Kalithea Horizon Royal

-Not 4*, more like 3 -Staff a mixture of pleasant and professional to miserable and unhelpful. Many of the staff in the main buffet appear to overtly resent your presence. -Not a resort designed for those who struggle to walk, as your room can be quite a distance away from amenities. -rooms not bad for adults. If you have young kids beware. There’s no childproof means of securing room door or patio doors. -cleanliness of rooms and dining areas pretty good but nobody ever seems to collect cups/glasses/plates etc around pools -food quality and selection pretty good but if it’s busy it’s like playing dodgeball and plenty of fellow tourists think nothing of pushing in front of you. -two of our party have been ill with gastrointestinal issues, likely from buffet. -for a family holiday the provision for kids is poor. Every single pool is freezing cold. The kids pool area, along with many other areas, has very slippy tiles making walking hazardous. The evening entertainment is amateurish and gets pretty tedious after a few nights. If you don’t mind your child passively chain-smoking a few hundred fags the mini-disco is for you, as there are plenty of ignorant, selfish, adults who apparently : 1. Have never heard of the hundreds of studies that conclude passive smoking is actually real 2. Simply don’t care about the damage their filthy habit does to everyone around them The music is also excessively loud. Whilst sat near the front we recorded a decibel reading of 90+ For a hotel of this size the gym is tiny and only accommodates a handful of people at a time, meaning you have to book every day. Beach area is fairly small and sand is like builders sharp sand. Snorkelling is pretty good, although can be murky some days. They should really offer a variety of water sports. All in all a mixed bag. The young children in our party would’ve happily played in a warm pool for hours but the lack of one made it much more difficult to entertain them. If you can’t entertain young kids on holiday it’s a problem.

This hotel complex is in gorgeous grounds and the pool areas are lovely. These are the good things. The food is very much the same as others all inclusives but everything is cold. The soft drinks are not the real I am and local spirits all taste like washing up liquid. The animation team worked hard and were good at their jobs. The singers and dancers were good but very similar each night and a little boring. Hotel not really near shops and bars etc so it’s a bus or taxi to the near by towns. Unfortunately myself and my husband suffered violent sickness and diarrhoea on day 3/4 of the holiday. We were confined to bed. Constantly disturbed by house keeping but they would not bring water. No pharmacy near by so husband had to cycle to it whilst unwell to get paracetamol. Reception was too busy to get him a taxi. I am vigilant with hand hygiene and we all washed and sanitised our hands regularly. I don’t know if this was food poisoning or a virus but it was awful. Luckily our adult daughter did not catch this and was able to collect bottled water and bread for us. Weather was rubbish but that’s no one’s fault. We did go out three times and had gorgeous food and mostly nice weather. The flys were around but not horrendous as others had said. We had approached tui about the hygiene before we travelled but they said they don’t take trip advisor reviews into account. Even though they are on their website. They also said the hotel still had exceptional feedback with tui. Hard to believe. I will never visit all inclusive again. We have been put off and we’re too bored because of lack of things to do. Interesting to see tui are not advertising this hotel next year???

