple people saying that they had smaller issues (even one couple saying they had a cockroach in their room), but hadn’t said anything about it to reception as they did not see it as a big issue, until we had told them our experience of this hotel. Everyone we spoke to were furious at the treatment of us during this stay. This hotel ruined what was meant to be a celebration of our marriage, and turned it into one of the worst holidays we have ever had. The night before leaving, we had a knock on the door, with a small, token gesture of two small bottles of wine (one red, one white) and some sort of honey, cracker set? As a “thank you for staying with us”. When we were talking to the other guests, they had not received this, and so not sure if it was given to us to try and sweeten us into not giving this review. When checking out, the reception staff member asked how was our stay, and we were genuinely lost for words, looked at each other, and laughed. Overall, Dimitra Beach Hotel & Suites fell well below the standard we expected from a five-star hotel, particularly for what was meant to be our honeymoon. While the location is beautiful, the sea views are stunning, and a handful of staff members, especially the porter and Lili in the reception bar, were a real credit to the hotel, these positives simply could not outweigh the repeated issues with cleanliness, maintenance, customer service, and the lack of acknowledgement for such a special occasion. We left feeling disappointed that so much of our holiday was spent reporting problems instead of relaxing and enjoying our first trip as a married couple. Based on our experience, we would not return to this hotel or recommend it to others looking for a five-star or honeymoon destination, as we do not feel the quality or service reflects the rating or the price paid. (can not attach videos but more than happy to send them to the hotel if they want to get in touch with us.)