A friend and I booked this hotel for her birthday as we had both been there separately and had really liked it (in fact, we both separately said it was the nicest hotel we had been to in Europe). We booked for 4 nights via TUI. The good: Staff were, on the whole, friendly. The room was clean and spacious and cleaned daily. The shower was great. There was a minibar in the room that was refilled once. It had lots of soft drinks, and one beer. There was a bottle of wine on the side too. The cocktails were nice there was quite a variety. We arrived quite late the first night and were helpfully rushed into the upstairs restaurant before it closed, so that we could get something to eat, then we finished our check-in properly. The beach was nice. The daytime entertainment staff were nice; friendly but not too pushy. Some of the evening entertainment was good. The staff talent show in the Safari bar was good and we saw a few singers in the Aphrodite bar that were good. The pizza was nice (they made me the biggest pizza ever, I could only eat about a quarter). The middle pool (by the Mythos bar) was much quieter than the top pool. It felt very safe walking around. The bad: The communication with the hotel before we arrived was appalling. I emailed them several times over a number of months with no response; I even asked TUI to contact them and, apparently, they can’t. The food was definitely not as good as last time. I am vegan, and apart from the nice pizza, above, the vegan selection had the limited variety I would typically expect from an all-inclusive and was very basic: some bread, salad, vegetables and fruit. I have definitely had better all-inclusive food as a vegan, but it was what I was expecting. There were a few issues – on the first night I was told I could not eat some of the potatoes as they contained butter, later on a different member of staff told me that they do not use butter at all in cooking veg (as it was ‘too expensive’). I was told all the bread was vegan, but some clearly had cheese topping. Breakfast was not great. The food was clearly better in the bottom restaurant. The beach (which was the bit that I most enjoyed last time) was definitely not quite as nice. It felt like it was ‘deader’ than when I was there last, and there was a lot of litter in the sea. Whilst there was lots of sea life, I definitely saw more (and a greater variety) of fish when I was there in 2018 (and it was at a similar time of year). Not much the hotel can do about that – likely a result of factors such as people not wearing reef-safe sunscreen, and overtourism in the summer, but it was noticeably less vibrant. As others have mentioned, you can upgrade to a different band and access the all-inclusive at the beach for €10 each a day, but you had to do it for the remainder of your stay (i.e. once you had booked it you had to book it for the rest of your days, you could not book it just for one day). I didn’t pay because there was no vegan food available, so it would not have been worth the money, and you can just get the bus up to the main restaurants. However, the food did not look bad there though. It costs €3 each to hire a bed and parasol, even if you has upgraded to the beach all inclusive, but the bed was yours for the whole day. Lastly, I caught the dreaded norovirus that was going around. This is probably not the hotel’s fault as it was going around the island, from what I understand. Me and my friend gelled frequently, but what we did not do (that we probably should have done) was use straws rather than drink from the glasses. Luckily it only hit me on the day I got home. The summary: Would I go again? I am not sure. I enjoyed it so much the first time I booked again twice (the first time was unfortunately cancelled by covid, and then we booked it this time). I would not discount it, but I think I would probably look at another hotel in Rhodes if I were to go again, unless it was on a fantastically cheap deal. It is not the cheapest hotel (I have had hotels for a week for less in the school holidays), and I am not sure that it was as worth it as I thought it was the last time, but I would check reviews to see if things had improved.

This resort thoroughly disappointed us. Location is gorgeous with stunning views of the sea and kalithea springs. Great private beach with good snorkelling but disappointing that AL guests don’t get the beach bar included. The food and drinks looked to be the same as what’s on offer in buffets. Hotel itself doesn’t have much round it so had to get taxi into old town or Faliraki to go out to eat. Pools are all good. Plenty of sunbeds never struggled to get a space although slightly close together and not very comfortable. All well kept and pleasant. Rooms are nice but very basic. Slightly outdated but nothing to bother us. All 3 of our rooms had showers that leaked water from the glass panel. Disappointed that no iron was included or available without paying for the launderer service. Evening entertainment was quite good. Every night external acts were brought in and always got people up dancing. Table service was sometimes slow and no allowed to go to the bar. The food is what totally lets this hotel down and is the reason we wouldn’t return. During our stay, 2/6 of our family got sick and others had stomach issues. It is quite clear that there are no food hygiene and handling standards being upheld here. The food was often lukewarm or cold. No temperatures were being monitored. Hot food was cold and cold food was lukewarm warm, including prawns being left unrefrigerated. In the outside restaurant there were tons of flies with no measures in place to mitigate this. In the self service bars the nozzles for the drinks clearly hadn’t been washed properly as they had visible black mould. Overall, this hotel is in a sorry state and has such potential but clearly lacks management and direction. We spoke to numerous English guests during our stay who all said never again and that they had also had issues with the food. It’s a shame really as is such a stunning location which is let down by the quality of the hotel.

Our experience at this hotel was extremely disappointing, and I would not return or recommend it to anyone. The condition of the room was unacceptable. There were visible stains and marks on the ceiling, areas that appeared damaged and possibly affected by damp, dirty flooring, and a damaged door. The room did not give us the impression that it was properly maintained or up to an acceptable standard. This is not what you expect when you pay for a holiday. The food was another major disappointment. We were unhappy with the food provided, and both my partner and I became ill during our stay. We experienced vomiting and diarrhoea, which completely ruined our holiday. We cannot confirm the exact cause, but becoming ill in this way made the experience even more distressing. What made it particularly frustrating was that we had already paid for the holiday and only came across the negative reviews too late. By that point, we felt there was very little we could do. A holiday should be a chance to relax, enjoy good food and feel comfortable in your accommodation. Instead, we were left disappointed by the room conditions, the food and the illness we experienced. Overall, this was a very poor experience and certainly not the holiday we paid for. I strongly advise other travellers to read recent reviews carefully before booking.